Pandora reaches two million listeners and takes it to radio head on

Sarah Homewood
By Sarah Homewood | 17 July 2014
 

Pandora Australia and New Zealand has cracked 2 million registered listeners with the streaming service now attracting two new users every second minute.

However, Pandora's Australia and New Zealand MD, Jane Huxley, said she isn't surprised about the growth because of the way the product organically gains momentum.

“The way that our platform works is that we grow virally, we know that people who download and use Pandora recruit other people to download and use Pandora,” she said.

“So it makes sense to me that the more listeners we get the more listeners we get. I like to call it the great Amway of radio apps.”

Huxley said that the key goal of the company was to take on radio head-to-head..

“We're here to really compete with radio, that's the milestone, that's the target,” she said.

“Its growing incredibly quickly - people love what we do and we're getting really strong feedback from the market, with the average listening time being 2 hours and 15 minutes a day.”

While the Pandora model goes after passive music listeners - those who are working, running or cooking while they listen - this doesn’t effect how advertisers view the product, with Huxley saying somewhere between 80-90% of advertisers continue with Pandora after one trial.

“When our advertisers are advertising on Pandora they're advertising to a mass and mainstream audience, but they're doing it in a very targeted way,” she said.

“We use behavioural targeting and we know we are serving ads to those who are either listening or looking so that wastage that you see in other broadcast mediums is really reduced in terms of using a platform like Pandora to target people that you're after."

The one-two punch of using audio advertising plus a click through ad on the device on which the user is listening to Pandora is seeing click through rates in excess of 5% according to Huxley.

“The two work in with each other, the audio plus the display is really getting the attention of listeners unlike anything I've seen.”

If news from the streaming space is music to your ears then pick up the latest issue of the AdNews magazine featuring a special report on all aspects of the radio industry, including all the key players from the streaming battle, Rdio, Shazam, iHeartRadio and of course Pandora.

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