How one can run Pandora music advertisements
Pandora, the popular music streaming service, has over 81 million users and the average Pandora user spends 2 hours and 15 minutes a day listening to music on the platform.
With ad options on their free and paid platforms, Pandora music ads are a great opportunity for advertisers looking to grow their target audience.
Learn how you can leverage Pandora's unique advertising platform to help you achieve your campaign goals.
How do Pandora ads work?
Pandora advertisers can choose between three types of ads, each with multiple subsets. Pandora’s three main ad types are:
- Pandora content ads
- Pandora visual indicators
- Pandora audio ads
Pandora Music Content Ads
This ad experience allows advertisers to share content with listeners in unique ways, including the option to create branded playlists and own all of the ad space on a specific broadcaster. In short, content ads are about bringing content to listeners through various immersive modes.
Brand stations
These stations give advertisers half of the commercial breaks that occur on selected stations that target specific demographics.
Artist programs
These programs allow advertisers to target specific artists that are relevant to their demographic.
Brand stations
By allowing brands to create 80-100 song playlists, advertisers can create playlists that contain the theme of a campaign.
Sponsored stations
With these channels, advertisers can use all the advertising space between the titles and target certain demographic characteristics of the channels.
Pandora Music Audio Ads
These ad experiences focus primarily on audio components. Think about the ads you hear on the radio. those interruptions that occur between songs. The same requirement applies to Pandora audio ads: the ad appears during selected time periods.
Platform specific audio
These music ads allow advertisers to connect with their target audience for 10, 15 or 30 seconds between songs and are complemented by a visual presence.
Audio everywhere
These Pandora music ads help users go beyond the platform and extend ad reach to connected cars and smart speakers.
With the Audio Everywhere product, advertisers can use a 10-, 15- or 30-second audio spot and are accompanied by a visual ad presence.
Sequential audio
This feature allows advertisers to tell a true story and uses the technology to post an expanded sequence of ads one by one.
Perfect for sharing your in-depth branding story, these ads allow you to share sequential ads in real time and keep your listeners moving on the buyer's path with your narrative.
Dynamic audio
This Pandora music ad uses the platform's intelligent display technology to optimize factors such as weather, time and location and create the right message for the right listener at the right time.
By leveraging the platform's data, you can create targeted ads that target your core audience directly.
Pandora music video ads
With a variety of placement options, Pandora video ads offer a variety of ways to reach listeners. From interacting with ad interactions for listening time to strategically placed videos, these ads are a great tool for marketers.
Video everywhere
With a standard 300 x 250 banner, these ads will run across platforms as soon as ad inventory becomes available.
Platform specific video
This full screen video is displayed to listeners as they engage with the platform for maximum visibility and interaction.
Mobile muted video
As the name suggests, this video ad option is only available for phones. The muted video starts automatically, giving the listener the option to unmute, pause, or watch the entire video on the screen. When you click the Call to Action (CTA) button, the listener will be automatically redirected to your landing page.
Sponsored listening
This Pandora music ad option gives listeners an hour of ad-free music in exchange for 15 seconds of engagement on your video ad.
Video Plus
This user opt-in feature allows listeners to skip more songs, gain Pandora Premium access, and play songs by interacting with your video content.
Show anywhere
This low cost option allows advertisers to reach audiences through banners that manifest on all platforms.
Platform specific display
These Pandora music ads are only offered to active users so that advertisers can showcase their graphics on their platform on mobile devices, tablets, and the web.
Sponsored listening
Pandora gives listeners an hour of free content for 15 seconds to engage with your visual ad.
Responsive mobile display
This Pandora music ad feature places your visual ad where album art normally appears while songs are playing.
Web billboard
This option gives advertisers the option to use a one-day popup takeover that will appear above the media player. Elements of the campaign dominate the background and give listeners maximum visibility of your brand.
Mobile Welcome Interstitial
This Pandora music ad is displayed in full screen mode as soon as users open the app.
Dynamic display
This Pandora music ad offers advertisers four ways to engage with audiences through display ads:
- Sequential messaging: These ads are displayed to the audience in an order based on the listener's previous ad behavior.
- CTR optimization: This feature allows advertisers to test multiple banners to see which ones are best for their audience segments.
- Creative targeting: This feature enables landing pages to be created separately for different target audience segments using the same advertising tag.
- Reinforced results: This Pandora music ad feature is pretty cool. You can add unlimited special effects to your display, including a countdown and even a weather dashboard. The sky really is the limit.
How much do Pandora ads cost?
With a better understanding of the range of ads available to advertisers, you are probably wondering how these ads can fit into your budget.
One of the best attributes of Pandora music ads is the cost effective pricing structure. Here's a breakdown of how much each type of ad costs.
