Rdio’s new in-house playlist celebrating the 60 countries in which it operates gave us a good venue to settle in for some ad-watching. Rdio’s ad inventory is sold by Cumulus Media, so it’s not surprising to hear straight radio spots exported to Rdio’s streams. We clipped screen shots and counted the spot load. Continue Reading
Ad-tech company AdsWizz has partnered with solutions provider Marketron to create Mediascape Streaming, which Marketron calls “The first end-to-end streaming advertising solution.” Mediascape Streaming is an extension of Marketron’s existing Mediascape product. Continue Reading
Yesterday Amazon announced a new feature that allows Twitter users to add something to their Amazon shopping cart by replying to a tweet with the hashtag #amazoncart. “Add it now, buy it later” is Amazon’s slogan. In this guest column, Jennifer Lane suggests how radio stations can use this new program to their (and their advertisers’) advantage. Continue Reading
Pandora announced the launch of Promoted Stations, a new music recommendation unit that features sponsor-branded listening stations by Taco Bell, Skechers, Toyota, and several other advertisers that have signed onto the program. The new ads are cycling through about 10% of Pandora’s listeners. Continue Reading
Music service Rdio will upgrade this summer to offer ad-supported on-demand listening to its music catalog. The announcement was made by Lew Dickey, CEO of Cumulus Media, which acquired a 20-percent stake of Rdio in September, in a quarterly earnings call. Click for full quotes. Continue Reading
Last month we noted real estate site Trulia’s launch of a $45-million ad campaign promoting its mobile house-seeking app. Since then we’ve had an eye out for the ads, curious about what sort of placement Trulia would occupy in Pandora’s portfolio of ad units and rich-media options. We got one answer this week. Continue Reading
The digitization of radio is an important part of the evolving media landscape, as documented by Edison Research, BIA/Kelsey, and other research organizations. On the front end, that means accommodating the consumer migration to online listening. Behind the scenes on the business end, it means bringing long-standing monetization technology from the web to broadcast. Continue Reading
Addressing this issue should be a major concern for AM/FM broadcasters, since hugely-long spot breaks are cited regularly, at least anecdotally, as a reason consumer are spending less hours per week with broadcast radio and more hours per week with satellite and Internet radio each year. RAIN founder Kurt Hanson offers ideas. Continue Reading
Ad solution provider AdsWizz has signed a partnership agreement with leanStream, a streaming solution provider, to help monetize content streams playing on the leanStream platform. The agreement is the latest in a series of alliances for AdsWizz, which now provides its audio-ad technology to 27 content delivery networks (CDNs). Continue Reading
All indicators point to mobile for nearly all Internet activities, and especially for listening to music. Pandora is the fifth most-downloaded mobile app, according to comScore. Which is a shame for advertisers who buy the full-screen treatment on Pandora’s browser experience. The big, full-screen ads on Pandora are like album art for advertisers. Continue Reading
European music service Deezer has partnered with ad-technology provider AdsWizz to help monetize local ad inventory in many of its global markets. RAIN spoke to Tristan Rachline, Deezer’s head of global sales, about the value of using AdsWizz, how it approaches local markets, and the much-awaited U.S. launch. Continue Reading
Marketron and Jelli announced this morning an agreement to combine Marketron’s system for tracking radio spot inventory with Jelli’s programmatic ad-buying software. Both parties emphasize that the alignment is the first instance of a broadcast radio buying system connected to a leading radio traffic system. Continue Reading