REVENUE AND SUBS SURGE AT PANDORA: Lots of press on yesterday’s Pandora Q4 Earnings Call. The news was overwhelmingly positive with revenue beating expectations on the strength of +16% YoY growth, and 81M average monthly listeners. One of the most intriguing developments was the early success of Pandora Plus which added 375K new subscribers since its launch in October. Keep in mind this is the setup product for the full Premium service which debuts in March. The popularity of the Plus option, with no real marketing push behind it, is strong anecdotal evidence that the Premium launch could be a real home run. I’ve included two Radio Ink links cover both aspects of the Earnings Call. (link1) (link2)
ACCULTURATION CATCHES UP TO UNIVISION: For years Univision has been the dominant Hispanic TV network in the US with Telemundo trailing way behind. But that order is being reshuffled as of late. The reason for this shift, as hypothesized in the following LinkenIn post, has to do with the acculturation of US Hispanics. As 2nd and even 3rd generations of Hispanic immigrants grow up in the US their cultural tastes become a blend of Mexican (or whatever originating country) and the United States. Up until now Univision’s programming hasn’t mirrored this shift – they’re still programming identical content to what you would see in Mexico. But Telemundo has been savvier about create custom content aligned to the specific tastes of acculturated US Hispanics. It’s a trend which is important to watch since Hispanics are an ever-growing segment of the US population. (link)
THE TWITTER PARADOX: Yesterday Twitter reported dismal financials during its Q4 Earnings Call. Revenue was essentially flat YoY, operating losses swelled to $167M (in just one quarter), and user growth has stalled to a paltry 2M increase for the entire year over 2015. All of this would seem to spell doom for most digital publishers (think of MySpace’s swan song), but there’s another side to the Twitter story. From a social relevancy stand point Twitter has never been hotter. Donald Trump is obviously a big reason for this, but so are countless other celebs and politicos who use Twitter as their megaphone to the reach tweet-heads. Thus the paradox . . . Twitter continues to stay in the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist, but can’t make a buck and isn’t attracting enough new users to the platform. To frame out both sides of the issue I’m including links from both AdWeek and NY Times. How this plays out is anyone’s guess. (link1) (link2)
Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!