In two hours I get to sit down and talk with Pandora founder Tim Westergrin, along with a few other students. What would you guys ask if you had the chance to talk to him?
I'd want to hear about the intricacies of their new audio advertising program.
What have they learned about listener preferences through tweaking the length, frequency, and targeting of audio ads? Are they making demographic inferences based off of music genre?
I'm also really curious about the creative on those audio ads. Do ad buyers know alongside which genres their ads will be broadcast? Do they adjust creative appropriately, i.e. hip-hop audio ad creative on a station of hip-hop music? I realize that each "station" is really an instance of user preferences, but still...
I could go on and on... I wonder if there is a cool side-business opportunity for supplying their ad buyers with creative (via a network involving independent commercial musicians/producers). This could help their ads become more effective and turn into something interesting itself.
On that note, it's interesting that pandora.com, the website, serves ads but the Windows Sidebar gadget does not. Does the iPhone app serve ads? Those might be an interesting place to wander into...
Maybe you could ask him about their back end infrastructure? It is always fascinating to learn how they manage to handle streaming music seamlessly to their many users.
What have they learned about listener preferences through tweaking the length, frequency, and targeting of audio ads? Are they making demographic inferences based off of music genre?
I'm also really curious about the creative on those audio ads. Do ad buyers know alongside which genres their ads will be broadcast? Do they adjust creative appropriately, i.e. hip-hop audio ad creative on a station of hip-hop music? I realize that each "station" is really an instance of user preferences, but still...
I could go on and on... I wonder if there is a cool side-business opportunity for supplying their ad buyers with creative (via a network involving independent commercial musicians/producers). This could help their ads become more effective and turn into something interesting itself.