Audio
You may have expected these ads to be the lowest price possible, but it doesn't. These ads run approximately $ 8 to $ 12 per CPM.
Video
Video is the most expensive category of Pandora music ads. It's also the most haunting. These ads will reset your campaign by an average of $ 15-25 per CPM.
Visually
These Pandora music ads average $ 5 to $ 7 per CPM, making them the most affordable group.
3 Reasons You Should Run a Pandora Music Ad Campaign
We've already covered the sheer size of Pandora's users, not to mention their commitment to active listening on the platform. However, these aren't the only reasons Pandora is a great advertising platform. Here are three more reasons to consider advertising on Pandora.
1. It increases brand awareness
A variety of ad types allow you to change the way you tell your brand or the story of your product. By using different modes to share your message, you increase the chance that your target audience will not only see your brand but also interact with it.
You can use this strategy to increase both brand awareness and audience reach.
To help you achieve this goal, Pandora shared three tips on how to leverage the platform's unique reach to increase your brand awareness.
- Mention your brand name within the first few seconds of your ad
- Make sure your ads are contextually relevant
- Watch video for awareness raising
By employing these three strategies, you can increase awareness of what can ultimately lead to actual sales.
2. It helps you to reach your target audience
Regardless of the type of marketing campaign you are running, it is important that you target the right audience instead of spending your time and budget on news that goes nowhere.
We've already covered the sheer size of the Pandora audience. What we haven't covered yet is how Pandora's plethora of user data can help you reach the target audience for your particular campaign or business quickly and directly.
During the registration process (this applies to both free and paid accounts), Pandora collects over 1 billion data points every day. The streaming platform goes far beyond the question of postcode and date of birth.
When you advertise on Pandora, you have a unique opportunity to use this data to create custom audiences who are most likely to interact with your ads.
If you narrow down the audiences with this specific data, the chances of success are much higher and you are protecting your budget at the same time.
Pandora's segmentation options don't stop there. Advertisers can use parameters like time of day, device, ethnicity, and other factors to make adjustments that will help you create and reach your ideal audience.
3. It can help you get more sales
Hopefully, with the audience you can reach, so will your sales.
In addition, Pandora provides clear metrics that marketers can use to assess how their campaign is performing and where there is room for improvement.
While the metrics associated with classic radio advertising are essentially useless, Pandora provides marketers with unique data points for each type of ad through an easy-to-use dashboard.
For web ads, these data points include:
- impressions
- Clicks
- CTR
- Graduation rate
- Quartile rate
For cell phone ads, these data points include:
- Time spent viewing
- Time spent on the landing page
- social shares
- Mute Rate (shown only for muted video ads)
Given the availability of these metrics, Pandora advertisers can assess what is working and what is not to track and optimize your ROI.
Don't you believe us?
Here is one of our favorite examples of successful advertising on Pandora.
Kellogg's pop tarts were aimed at connecting with the youthful audience on the platform. The company was able to attribute the following ROI to the campaign in 2015:
- Tripling the ROI
- Increase in sales by 7 percent
- 347K station ads generated
- 466K listening hours logged
If this isn't a convincing record of success, we don't know what it is.
How to set up your Pandora ad campaign
Starting a Pandora digital advertising campaign is easy.
First, contact a Pandora advertising representative. This step starts the conversation, and the representative will provide you with a Pandora advertising guide that you can use to make the following decisions.
- While we've discussed the variety of Pandora music ads at a relatively high level, it is time to delve deeper into which Pandora music ad format is right for your campaign and determine the asset that is required for that format.
- Assess Pandora's demographic information (also included in the streaming platform's manual). Identify which audience segments are appropriate for your campaign and share them with the Pandora representative.
- Determine the best time of day for your audience to interact with your ad.
Once you've completed these four steps, your campaign will be well on its way to creation and will be able to track its performance using the metrics above.
Conclusion
If you're looking for new media to reach your target audience, Pandora is a great place to start.
Much like any other digital marketing strategy, you should pursue your Pandora plan with a clear goal.
With a variety of options from audio to video to video, it's easy to find the right medium for your ad. If you have a bigger budget, you can invest in multiple formats to ensure your brand's message is shared on the high-traffic platform.
Narrowing down your target audience and deciding where to put your advertising dollars can be overwhelming. So please contact our agency if you need help.
What's the best Pandora ad you've ever heard or seen?
See How my agency can drive Firmly Traffic volumes on your website
- SEO – Unlock tons of SEO traffic. See real results.
- Content Marketing – Our team creates epic content that is shared, links accessed and visitors drawn.
- Paid media – effective paid strategies with a clear ROI.
Book a call