Posts filed under ‘advertising’
Shazam Scored Big During Sunday’s Game
The award for best use of the Superbowl to drive traffic to its music platform goes to Shazam, the innovative mobile music tagging app that ranks among the five most downloaded apps on iTunes ever.
Shazam is an app that you can use to tag songs and identify them. Hear a song and wonder what it is? Shazam identifies the song for you and offers you the lyrics. It also lets you preview and purchase the song, watch the video, and learn more about the artist. You can share songs with your friends as well. They have more than 175 million people using the service in 200 countries.
Shazam encouraged users to use Shazam to tag the halftime performances of artists and get exclusive content. Sponsored by Bud Light, the promotion offered both a Shazam logo on the screen and announcer promo telling the tv audience that they could use the app to tag artists and ads, enter contests and get special offers. Sponsor tie-ins included Toyota, offering a win a car sweepstakes, Cars.com which let viewers use the Shazam app to donate a buck to charity, and Pepsi which offered a free music video to viewers who used the app.
Shazam reported that football fans tagged content millions of times during the halftime show and ads. No word on how many folks downloaded the app during the show to use it, but I’m guessing there was a lot of traffic for that as well.
Simply by making music more interactive, Shazam was able to put itself at the center of one of the biggest tv events of the year. Here’s the Bud Light tv commercial featuring Shazam..
Mobile Music Ad Dollars Are Growing
Mobile ad dollars are growing, according to eMarketer. As smartphone usage expands, revenues from the ad-supported component of mobile music, games and videos alone will grow 52.7% this year to $433.8 million.
Two things are driving the increase – one being the growing audience for mobile music, gaming and video content. The second reason is that more and more content providers are shifting to an ad based revenue model, stimulating marketplace spending. Spending on ads for mobile music, gaming and video content accounted for 20% of the revenue in the space last year but will increase to 30% by 2015, to nearly $3.59 billion. The remainder of the revenues will be paid by subscription and download fees.
There’s a strong tolerance for mobile ads if the apps are free – new study info from Nielsen showed both that free apps are preferred by consumers and 51% of consumers say they are okay with advertising on their devices if they can access the content for free.
Monetizing mobile content with ads is becoming increasingly important for services such as Pandora. With the most downloaded free music app in Apple and Google app stores, Pandora sees the majority of its audience on mobile devices.
Radio’s Online Revenues Up 15% This Year
Digital revenues will continue to be the bright spot in radio’s future, according to new projections issued by BIA/Kelsey. Radio’s online/digital revenues will grow to $479 million in 2011, up from $405 million in 2010. The five-year outlook indicates radio’s online/digital revenues will reach $758 million by 2015, representing a 13.4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
In particular, the report mentions the integration of digital and traditional assets, which is giving stations opportunities to attract advertisers through online, social media and mobile channels and drive on-air audiences online.
While radio revenues have seen sluggish growth of only 1.2% this year, the digital/online segment has grown 15% over last year and is projected to finish the year at $479 billion.
Pandora Reports First Profits
Pandora reported its first profits last week of $638,000 on revenues of $75 million for its third quarter of this year. This beats most analyst’s expectations and dashes last year’s losses for the same period of $1.77 million.
Pandora streamed 2.1 billion hours of programmimg -twice the numbers of last year same quarter. According to Chief Executive Officer Joe Kennedy, About half of Pandora’s $66 million in third-quarter advertising sales came from mobile users, a “triple-digit” increase from a year ago.
“Rapid growth of 104% year-over-year in listener hours and record Internet radio market share growth to 66% illustrates the strong demand for personalized radio,” stated Joe Kennedy, Chairman, President & CEO of Pandora. “Our growing scale and powerful, multi-product advertising platform is enabling Pandora to increasingly penetrate areas that were once solely served by terrestrial radio. Our momentum in transforming the radio industry is stronger than ever.”
For third quarter of fiscal 2012, total revenue was $75.0 million, a 99% year-over-year increase. Advertising revenue was $66.0 million, a 102% year-over-year increase. Subscription and other revenue was $9.0 million, an 80% year-over-year increase.
