Power of Scale: Audience Delivery in a Streaming World

It's that time of year: the annual TV Upfronts and broadcast ad buyers are hearing the latest and greatest pitches from Broadcast Network partners hoping to find something new and interesting for their clients, amid a rapidly changing landscape.

Oftentimes, when I meet with Marketers who invest heavily on TV,
they ask:

• “Where should streaming audio play in my marketing mix?”
• “Why should I be thinking about Pandora as that partner?”

We have to consider the realities of living in today’s technology-first world. Media fragmentation is at an all-time high, consumer attention is at an all-time low, and quality, brand safety and transparency top the list of advertiser demands. In addition, ad avoidance has evolved from channel surfing to non-ad supported subscription models. More and more marketers are concerned about the ability to reach consumers who are increasingly shifting to the cord cutter category or prefer watching their favorite shows on OTT ad-free platforms. Finding audience scale (i.e. reach) in quality content environments (beyond TV) can be incredibly challenging.

Offering a premium high quality ad environment, attention, and a massive 100% logged-in user base (Pandora reaches 1 in 3 Americans),¹ streaming audio is the perfect complement to a TV buy. But, does it really work? Does scale really make a difference in reaching fragmented, hard-to-engage TV audiences?

First, let’s talk about the shift that is happening to digital streaming

From the latest Edison Infinite Dial report, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Population (60%) are streaming digital audio weekly and time streaming is growing with the increase in connected home devices.² While listenership is still high in expected places like car and home, mobile devices now allow listenership virtually any and every place consumers are spending time. It is quite literally creating a soundtrack for people’s lives. As a result, audiences are shifting dramatically toward audio-first environments, where content is being consumed through screenless devices. The massive adoption of connected platforms—including smart speakers and other IoTs—are creating new moments and touch points throughout the day that are not just audio-first, they’re audio only.

This is a huge opportunity for Marketers, yet most aren’t quite sure how to take advantage of it just yet. Fortunately, we have the scale and the solution to help you make the most of this opportunity today.

One of the reasons scale is so important is because it’s truly a competitive advantage. Spotify, for instance, only has a presence on Amazon Alexa devices and Sonos speakers for listeners in their Premium Tier—which means there is ZERO addressable audience on these incredibly popular and fast-growing devices. We are the only player in town to reach ad-supported streaming audio listeners.

Second, let’s highlight the shift that is happening with traditional TV viewing

It's no longer news that U.S. consumers are ditching traditional TV in favor of over-the-top (OTT) streaming and CTV. Nearly half of 22–45 year olds are not watching content on Traditional TV⁵ and the greying of traditional TV audiences plagues advertisers looking to win younger, influential audiences’ time and attention. Streaming ad-free subscription service Netflix now rules the connected living room, with 74% HH penetration and 44% share of total OTT viewing hours.⁶

But again, we run into the problem of addressable audience. Millions are paying for ad-free OTT TV services—few of which have scaled, high quality ad solutions. 90% of Pandora’s audience is addressable, logged-in and using Pandora’s ad-supported product. This means advertisers can leverage Pandora’s large audience to reach light TV viewers, cord cutters or cord nevers in the most relevant places and spaces.

Complement Your TV Campaign with Pandora

Streaming goes with you where TV can’t—we’ve established that. And Pandora is the right streaming partner because we deliver quality ad environments and audiences that can be targeted and measured.

For us, quality and attention is part of our core narrative: we deliver ads that are in a high quality environment and are designed to be engaging, hard to avoid and viewable. On top of that, we have an audience scale of over 118M listeners, which is 90% addressable.¹

Trying to target TV viewing audiences? Leverage Pandora’s 1P/3P audience segments to complement your 2019-2020 television campaign.

Your audience is listening and advertisers can complement their TV campaign with Pandora. We have 2,300+ pre-built audience segments to reach the audience most valuable to you.

1 comscore Key Measures, Total Audio Pandora + SoundCloud, P13+ 2 Edison Research and Triton Digital; The Infinite Dial 2019, P13+ (read more) 3 Internal Pandora Metrics, January 2019 4 Internal Pandora Metrics, February 2019 5 Omnicom, Reaching the Unreachables 2017 Study (read more) 6 Statistica, April 2017 7 Simmons Research Fall 2018 NHCS Adult Study 6-month, Adults 18+ 8 Pandora Tune In User Study, 2019