Pandora Steps Up Attack On $14B Radio Ad Market
Broadcast radio is about to take another body blow as Pandora steps up it's efforts to sell local advertising. Radio is still a $14 billion ad sales market; and starting in May, advertisers will be able to compare Pandora's reach directly through
services that filter 80% of all local radio ad sales.
The music streamer is also opening sales offices in the 25 top media markets in the U.S. Pandora reported that, as of January, it is has 65 million listeners or 8% of the U.S. radio audience.
“Pandora will now be there side by side, apples to apples, in the same systems used every day to purchase radio advertising,” Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy told Bloomberg. “We get terrific visibility on these systems.” Strata Marketing and Mediaocean which serve 1000+ ad agencies each have already been testing the addition of Pandora ratings, according to Kennedy.
If Pandora can make it easy for smaller advertisers to pick local markets and music genres to target, it would be a boon to smaller musicians, such as myself, who could target local markets with advertisements prior to playing a show in a particular city. Another benefit would be for those of us who do DJ nights at bars to advertise to the right kind of people who would be interested in such a thing.
Owning a perceived 8% of the total market compares tiny to radio’s 93% broadcast reach, especially when Pandora combines every format in that 8% meaning targeting by music format, age, gender, should get you even smaller results. Additionally Panodora is now limiting the time people can spend listening, and will be adding more commercials, both because of the financial expenses it is experiencing. It’s low advertising experience was separating itself from broadcast, but if it can’t support that difference it will have trouble growing by being another ad supported medium.
I don’t understand why anyone will keep listening to these services with commercials when you have http://www.earbits.com which is completely free and has no commercials or ads.