This news came a week after the Radio Advertising Bureau released third quarter revenues reporting $190 million in digital revenues for US based radio broadcasters in addition to modest growth in spot revenues.
Mary Meeker: The Next Big Thing Is Online Audio
Mary Meeker is widely considered to be an expert when it comes to spotting trends online. A partner at venture capitallist firm KPCB, she was named one of the ten smartest people in tech last year by Fortune magazine. She’s a popular speaker and analyst who has a knack for spotting the next big trend in technology. Lately Ms Meeker’s specialty has been mobile and the way it is revolutionizing the way we do everything, from shopping to consuming media.
This week, speaking at Web 2.0, Meeker gave a fast talking presentation about Internet trends. In it, she predicts that the next big thing is online audio. Lots of new technologies are contributing to this emerging trend. For example, she points out that while twitter and facebook have enjoyed enormous success with their mobile apps, it’s Pandora that has the largest percentage of their audience on mobile devices.
Meeker went on to mention new technologies that are driving the new trend, including Bluetooth enabled wireless devices which permit hands free access, higher quality, more compact wireless audio speakers, connected car audio, sound recognition and understanding apps such as Apple’s new Siri, and sound creation and sharing platforms like SoundCloud and Spotify. 
The presentation is chock full of great info and perspective on the promise of mobile. There’s plenty of room left for growth for smartphones, mobile ad dollars are ramping up just fine, cpms are ramping too.
What’s more, the US has taken a leadership position in new mobile technology – thanks largely to Apple and Google. Innovation in Silicon Valley has never been more rapid.
And in case you missed this point a few paragraphs ago, Mary Meeker, one of my personal favorites in the biz, said that Online Audio is the next big thing…
You can watch her presentation online here.
Abacast Offers Broadcasters Streaming, Sales Solutions
Abacast, a streaming solutions provider, is helping broadcaster partners generate significant ad revenue with the Abacast Digital Ad Sales Program and the Abacast Clarity™ Digital Radio System.
Federated Media is a company that owns 15 radio stations in Indiana and launched their streaming initiative in September. Using the Abacast sales program, which provides training and sales materials to the stations, they were able to quickly sell 50% of their annual digital inventory, achieving annual streaming profitability, and generating an annual gross profit margin of 83%. “The digital revenue was almost entirely incremental,” said James Derby, Chief Strategy Officer at Federated Media. “We signed many new and existing customers that were excited about digital and wanted to jump in with our digital package.”
Neuhoff Media, a privately held company with 12 radio stations in Illinois, sold 40% of the available yearly digital ad packages in their first month using the Abacast sales and ad management systems. Gross profit margins from streaming totaled 50% after the initial month.
“Abacast has built mature systems that enable our customers to build profitable digital businesses that take advantage of this growth trend.” said Rob Green, Abacast CEO. Green attributes the early success of these two partners to successful integration of Abacast’s Clarity™ Digital Radio System which provides a complete solution for online radio streaming. In addition, the Abacast Digital Sales Program offers digital sales training and brandable sales presentations for station sales execs.
It’s a smart move for Abacast to offer both technical and digital sales training solutions, one that shows that they mean to become business partners with their stations, something that should help them build their network..
Internet Radio’s Listeners Are Engaged
Targetspot has released a new whitepaper that examines the behavior of digital audio listeners with regard to discovering new music, giving and receiving musical recommendations, and music purchasing.
The paper points out that Internet radio listeners are an engaged bunch, 80% listen 1-3 hours a day. What’s more, 73% listen to more than one station a day and 46% often check out the name of the song or artist playing. 
Other indicators of the level of engagement with new music that Internet radio listeners have include:
- 69% of Internet radio listeners have decided to purchase a song as a result of hearing it on an Internet radio station.
