When we work out, we listen to Pandora, the Internet radio application on our phone. We don’t mind the ads that play between some songs or appear on screen. In fact, the ads sometimes make good business sense. For example, we listen to a station called Disco Radio. When the song Boogie Oogie Oogie plays, we see an ad for the movie American Hustle. The movie interests us and the ad reminds us to one day watch it. For our daughter, we also listen to a station called Disney Songs & Story (Children’s) Radio. The station plays various songs from Disney movies. While listening to this station, an interesting ad popped up. We took a screen shot. The ad states, “Viagra Savings.” Our daughter did not see the ad and we’re glad we didn’t need to explain the product.
When looking at images of Belle, Tiana, Rapunzel, Ariel and Cinderella, we don’t want to imagine, at that moment, a man popping a blue pill preparing to get some. When we are listening to something called, “Fairy Tale Songs,” we don’t want to imagine some guy playing Barry White getting ready to get down with his own princess. From a purely business point of view, it’s hard to imagine pitching Viagra to someone listening to Disney songs. The only exception might be grandparents listening to the music with their grandchildren, but even that’s creepy and we imagine Grandpa and Grandma would be the first to agree. Pandora also advertises for itself, explaining people can upgrade now to “ad free listening for only $3.99 per month.” Pandora calls this, “the next level of personalized radio.” Pitching us Viagra seems personalized enough and we’re not interested in paying the small fee just because of a few misplaced ads.
To give Pandora the benefit of the doubt, we wondered if preventing such ads from popping up at the wrong times is a challenge. But if Pandora has the equipment to tie in an American Hustle ad with our Disco Radio, can it prevent a Viagra ad from reaching the wrong audience? The New York Times just reported that Pandora “has started data-mining users’ musical tastes for clues about the kinds of ads most likely to engage them.” We emailed Pandora, bringing our experience to its attention.
We aren’t going nuts over this. We imagine this is simply a glitch or something somebody hadn’t considered. But this is the type of thing brands must consider and should rise to the occasion to avoid. We doubt Disney, Pandora and Viagra want listeners to see them in bed together. We love Disney. We love Pandora. We hear many people love Viagra. Just put some protection in place to ensure appropriate relationships and no unwanted surprises.
Update (Jan. 7, 2014): A PANDORA® internet radio Listener Advocate emailed, “Sorry to hear that. Could you please forward me the screenshot you took? I can pass that on to our Ads team so we can take a look. Again, our apologies for such a disconcerting experience.” We emailed a screenshot.
Update (Jan. 8, 2014): A PANDORA® internet radio Listener Advocate emailed, thanking us for sending the screenshot. “We’ll look into that ASAP.”