Did you know that Pandora and SoundCloud’s combined audience is now the largest digital audio advertising marketplace in the U.S? Our partnership reaches a staggering 119 million listeners—a 25% increase in reach and 91% of which are unduplicated.¹ This means that advertisers are able to purchase SoundCloud’s U.S. ad inventory directly through Pandora, leveraging a powerful logged-in user base, proprietary targeting and data capabilities, and most importantly, have access to the largest ad-supported audience through direct sold and programmatic buying channels.

The partnership opens up a world of possibilities for brands looking to get their products and services in front of engaged listeners—whether nationwide, or to a local audience. Audience size is a key consideration when evaluating where to place media buys, but what numbers should you pay attention to most?

Read on for more about addressability, and why it matters.

Total Audience vs. Addressable Audience

Which Should Marketers Pay Attention To?

Audience size is a key consideration when placing media buys, but what numbers should you pay attention to the most? The foundation of all marketing success starts with knowing who you want to target your marketing and advertising to. Bonus points if you can identify not only who they are, using traditional demographic information, but also what their interests are, where they spend their time, and ultimately what your brand can offer them that competitors can’t.

However, interpreting audience metrics can be tricky. Without the right context, numbers can easily be misinterpreted or appear inflated. That’s why it’s essential for marketers to understand the difference between addressable and non-addressable audiences, as well as how to differentiate between the two when looking at industry reports.

What’s the Difference?

The total audience number is exactly what it sounds like: the number of users or subscribers that a company has regardless of if they pay for a subscription or not. For example, Pandora and SoundCloud have 119 million combined total monthly unique visitors across all tiers.¹

An addressable audience, however, is a subset of the number of total users that advertisers can reach with their marketing campaigns. To continue with our own audience example, 90% of our audience is “addressable”²—which is the percentage of listeners that use the free, ad-supported version of Pandora. Listeners who pay for Pandora Plus, Pandora Premium, or SoundCloud Pro would not qualify as “addressable” because they are not eligible to receive ads.

In Spotify’s latest Financial Disclosures, they revealed they have 271 million monthly active users globally,³ but that number includes both addressable and non-addressable listeners, inside and outside of the United States.

The difference between 271 million total global users and 38 million addressable users in North America is significant to any advertiser, it’s no wonder that there’s confusion. This is why marketers need to do the extra research, and ask for the breakout of addressable vs. non-addressable audience data before committing to any media buys.

Using 3rd-Party Research to Compare Addressable Audience Size

Third-party research is particularly helpful in demonstrating not only the overall audience numbers for publishers, but also the amount of time users spend with any particular publisher.

According to recent Comscore reporting, Pandora and SoundCloud’s combined audience reaches 75% more total Mobile App visitors⁴. Pandora and SoundCloud also reaches 30% more adults aged 25-54 than Spotify.¹ Neither of these cases even take addressability into account. Imagine the scale difference in these scenarios if 10% pay for Pandora while 50% pay for Spotify.

Another important factor to consider whenever looking at where to place your media buys is the amount of time spent with that publisher. For example, Edison Research’s latest Share of Ear study reveals that there is 87% more ad-supported time spent listening on Pandora than Spotify.⁵

3 Steps to Connect with the Right Audience

The more you know about a publisher’s addressable audience, the smarter decisions you can make about where to spend your media dollars.

1. Examine all of the numbers: The headline doesn’t always tell the whole story. Dig into the numbers so you can intelligently compare your investment options side-by-side.

2. Ask for addressable audience metrics in your RFPs: Request that your campaign reach and frequency goals measure against accurate U.S. addressable numbers—not total audience size.

3. Get data from multiple sources: Cross-reference third party data sources around addressable audience numbers and pair that with time spent metrics in order to get a full view of who you will actually be able to target and what their overall behaviors are. Your Pandora sales representative can provide you with additional addressable data from Edison Research based on age, gender and ethnicity. Just ask!

To understand how your brand can get in front of Pandora’s robust addressable audience, get in touch with us here.

Sources:

1.Comscore Media Metrix, December 2019 P13+ (Comscore reports total audience only)
2.Pandora Internal Metrics, Q4-19 10% paid audience
3.Spotify Internal Metrics, Q4-19 50% Premium Subscribers in North America
4.Comscore Mobile Metrix, Key Measures, December 2019 P13+, Mobile App only, Pandora Audience Exchange
5.Edison Research Share of Ear study, Q4 2019

Link to Spotify financials
Link to Pandora financials