The highly popular music streaming service, Pandora, will begin rolling out it new advertising format beginning January 19, 2017. The new format, Responsive Mobile Display ads and Muted Video ads have produced positive results for the few brands, including Google, Express, and Denny’s, that have been involved in the company’s beta testing.
Pandora’s new mobile video offerings present the user with a video ad in the square that is usually displaying the album art for the song that is currently being played. Using this type of space allows the ad to easily adjust to any size of phone screen.
According to Pandora’s chief revenue officer John Trimble, “We applied the same expertise that makes us the leader in audio advertising to our new visual ads to deliver strong, measurable results.” John continued, “We are reinventing our mobile display ads to take full advantage of screen real estate and features native to our platform. And because our display ads are served only when a listener is looking at their phone and we have one of the largest logged-in user bases, we are uniquely positioned to deliver listener attention to advertisers at scale.”
The beta testing showed that there was an average increase of 50% when considering the amount of time spent with the new Responsive Mobile Display ads when compared to the old format. In addition, there was also an increase of more than 9% in brand awareness and favorability.
The new muted video ads created a 32% increase in the number of Pandora listeners that spent a minimum of 5 seconds watching the video, in addition to a high rate of users that watched the complete muted video advertisement.
Denny’s restaurant chief marketing officer John Dillon stated, “At Denny’s, we understand the importance of continuing to find new and innovative ways to connect with our fans on their terms and in their terms, especially in the digital world.” Dillon continued, “Our recent beta partnership with Pandora offered us an opportunity to showcase the launch of our new Buttermilk Pancakes in a way that was highly engaging, while also being cohesive—rather than intrusive—to our target audience’s online experience.”
Pandora states that 3 out of 4 survey respondents indicated their preference for the new ad formats. 74% of the survey respondents indicated that engagement with the new formats would be likely as well. If Pandora is able to achieve this type of acceptance to their new advertising format from the rest of their users, it is likely that others will soon follow in their footsteps.