- 42% rate songs on Internet radio stations
- 38% recommend songs, artists or stations
- 32% check out what others are listening to online
- 57% search for new music
- 28% click on ads
- 32% buy songs online
- 22% buy albums online
Study: Digital Ads Impact Affluent Americans
The Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ipsos Mendelsohn, an independent research firm have released a new study Affluent Consumers in a Digital World. The study focuses on the behavior of Affluent Americans - the 21% of U.S. households that have a minimum $100,000 annual income or the top fifth of the country. They represent 70% of U.S. consumer wealth.
It’s an interesting study that reveals that these Americans, with concentrated buying power and generally low consumption rates of traditional media, are the heaviest users of digital media. While Affluent Americans are less likely than the general population to watch TV or listen to radio, they are more likely to own a smartphone, use the Internet and spend more time online.
They also have higher recall of digital ads than the general population and are more likely to have increased awareness of a product or brand because of digital advertising. 
Digital ads have considerable impact on awareness of products and companies for many Americans, but Affluent Americans are more likely than others to say that they learned about new products or learned about companies they were not aware of before due to digital ads.
Interestingly, this group prefers ad supported websites and are willing to provide more information about themselves in order to receive ads that they find relevant.
According to the study, video, banner, email and search ads are the most effective sorts of digital ads with this group, but I saw no evidence that digital audio ads were even included in the study. The IAB has only recently begun to acknowledge audio as a digital ad type – it’s been about a year since the IAB formed an audio committee (which I participate on) and released A Digital Audio Overview. On September 19th they will host an agency day at their office in New York City and they are making a strong effort to become a good resource for educating the agency and ad communities on digital audio ad opportunities.
New Data Shows Targeting Is Critical For Internet Radio Ad Campaigns
Triton Digital has reported, via Inside Radio, that on average about half (51%) of a streaming broadcast station’s audience is outside its Designated Market Area (DMA). In fact, according to Triton COO Mike Agovino, quoted in the article, the larger the market, the higher the percentage of out of market listening. He says a lot of the out of DMA listening is from nearby markets, such as listening in Connecticut to New York stations’ streams. 
The problem is, few stations are separating their in-market versus out-market audiences when they are selling to advertisers or when they are counting up delivered impressions. In fact, most national streaming ad campaigns are targeted geographically based on choosing call letters in the markets that the advertiser wants to target, according to the article in Inside Radio, which checked in with Eyal Goldwerger, CEO of Targetspot and Brian Benedik, president of Katz360. If national advertisers are buying streaming ads on broadcast stations and believe they’re geotargeting by doing so, that’s a problem, since this new info from Triton reports that only half the people who hear the ads are in that market.
Since online stations like Pandora and Slacker are registering their listeners, they have actual impression by impression geotargetability. Advertisers that are measuring the results of their campaigns are going to see an improved return by those stations and that will drive the price up for them. Broadcasters that stream and fail to improve their targeting capabilities will see the opposite.
The reality is that targeted ads are good for the station, the listener and the advertiser. Listener registration lies at the center of ad targeting capabilities. Pandora, Slacker, CBSRADIO, iHeartRadio, and others have been registering their listeners for a long time because they understand that the game has changed and targetability is essential to an ad based streaming audio ad model.
SoBE’s Summer Ad Campaign Includes Internet Radio
Image via Wikipedia
Pepsi’s SoBe brand has launched a summer campaign that takes full advantage of the visual and audio opportunities available to advertisers on Internet radio. The first day of the campaign, running on Pandora, featured the iconic SoBe lizard in a first ever in-tuner animated video ad that slithered across the player when listeners interacted with their stations.
The campaign targets male listeners 18-29 and ties in with ads that feature Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011 Rookie of the Year, Kate Upton .Heidi Browning, Senior Vice President of Pandora Strategic Solutions, said, “We’re always excited about finding and developing new and engaging solutions that take full advantage of Pandora’s sight, sound, motion and emotional advertising solutions.
Ramond Romero, OMD Group Director for Pepsi Digital, said, “It’s refreshing to continuously develop programs which blend the lines of media and creative. We not only plan toward the ‘Try Everything’ campaign theme, we brought it to life with media on Pandora.”
