Pandora’s online box attracts brands
By Steve Mullins. Branded radio. Pandora Media keeps racking up impressive metrics for its Internet radio service, delivering numbers that can only be good news for brands.
Recently, Pandora announced that it had racked up 40 million users across all platforms, including mobile, in early December, and that it was now signing up new listeners at a rate of 300k a week. In addition, the company says it accounted for 44% of all Net radio listening hours in the US in October, with total average daily users running to 3 million.
Wait, there’s more.
“Recent comScore data also show that Pandora’s delivery of coveted ad targets beat out both Hulu and ESPN with nearly twice as many daily visits among 18-24 year-olds,” the outfit says. “Among 25-34 year-olds, visitors come back to Pandora more than twice as often as repeat visitors to CNN.”
Brands have taken advantage of that kind of reach too. In May this year, Brita came onboard to sponsor one week’s streaming of Dave Matthews Band’s new album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, prior to release.
“While Pandora is getting bigger, it’s also getting better, enabling brands such as Brita and our Filter For Good campaign not only to reach consumers, but to finely target our messaging to specific age groups, gender, geography and more – all wrapped in a premier user experience that’s truly engaging,” said Drew McGowan, senior group manager for Brita.
And in December, Starbucks created a branded playlist on Pandora that could be added to a consumer’s personal tuner online and to smartphones. The coffee-shop brand wanted to drive consumers in-store to participate in a charity drive, with donations of $1 from each sale of the brand’s Playing For Change CD going to the Global Fund to help fight AIDS in Africa.
