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Report: Pandora Hopes To Build Ad Revenue By Pinpointing Likely Voting Preferences
February 14, 2014 at 3:55 AM (PT)
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"Next time you listen to a BOB MARLEY channel on PANDORA MEDIA INC., the Internet radio service may peg you as likely to vote for a Democrat," reports THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
The webcaster will offer a new advertising service next week that would enable political ad buyers to target the majority of its 73 million active monthly listeners based on PANDORA's research of their political leanings.
How will this work? The paper writes, "the company matches election results with subscribers’ musical preferences by ZIP Code. Then, it labels individual users based on their musical tastes and whether those artists are more frequently listened to in Democratic or Republican areas. Users don’t divulge their political affiliations when they sign up for PANDORA. PANDORA’s effort to pinpoint voter preferences highlights how digital media companies are finding new ways to tap information that users share freely to target advertising. These go beyond the traditional tracking of Web-browsing habits."
“Targeting users is basically the currency in data right now,” PANDORA Dir./Project Management JACK KRAWCZYK told THE JOURNAL. adding "he believes PANDORA’s predictions are between 75% and 80% accurate, but the 'true test' will be how the ads perform. PANDORA uses county election results in assembling its profiles because it has found they are better predictors than more-local results, such as from a voting precinct."

