That’s what Pandora CEO Tim Westergren told investors Tuesday when the topic of local ad sales came up. And that includes at least one local mattress store in Dallas.
Westergren, who has 154 local sales reps on his payroll, said when sellers come over from iHeartMedia or Cumulus it’s like they received Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket because of the menu of targeted audio products they have to sell those same advertisers they were calling on with their previous companies. He says the company is laser focused on local advertising, which made up 28% of the revenue in Pandora’s 3rd quarter.
Westergren also said over-the-air radio is vulnerable. “As terrestrial radio becomes less relevant, online radio will continue to grow.” Westergren also said Pandora now makes up 10% of all radio listening across the country, a number that he’s thrown out many times before, but without any third party verification. A chart Pandora showed investors showed that over-the-air radio had about 80% of all radio listening across the country. Westergren once again said that 10% listening number makes Pandora the largest radio station in nearly every market in the country, although most people in the radio station would say that is not really comparing apples to apples.
Tim Westergren is an idiot…he continues to call Pandora radio…its not radio. Radio is so much more than offering music to our listneners! Pandora will disappear as i have stated for more than 5 years…there will be streaming services just not Pandora. They will be purchased and folded into some business that has legs!
Apparently Pandora believes that if you repeat something often enough, that alone will make it true. Claiming it’s the largest station in every market is absurd, since their audience is comprised of hundreds if not thisabds of microstatiions. Pandora as a platform should instead compare itself to the FM band in a given market not individual stations.