Pandora renews focus on ad revenue, names McAndrews new CEO

There is an emphasis on advertising solutions this week.

Two days ago Songza closed a capital round of $4.7M for developing its “life moments” sponsorship platform. Yesterday Pandora announced its new CEO/Chairman appointment of Brian McAndrews to replace outgoing Joe Kennedy. Kennedy announced his intent to resign the company last March.

The selection sends a clear signal of Pandora’s intent to double down on monetization of its leadership position in Internet radio, so it’s no wonder that Pandora stock jumped nearly 10% this morning. McAndrews comes with a deep pedigree in digital advertising. As President and CEO of aQuantive, a digital marketing leader that was acquired by Microsoft in May, 2007, McAndrews became Redmond’s APS (Advertising and Publisher Solutions) lead. He comes to Pandora from a managing directorship at Madrona Venture Group, whose portfolio spans a wide range of Internet brands, from Amazon to Cheezburger.

One of McAndrews’ several board positions is at AppNexus, a major ad-buying platform whose CEO, Brian O’Kelley, is regarded as the inventor of ad exchanges. AppNexus executed $700M in advertising purchases in 2012, making it a competitor to Google. The company is rumored to be the next multi-billion dollar IPO.

McAndrews inherits Pandora as it owns leading share across markets (7.42% of total U.S. radio share), 72-million active users from a registered base of about 200-million, a relatively small music inventory of about a million tracks, proprietary recommendation and programming technology, some form of presence in over 100 car models, and a controversial attempt to reduce its statutory royalty payments to recording artists.