Pandora Selling Local Ads on Promise of Beating All Stations in Most U.S. Markets
Pandora is on track to hold a bigger share of listening hours “soon” than the largest radio station in each of the majority of U.S. markets, CEO Joe Kennedy said Wednesday. The company passed “an inflection point” in its heft as an ad medium by doubling its national share to 4.3 percent Q3 from a year earlier, he said in a webcast presentation from a Citi investors conference in San Francisco.
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The growth continues “at a very strong pace,” with Pandora seeing as strong increases as ever in figures on users and time spent, and the company has bulked up with heavy hiring of local as well as national ad sellers, Kennedy said. Pandora is already the third-largest U.S. radio ad network for reaching listeners 18-49, he said. Arbitron data showing a decline in total time listening to radio supports the company’s assumption that most of its growth will come out of FM’s hide, he said.
The company will keep talking with Facebook about an alliance but has no reason to think it has suffered without it, Kennedy said. Capabilities that Facebook added recently are aimed at “new players looking to build audience,” whereas Pandora is “growing at a tremendous rate” mainly by word of mouth, he said.
Pandora has a double-digit share of U.S. office listening time, because of the ease of access through desktop computers, but the workplace accounts for only 18 percent of radio consumption, Kennedy said. In homes, which account for 35 percent, the company doubled last year to more than 400 the number of consumer electronics devices that integrate its service, he said. Docked Apple mobile products are “the prime home consumption devices,” he said. Pandora’s share of listening in vehicles, where almost half of the total takes place, will grow tremendously but slowly as the easy technology needed spreads widely, said Kennedy, who was a sales and marketing vice president at the automotive company Saturn.