Jango, matching artists and ads
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As record labels and artists cast about for revenue streams to offset the slump in CD sales, many have looked to the advertising industry to license songs for commercials (big dollars!), sponsor downloads (potentially big dollars!) or just buy ads on free music sites (dollars that may be measurable if rounded up to the nearest integer!). Unless the product being sold is music-related, though, an ad on an online jukebox or radio site doesn’t seem as effective as one tied to search keywords. That’s because people who do a search online signal their interests overtly. If I search for ‘light truck durability,’ for example, I’m revealing a purchase intent. If I steer my browser to an online radio station, I’m not revealing much besides the type of music I like to hear.
Daniel Kaufman, chief executive of Jango, is trying to draw a clearer link between musical tastes and purchase intentions. Jango operates an online radio site, and it provides its radio feeds and related content to more than 1,000 music sites (including those that specialize in individual bands, lyrics or guitar tabs). To differentiate the advertising network it launched across those sites, the company is developing a database of associations between products and artists. The point is to tell advertisers which artists’ fans respond to coffee ads and which ones have a weakness for designer duds.
How? ‘It’s simpler than you’d think,’ Kaufman explained in a recent interview....
Most of the pages on Jango are associated with an artist. The same is true for its partners. Now imagine running an ad for a Dodge truck on every artist’s page for a week. ‘At the end of the week, you simply rank-order the click-through rate of all the artists.’ Voila, you’ve learned that the pages related to a certain subset of artists generate a much higher click-through rate for the truck ad than the average artist’s page does -- 273% higher, according to Jango. Others may not skew as strongly as the Dodge truck; for instance, with Armani Exchange ads, the associated subset of artists had click-through rates only 82% higher; for Gevalia Coffee, the difference was 147%. And some items -- e.g., mobile phone services -- won’t show much of an association with any type of music. But most do, Kaufman said, adding, ‘For many, many products, music is a good proxy for psychographics.’
Here’s another interesting observation from Jango publicist Dave Clarke: ‘Each brand had a completely different subset of artists -– some expected, others somewhat unexpected. Dodge not only performed well with Keith Urban but also Justin Timberlake. Armani Exchange was not just favored by fans of Coldplay but also fans of John Mayer; Gevalia Coffee shared a strong affinity with Bruce Springsteen but an even stronger one with Leona Lewis.’ Now that’s a surprise. Who knew that The Boss appealed to coffee snobs? I mean, U2 I could understand....
-- Jon Healey
Healey writes editorials for The Times’ Opinion Manufacturing Division.
