ambient

I may be a little slow on the uptake, but I just got why Pandora is such a powerful ad platform for advertisers.

Pandora has done a great job in making the application interactive. If it plays a song I don’t like, I give it a thumbs down; if I like it, thumbs up. That becomes quite a powerful semaphore in determining which ads to show because songs are delivered in the context of channels.

So, on my Pandora, I have a Tristania channel and an Iron & Wine channel. Both of those specific bands become mapped to larger symbolic channels in my own mind (eg. Tristania = dark fantastic adrenaline-pumping capital ‘R’ Romantic Byronic gothic symphony vs. Iron & Wine = chill guitar-strumming melancholy pensive relaxing americana).

My interaction in each of these spaces gets pumped in the form of very sophisticated demographics data to their advertisers. When Tristania is playing, I get Absolut Vodka, shrouded in dark shadows, and when it’s Iron & Wine, I get relaxing images of people taking long baths or going on vacation.

Brilliant, if you ask me.