Full-screen branding
Pandora, a music streaming service, is one of my favorite web apps. I'd say I use it for about half of each workday, leaving the window open on the laptop on my desk.
Which means I see it pretty much all the time. This is an advertiser's dream.
Pandora not only realized this, but they've taken advantage of it in a way few web-based services can. They rebrand the entire page for advertisers, without impairing core functionality. And to my surprise, I find this not irritating, but delightful. It's like getting a neat new skin on the application.
And better still, some of these include one or more custom Pandora stations. I'm sure the music was carefully selected by some marketing staff, but I get a kick out of it, and I have even been introduced to some new music.
So, that's what it is. Here's how it looks:
Embedded Flickr slideshow created with flickrSLiDR, a handy little tool.
It even supports Internet Explorer's failure to cope with web standards. ;-)
Maybe not everyone will be as enamoured of this as I am, but I think it's a pretty slick way of paying the licensing fees for the music I listen to for free — and about seventy thousand times less intrusive than the 20-minutes-per-hour of commercials I hear on broadcast radio. Advertisers get to associate with something i find positive, while I get internet radio customized to my taste in music — if that's not a win-win, what is?
Comments
ummmm, your lovely "demo" is just a giant blank textarea. Could be a west-coast thing, yep, that's what I'm gonna declare.
WEST SIDE!
@nick that's what you get for using Internet Explorer.
(I'll change it to the non-standards-compliant method IE likes.)
Unfortunately for Pandora, I have it loaded in a clipping on Dashboard. None of the advertisements appear.
Well!
We're honored that you enjoy Pandora and our ads, Robert! I've passed your comments on to our ad & design teams.
It means a lot that an Information Architect & professional web-type person has such nice things to say about us.
And you're right -- the ads help to pay our hefty royalties, so music fans can listen for free and musicians can get paid.
Win-win-win, indeed. Thanks so much for noticing.
~ Lucia Willow and the Pandora ad and design teams
[lucia AT pandora.com]
Read something more recent.
Statements and opinions expressed in this blog and any comments made are the private opinions of the respective poster, and, as such, iMarc LLC is neither responsible nor liable for such content.
Visitors
It is a smart place to advertise. Also they must serve ads by profile and music choice. The ads I get are much different than yours. For example, I've never had a car ad, and lately ads have been mostly for new movies.