Pandora made more than $229 million from mobile display ads in 2012, according to an IDC study that came out last week — on par with Facebook ($234M), and double that of Twitter, which netted $117 million.
That's a pretty penny from a medium that until late last year, marketers will still unsure about.
Let's timehop back to August 2012. In an article entitled, "Why is Pandora not making more money in mobile?" Mobile Marketer cites several reasons why the music-streaming service was struggling, including smaller screens that don't allow for large-format, high-impact ad formats.
At that point, most ads were in the form of small banners, and video hadn't really come onto the scene yet. "The mobile advertising market is still in the early stages," they wrote, and is not keeping up with Pandora's mobile use.
Fast forward to today. Mobile traffic in the Music, Video and Media category (Pandora among others) continues to soar, and has consistently been #1 in terms of impression volume on our Opera Mediaworks mobile advertising platform.
However, as you can see here in the Q1 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report, revenue has definitely caught up with impressions.
About 18% of all revenue is generated by mobile sites and apps that serve... Read more
