Without music I can’t get through the day without going insane. Pandora’s awesome mobile app allows me to stream songs directly into the palm of my hand via smartphone. For a consumer, Pandora offers a large selection of artists, easy interface, and high quality music. Not to mention the app is completely free. However, for marketers and big brands alike Pandora is a goldmine of opportunities. This ”fun app” is one of the best ways to bolster brand awareness, engage consumers, and increases fiscal results.
According to Luxury Marketing Pandora’s traffic is 65% mobile device based and allows targeting based upon listening preferences, making Mobile Banner Ad’s within the app the ideal place for big brands to allocate their marketing efforts. Pandora is by no means a “traditional” advertising channel and there are plenty of big brands that are looking for ways to break the mold of “old school marketing”. Luxury brand Nordstrom’s is one such big brand. The company aims to drive consumers to stores via banner ads that offer a store locater with directions.
Pandora takes the guess work out of the question “where is my target audience”. Within the app, consumer demographics can be segregated by a stations genre ensuring a brand will have a higher ROI per advertisement. For instance, a Pandora station for “Lady GaGa” is bound to have listeners who value high fashion, high culture, and clothes that are trendy. Nordstrom’s placed banner ads on that station alone to target the fashion guru’s of the world. The combination of Pandora and mobile banner ad’s is a marketing tool that is down right effective. In the fiscal year of 2011, Pandora has 23 million active users and is projected to grow 21 percent annually and reach 159 million active listeners worldwide by fiscal 2021 according to Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt. Pandora is so successful that is gaining more consumers per year than sales staff. With such a growth in mobile music, mobile marketers need to start incorporating banner advertising with Pandora to engage consumers. In the near future QR codes will die, but Mobile banner ads are here to stay.
Long Live the Mobile Banner Ad!