I've been tinkering with Pandora for a while now, over the course of a year at least. For those unfamiliar, it's a smart radio station that takes your initial input, and based on your continued feedback, creates a customized stream of music based on your preferences. While doing this, it also introduces you to new music by similar artists or based on similar traits of the music you've favored. Give the songs a thumbs up or thumbs down and your stream becomes more refined.

It's the result of something called the Music Genome Project which essentially decodes the "musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony."

It's free. From time to time I come back to listen when I am bored with my playlist, or not digging what's on my favorite streams, or when Pandora efficiently reminds me via personalized emails.

Today when I returned I saw something new. The surrounding borders of the main Pandora page were "skinned" by sponsors (Chase, Nike+ and a reality show called Nashville Star). They take over the appearance of the page with the exception of the body, and there is a large format ad as well - a skyscraper or a large box. I don't mind this at all. If intrusive advertising is what keeps a cool thing alive, and free, so be it. Free content surrounded by advertising is not new, but this was the first time I have seen an entire page actually be skinned by a sponsor, let alone done tastefully. If I were there to read content, I would have found it objectionable, but in this case the user experience is to listen, and occasionally react to give the player additional feedback. I thought it was effective.

As I was introducing a co-worker to this, I demonstrated how the player window can be minimized. Once doing that, a large dynamic banner from Amazon appeared over the player featuring products I have either recently purchased or expressed interested in at the Amazon site. This was amazing to me. Perhaps there are few sites I interact with this much on a personal (consumer) level. However, the fact that these two sites are capturing enough data about me to offer up products they know I like, or think I will like, on an ongoing basis is amazing to see happen for real today. The things we talk about and read about the future; highly targeted advertising, highly personalized emails, and dynamic ads generated at such a granular and personal level are happening now.

Oh, did I mention that one of the products Amazon offered me was music that Pandora thought I'd like?

Labels: advertising, Music, Online Advertising, Pandora