Pandora Knows How You'll Vote, and It's Not Keeping Your Secret
Pandora Knows How You'll Vote, and It's Not Keeping Your
Secret
The online music service is telling campaigns what music
you listen to, which they say gives away your party affiliation.
By Alex Brown February 19, 2014
The music streaming service announced last week it is
launching targeted advertising—allowing candidates to reach voters based on
age, location, and music preference. According to Pandora, that information can
tell with 75-80 percent accuracy how a person will vote.
"What we're trying to do is make it so that the
targeting that's selected by these campaigns is ... reaching the right
groups," said Pandora's Jack Krawczyk. The company's advertising system
weights its results based on users' ZIP codes; an area that voted 60 percent
for Obama will have that factored into its residents' voting probabilities.
Then Pandora looks at your music. Listen to a lot of
country? You're probably a strong Republican voter. Prefer jazz? You likely
vote Democrat. Classic rock or hip-hop? Well, you're a little harder to pin
down—but that might be just what ad-makers are looking for.
Pandora is the latest content provider to try to cash in
on political operatives' desire for precision messaging. DirecTV and Dish
Network are offering "addressable advertising" for statewide
campaigns, allowing candidates to tailor a message down to the neighborhood
level.
But just because an algorithm thinks it knows how you'll
vote, do you really want to get bombarded with campaign ads for your (probable)
candidate of choice? Do you lay off the hip-hop so the computer doesn't
identify you as a coveted swing voter?
It's not that Pandora hasn't played host to campaign ads
before. But the voter targeting makes it more likely campaigns will look to it
as a worthwhile advertising investment. The more a campaign knows about you,
the harder it's willing to work to pursue your vote—more knowledge gives
operatives a better idea of where they're investing their money.
So while it might be frustrating to have your
demographics put you in a campaign's crosshairs, it's quite lucrative for
Pandora. "The more you reduce the risk that you're not hitting the right
audience, the higher the willingness to pay," Krawczyk said.
Another possibility—at least according to one campaign
operative who has worked with Pandora—is rolling out ad campaigns when artists
endorse politicians. For example, in the unlikely event Katy Perry endorsed
Mitch McConnell, you might want to steer clear of her music unless you wanted to
be bombarded with his campaign ads. You might also find it difficult to listen
to Clay Aiken without hearing ads for, well, Clay Aiken.
No matter how annoying targeted ads get for you, they're
a smarter buy for campaigns and money in the pockets of content providers. So
expect to see more, not less, of them in 2014 and beyond.
Still, Krawczyk pledged to take user feedback into
account as Pandora rolls out its campaign offerings. "We're always
monitoring the effect of our ad load," he said. "If we saw that
there's anything that's driving away listening behavior, then we would
certainly act accordingly."
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