Pandora Wants You To Get Intimate With Brands In Exchange For Ad

Sponsored Listening, a Pandora feature where users of the free ad-supported version could engage with a brand for an hour of ad-free service, is now open for all advertisers.

Once Pandora listeners watch or interact with the ad, the advertiser “sponsors” the next hour so the listener gets an hour of uninterrupted music.

The launch follows a beta period initiated in September 2014 during which Sponsored Listening received positive feedback from Pandora’s listeners and produced a measurable return on investment for advertisers, the company said.

Pandora says that Sponsored Listening now also offers advertisers more creativity.

These ads can be a video or an interactive “rich media unit”, – a slideshow, for example – and require the user to pay attention for at least 15 seconds, although videos can be up to two minutes and a half in length. The ads are also only available on mobile devices through Pandora’s app. This targeted roll out makes sense, as the company has said before that 80 percent of its active listeners are tuning in on mobile devices. Aside from Land Rover North America, Pandora has brought some other big names into the official Sponsored Listening spot this week, including Corona Extra, Gatorade, truTV and Yuengling.

According to Pandora, the tool resulted in a 12 per cent increase in brand awareness and 30 per cent lift in purchase intent for advertisers during its beta testing period.

Pandora is heralding the full rollout of its Sponsored Listening feature, which has been in beta since last fall. “Opportunities to engage with our consumers around new vehicle launches within premium listening environments are hard to find”. Tullo has a success rate of 55.9% and is ranked #2970 out of 3712 analysts, while Mahaney has a success rate of 65.0% and is ranked #9.