Pandora Hires Mobile Chief

Kim-Luegers-

Internet radio service Pandora has hired a Draftfcb executive as its first director of mobile and emerging media, reflecting the company's growing focus on mobile platforms. Kim Luegers, who led emerging media strategy and planning for Draftfcb's Chicago office, will fill a similar, newly created role at Pandora.

In the new post, she will be responsible for helping Pandora generate new revenues from mobile and emerging media; creating ad products for online, mobile and other digital media; and working with clients to develop effective mobile programs, among other tasks.

At Draftfcb, Luegers worked on new media initiatives across mobile, interactive, Internet radio and advanced TV on behalf of clients including Miller Coors and State Farm. Before joining the agency, she handled buying and planning in traditional media in Chicago at both Mediaedge and OMD.

In the last year, Pandora has ramped up its mobile monetization efforts through various initiatives including a new service launched with AdReady last fall allowing small and medium-sized businesses to run local ad campaigns on Pandora's mobile apps. In June, the company introduced its own iAd-like rich media ad units for the iPad with advertisers on board including Starbucks, Lexus and Budweiser.

And as part of its effort to expand access to connected devices everywhere, Pandora this year expects to be more widely available through new in-vehicle media systems from automakers including Toyota, Ford, GM and Mercedes-Benz.

More recently, Pandora's ad targeted practices were highlighted in The Wall Street Journal's series on online privacy. In an article last month, the newspaper reported that more than half the 101 popular apps it tested transmitted unique device identifiers to advertisers without a prompt. Some, including Pandora, also sent information including a user's age, gender and location.

The company has said it uses listener data in accordance with its privacy policy, and that any advertiser programs (such as sweepstakes) that ask for personally identifiable information are opt-in. Pandora -- which says it has 75 million registered users, up from 50 million in March 2010 -- has raised about $56 million to date from investors including Greylock Partners, Crosslink Capital and Labrador Ventures.

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