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Best Buy, Becks Beer launch mobile campaigns for iPhone

Best Buy and Becks Beer will be running branding-purposed mobile campaigns within Pandora's newly launched iPhone application.

When a user clicks on the application's icon from their iPhone, they are routed to a welcome screen with the advertiser's logo. Also The logo is on the bottom of the screen for all other pages as well for.

"We are basically giving advertisers a chance to sponsor the music," said Cheryl Lucanegro, vice president of sales at Pandora, Oakland, CA. "It is a good opportunity for advertisers because they are sponsoring this experience for the user without interrupting the music.

"The ads are immersed and integrated into the application," she said.

The contracts secure their rights to be the exclusive advertisers on the new mobile platform: Best Buy for the first thirty days, Becks for the subsequent thirty days.

The brands are targeting Pandora's affluent demographic of iPhone users who are predominantly male and aged 36 on average.

The users skew somewhat older with a higher than average household income and wield greater purchasing influence among their family members and friends.

Users' high affinity for Pandora means they'll spend significant time interacting with the iPhone application as well.

"We're thrilled that Best Buy and Becks are our first advertisers on our iPhone mobile platform, -- Ms. Lucanegro said. "Through diligent product development and research, we figured out what works best online to generate a high level of engagement and response for marketers while enhancing the user experience at the same time.

"Our goal is to translate this knowledge, advertising philosophy and product development schema to the mobile platform," she said.

Users of the application tend to spend 70 min on average listening to the streaming music.

Pandora's iPhone ad platform also has the ability to hyper-target audiences for highly relevant and personalized marketing communications, such as by gender, age, geographic location, music genre and day part listening.

"This advertising brings the marketer there with the music," Ms. Lucanegro said. "It's a great way to reinforce a brand.

"We plan to develop and launch new advertising products that increasingly leverage the mobile experience," she said.