Pandora has debuted its Sponsored Listening service following an 11-month beta test involving brands such as Land Rover, Gatorade and Corona, giving those listeners who engage with an ad for at least 15 seconds an hour’s worth of ad-free music.
The company has written about the new service in a blog on its site, detailing the beta phase, while co-founder Tim Westergren talked to M&M Global about Sponsored Listening earlier this summer.
Having tested the service with select listeners and advertisers, it is now available to all brands and all consumers, with brands that sign up given “100% share of voice” within a session.
Pandora said that advertisers on Sponsored Listening found that consumers engaged with ads more deeply, with some users interacting with content beyond the timespan necessary for an hour’s uninterrupted listening. Advertisers also experienced a 12% lift in brand awareness and 30% hike in purchase intent, Pandora said.
Legitimate interactions that grant a listener an hour’s uninterrupted access include watching a video or engaging with rich media such as sliding picture galleries or 360-degree product spotlights.
Pandora said that the beta testing saw 4m users choose to engage with ads. Beta partners included Land Rover North America, Corona Extra, Gatorade, TruTV and Yeungling.
Lauren Fitts, Gatorade’s director of integrated campaigns, said: “This kind of value exchange is rare in a fast-paced, fragmented media environment. By sponsoring an hour of free listening, we can help fuel a better training session or workout, and that is a really authentic touchpoint for our brand with athletes.”
Jonathan Eccles, a Pandora product manager, wrote in the blog: “In today’s cluttered advertising landscape, it is more important than ever to leverage solutions that capture attention and drive quality time spent with your brand.
“We know that when people listen to music, they experience an elevated state of emotion. When marketers can tap into emotional moments like these, they will be rewarded with life-long brand loyalists.”
M&M Global spoke to Pandora co-founder Westergren at Cannes, when he warned newcomers such as Apple that online radio is fantastically hard.
Pandora has acquired nearly 80 million active listeners in the US, Australia and New Zealand over the past 15 years, and harbours further international ambitions, depending on the creation of an “acceptable licensing structure”.
Earlier this year, the platform recently announced a $48.3m net loss for the first quarter, with listener numbers dropping 2.8% on the previous quarter. However, its active listener levels were up 5.2% on 2014 levels.
