In the recent past, digital ads craze measurement has been the in-thing in regard to marketing strategies that most, if not all companies with an online presence apply. It is acknowledged that digital arena is constantly metamorphosing, and this has necessitated advertisements to a notch higher with Smartphone now being the main ad platform. The main thing here is having an understanding of how many visitors to sites are listening to ad message and not only viewing the visual content- Pandora Media Inc (NYSE:P) is out to find out specifics of the metrics involved in the process.
Details of Pandora deal
Pandora has linked up with Moat (digital analytics company) to measure viewability in music-streaming services app with a promise to advertisers to pay only based on in-views. This will be based on the accepted standards of Media Rating council as well as the individual marketers like the WPP.
Accepted MRC standards
The RMC guidelines explicitly state that advertisers who have partnered with them pay 50% of any given displayed ad after 1 sec view-and 50% of video promo that is seen for at least 2 seconds. Moab is the only existing company that has been fully accredited by the MRC in regard to measuring in-app ads. This particular viewability applies to all the Pandora displays and entire mobile inventory that has been bought specific impression model. However, the company’s sponsored-listening ad products are not catered for at all. The sponsored listening allows advertisers pay for at least 1 hour of ad-free listening of choice.
Pandora’s chief ad strategist, Lizzie Widhelm, said that the company has spent at least 18 months testing mobile viewability with other partners including Volvo and GroupM. As such, starting the deal with the company was of utmost importance because 91% of visitors listen with either Tablets or Smartphone. Jonah Goodhart, co-founder and Moats CEO, said that it is a much better option for advertisers to transact not only based on metrics but measuring viewability to gauge the effectiveness of a given campaign.
It is now possible that with this deal more innovation around viewability and audio is set to take place, especially in regard to marketing platforms and technologies.
