October 07, 2008

Pandora Ads Rock

I love Pandora. Pandora is a free Internet Radio service that uses the Music Genome Project to send you a constant stream of fresh tracks based on your music preferences. I love rocking out to the music streams Pandora sends my way every day.

The core music service Pandora offers is impressive but Pandora impresses in a lot of other ways.

Pandora's user interface contributes a lot to the success of the service. The user interface is beautiful and a pleasure to use.

Pandora is an ad supported service and I've always been impressed by the way they've integrated ads into the user interface. Ads are usually integrated into a website as an afterthought - slammed into the right margin or simply dumped into a header or footer. Pandora on the other hand integrates, or blends, the ad into the user interface. I think this makes the ad far more effective.

Recently, Pandora has been making more of the ads integrated into their service interactive. Today the HP TouchSmart ad really impressed me - it was beautiful and a pleasure to interact with. I think this type of ad is a very effective branding tool. Ads like this might not convert well on the spot but I do think they're great for brand building.

Posted by Cale on Oct 7, 2008