Pandora Trying Out Invasive Commercial Breaks

Nathan Halverson writes "The popular online radio service Pandora.com has added brief commercial interruptions to its service. Pandora says this is a trial and is targeted to a subset of listeners at this point. In one case, a brief ad for the Fox TV show 'Lie To Me' interrupted the music stream for about 15 seconds after ten songs had initially played, and the same commercial interrupted 22 songs later. 'But [Pandora's] founder promised the site will never carry as many audio ads as broadcast radio, despite the fact it pays substantially higher royalty fees to the recording industry.'"

Comments

Whatever, it's a great service

[gravos]

I for one am understanding of their need to generate revenue to maintain the excellent service. Especially they go to some of the background or portable options they've hinted at before, audio ads may be the only way to do that. I heard the McDonald's ad and considered it far less intrusive than the types of ads I get on other "free" Internet radio services. If they can design all their ads like that--NPR style, so to speak--and not make them constant interruptions to them music (start up and/or change of station are good ideas), then I say go for it. If that helps keep Pandora free and improving, I'm all for it.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

You only believe that because they told you to. Advertisers fill your head with answers to questions you never asked then when you are called on to make a decision and you're too lazy to do research or too tired to really think about what you want, you use the answers they gave you as your own.

I don't believe that for a second. I'm the kinda guy that reads ingredients lists on everything from kitchen cleaners to pharmaceuticals. I am not under the control of advertisers or marketing fuckheads, thanks. If you are then I pity you.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[kabocox]

Actually, I think pretty much all of us that have grown up with pervasive advertising have an internal trip switch these days. It's a sad fact, but the way to keep sane in the modern (urban) environment is to selectively ignore most of the world around you.

Advertisers look for ever more invasive ways to get our attention, and then wonder why advertising has less and less effect. it's because we hate you and have learned to ignore you to the extent we don't even realise you're there half the time.

Reminds me sort of at college to. I mean walk down any given hall way and you'd have all sorts of crap posted by various professor and such on each wall. Now the only board that we'd all stop and spend 30 seconds reading over was just a general post it board outside of the cross roads to several buildings. It was where students posted things like used books for sell or looking for a roommate or party at such and such. What format where they generally in? One sheet of paper with a single large header, 2-3 paragraphs stating what the heck it was about, then phone number/address/time ribbons along the bottom or around the entire edges for you to tear off and take the contact info with you.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't believe that for a second. I'm the kinda guy that reads ingredients lists on everything from kitchen cleaners to pharmaceuticals. I am not under the control of advertisers or marketing fuckheads, thanks. If you are then I pity you.

If you believe that, more power to you. But everyone gets tired, everyone has moments of vulnerability where they don't want to exercise diligence. If you haven't been exposed to advertising, you get a dull look on your face because you don't have an answer and you need one and you don't want to exercise the effort, but eventually you do because you have no other option. If you have been exposed to advertising, you take the easy out because it's there. It's just part of being human.

You think you're some highly intelligent person who isn't vulnerable to these effects, and that the advertisers are preying on the sheep, who are all much stupider and less sophisticated than you are. But you're mistaken. The people the advertisers are preying on are just like you, and you're just like them.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[ShieldW0lf]

"If you haven't been exposed to advertising, you get a dull look on your face because you don't have an answer and you need one and you don't want to exercise the effort," Answers to what? What exactly are we talking about here? the meaning of life? Which catfood to buy? (hint, the one the cat likes wins) What? Because to me advertising is pretty much just noise.

We're talking about the cat food you grab off the shelf when you have no cat food at home, the one your cat likes is sold out, you don't know enough to tell the difference between the ones you see in front of you and you're late for supper so you grab the one with the logo you recognize because it's a symptom of the human condition that things that are familiar are deemed safer than things that are not familiar.

We're talking about making peoples decisions for them, so when they're psychologically vulnerable, as in the circumstances described above, they give themselves permission to not consider what they're doing before they do it.

Most purchases happen in this fashion, and the more people make decisions in this way, the more they train themselves not to be critical thinkers.

Re:Whatever, it's a great service

[Nursie]

I also think that this is nothing like the initial point of my comment - that it is getting harder and harder for any advertiser to get their message across in the sea of advertising noise, and the sea of noise makes it easier to ignore.

Because there is SO damned much of it and most of it does not get through, in order to be heard you have to be both annoying and pervasive, which is not cheap and doesn't always produce a good result.

What's your argument? That regardless of exposure we're all like a blank page for advertisers to scrawl all over as much as they want because of their advanced psychological techniques?

I don't think so. I'll repeat, I barely notice ads these days, and the ones you can't help noticing because they are invasive ensure that I never buy that brand again.

*Sigh* I hate advertising

[rolfwind]

Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads (not that the same promise didn't stop ads on cable tv). Not even regular radio interrupts songs in the middle, although a lot of obnoxiously talk into the beginning or cut off the end with their chatter. And replacing Satellite Radio with an iPhone/data_contract + Pandora seemed like a decent idea a while back.

What is it with advertising becoming so pervasive the last 50+ years that it actually ruins the medium it trojan horses itself in to the audience? On TV, the channels seem to enjoy ruining their shows with invasive in-show advertising for other crappy shows on the same channel. I cancelled my premium subscription when those sets of channels insisted on ruining all their shows, like a subtitled movie by covering the subtitles at the worst points with in-show ads. I know this is a reaction to TIVOing, but really, even with a DVR I usually just recorded something and forgot to skip ads half the time. I'd buy the DVD of that subtitled movie mentioned, but then I am forced to watch previews to "coming soon" movies that are long since gone from the theaters. Pirates are better off.

Since I was a teenager, I stopped buying branded shirts, as I refused to pay to be a walking billboard for some corp. It's weird how that became popular. And it's strange that the internet is one of the few mostly ad-free places left if the user chooses (adblock, noscript, etc) yet I bought more based on word-of-mouth there than any actual advertisement in the real world. Just seems like a giant waste of $$$ to be honest.

Hell, look at Geico commercials, at least they at least try to be entertaining. Maybe more advertising to follow the same route, becoming patrons of specific songs/etc (like in the middle ages) and actually add to the mediums rather than sabotaging them.

Re:We need a spam filter for radio

[bytesex]

What I don't understand is why TVs don't yet have a function that not only mutes it, but also makes the screen almost dark. So that you can just spot when your program is back on.

Music is being advertised on radio

[captainpanic]

Why advertise anything else?
People hear music, like it, buy the CD or visit the concert.