Opening Pandora's Black Box, Becomes First Digital Publisher To Integrate With Madison Avenue's Stack
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, May 15, 2013
Popular Internet radio service Pandora this morning announced that it has fully integrated into Madison Avenue’s media planning and buying software suite, including deals with both
Mediaocean and Strata, the two major media data processors for agencies.
Describing the integration as a “frictionless planning and buying” system, Pandora
said its new platform is built on proprietary software designed specifically for its ad operations and billing processes, making it the “first and only digital publisher to integrate the
planning, buying and billing phases of the buying process of digital advertising.”
Among other things, the technology will facilitate real-time audience data on
Pandora’s more than 70 million active users into the hands of the media-buying community, which still frequently must rely on largely manual processes -- even when dealing with digital media and
audience suppliers.
Pandora claims the new system will completely “automate” the buying process from “end-to-end,” and said the integration with
Mediaocean and Strata marks the “final stage” of its plans to fully integrate with Madison Avenue’s big media-buying processing platforms.
Its first
phase began last year, when it launched Triton Digital’s measurement of Pandora in traditional radio metrics such as average quarter-hour and cume audience estimates, giving it data analogous to
the Arbitron ratings that planners and buyers historically used to buy traditional radio advertising.
The second phase came in March, when Pandora integrated its Triton
ratings into Mediaocean’s and STRATA’s media-buying platforms. This final stage, it said, “offers the full-cycle solution from planning to buying to billing for multiplatform audio
campaigns on Pandora.”
