Pandora adds audio ads

by Jordan Running (RSS feed) Jan 9th 2007 at 6:25PM

The Digital Music Weblog is reporting that our favorite streaming audio music-recommendation service, Pandora, has begun inserting audio ads into the music stream for some listeners. One TDMW reader heard an ad for the McDonald's Dollar Menu, and wasn't pleased. Grant Robertson had a chance to ask Pandora's CTO Tom Conrad a few questions about the new ads. Conrad said that currently the ads are in trials and are only heard by 10% of Pandora listeners, each of whom hear a maximum of one ad per day, and the trial is targeted by listener age. The ads they're trialling run just nine seconds and follow the "NPR-style" "This station brought to you by..." format, and they're not considering any other formats right now. Head over to TDMW to read the.

Tags: ads, advertising, audio, music, pandora

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Steve said 5:53AM on 1-10-2007

It's called revenue. If a service like Pandora is free the money has to be made somewhere. I think short, infrequent, NPR-style ads is a small price to pay.

conedude13 said 10:18PM on 1-09-2007

That stinks. I guess it was only a matter of time before they started doing this though. Still a great site and service though, and I hope that the future state of the ads do not overtake the site.

Theo said 2:05AM on 1-10-2007

If they can keep the number of audio ads limited then I really don't mind if they'll insert them between songs. This won't make me avoid Pandora's great service. I have discovered lots of great new music and I will keep on doing this with Pandora.

Badger Gravling said 4:39AM on 1-10-2007

Every site needs funding from somewhere, and so far Pandora has just limited itself to homepage takeovers, which are pretty unobtrusive...

It depends how many adverts I encounter during a day as to whether it gets annoying

Rob said 9:55AM on 1-10-2007

Pandora is great, but I don't get to listen very much overall. When I do the web browser is in the background and I rarely see the adds they display. I completely understand the need for the audio adds, and as long as they are limited and not obnoxious I'm happy to hear them.

If you listen more and the ads bother you - sign up for the paid service that is add free.

Bunz said 12:34PM on 1-11-2007

I'm an avide Pandora listener. They're doing the ad's right, they're not long, they're not over powering and it's not much to pay for using a free kick-ass service. Way better than Yahoo Launch.

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