New Innovation in Audio Measurement: Introducing Test & Tune

Demand and innovation within the streaming audio space is at an high, so ensuring creative is working as hard as possible is top-of-mind for many advertisers today. While the industry has come up the curve in recent years when it comes to measurement - robust performance analysis now exists - there is a lack of available quick signals and insights that can help explain if a campaign may or may not be resonating. Are listeners correctly associating your value proposition back to your brand? Is the creative memorable but your brand name isn’t breaking through? Are you doing the most with a format that does not have a visual aide that has been the norm for so long?

With the recent launches of Pandora’s Studio Resonate and the Insights Lab, we want to better understand the relationship between creative and its impact on effectiveness and develop signals for advertisers to inform creative optimization decisions.

To improve insights around audio strategies, we’re excited to announce our beta launch of Test & Tune, our new suite of measurement capabilities for advertisers. We’ve been working for over three years to create and operationalize an experimental design methodology that meets the rigor of industry-leading data scientists. Our vision is to turn the keys over to advertisers and start understanding how their audio advertising resonates with audiences.

What is Test & Tune?

Test & Tune is our control testing capability to support brand sentiment and sales lift questions on our platform. Born from the Insights Lab, the Test & Tune methodology is to understand causal effects and our proprietary ‘ghost ad’ methodology was evaluated and has met Kantar’s methodological and statistical requirements for an experimental design measurement framework.

How is the methodology different from other studies out there?

Whereas the industry largely leverages observational methodology and correlation, Test & Tune carves out a randomized portion of a brand’s targeted audience to be the control group, made up of listeners who are not exposed to a brand’s audio ads. For those in the control group who would have received the audio ad, we simply record a “ghost” impression. This enables us to identify incrementality: the causal effects of advertising to those who heard a brand’s ad versus those who would have heard the ad.

What are the measurement options
within the Test & Tune suite?

• Pandora Surveys (Beta): Curious about ad recall, message association, or creative memorability? Pandora Surveys enables advertisers to ask questions that provide actionable insights and learnings.
• Sales Lift: For advertisers interested in incremental impact to sales lift, Pandora has entered into an agreement with a credit card data provider, representing the majority of the commerce population.
• More to come: Test & Tune is an evolving suite of measurement options built on an experimental design platform. We expect to be rolling out more opportunities to measure, including creative split testing, client-side tags, and other data sources.

We’re excited for the advancements in audio measurement and the insights that advertisers can uncover to inform their audio creative strategy. Come Test & Tune your next campaign with Pandora.