McAndrews: Connected Car Is Long-Term Growth

Pandora CEO told analysts on Thursday earning call that Pandora has seen some great growth in the auto business in terms of  native integrations.

McAndrews reports 7 million unique users who have  activated Pandora through their native automotive integrations and that’s up from 2.5 million a year ago.

"So we are seeing momentum there, which we feel good about, and on average at this point, people in the car are listening about six a hours a month per listener and that compares to the 21.1 number for the average Pandora listener."

McAndrews admitted car penetration is going to take a while.  He said there are now 145 models of cars, including ten of the ten best-selling vehicles featuring Pandora.

He added, we are very encouraged about the long-term trajectory. We know it will take time, but we are feeling very positive. Just as an aside, if you were seeing more and more automobile advertisers come to Pandora. In fact, that category is up 85% over last year for the first half. So to the extent that automobile advertisers or any kind of proxy for wanting to advertise the people driving, certainly we are starting to see a lot more – we're seeing a lot of strength there.