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Pandora to Expand Ad Program to TVs, Blu-ray Players

by Warren Riddle on September 30, 2010 at 11:15 AM

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Pandora streams its radio programming to approximately 65 million registered users, so the service presents an excellent avenue for advertisers to reach a broad audience. The Internet radio company's fledgling iPad advertising program has already attracted major corporations like Starbucks, Lexus and Budweiser, all while Pandora is reportedly planning to initiate another, more diversified ad system.

David Kaplan reports that Pandora's new "connected home" program expands its now wide-reaching ad platform from PCs, smartphones and tablets to "in-home connected devices such as TVs, Blu-ray disc players, table-top radios and other digital media players." Wary subscribers who have become accustomed to ad-free TV listening (through services like Roku) should remain optimistic about the expansion, though. Seemingly, Pandora intends to keep the ads exclusively limited to six specific corporations per month, with independent advertisers offering non-competitive products and services.

If the new program operates similarly to the existent ad system for PCs and mobile devices, the in-home Pandora listening experience won't suffer. The overwhelming majority of sites and Web services already display unobtrusive banner ads, so on-screen spots shouldn't annoy regular or first-time listeners. And, if programming is temporarily and infrequently interrupted by a brief, 15-second ad clip, well, that's a small price to pay for free music access.

Tags: advertising, internetradio, ipad, ipadapp, pandora, StreamingRadio

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