THE YEAR OF AUDIO: Last week MediaPost ran the following interview piece with Pandora’s CRO John Trimble. Since then it’s received a ton of secondary press pickup, so I thought it was worth circulating.   The main takeaway from the article is the emergence of Audio as the ultimate disruptive ad unit in a world where screen-less connected devices are proliferating. This is especially relevant for marketers given that time spent on audio-based platforms, like music and podcasting, is usually in much longer sessions than video or social sites. This extended time spent equates to consumer engagement, which allows marketers to break through the digital clutter, tell their brands’ stories, and actually create a meaningful relationship with existing or soon to be customers. This makes Audio a potent marketing weapon whose time has come. (link)

APPLE POACHING THEIR WAY INTO THE MUSIC BIZ?: After last week’s Apple earnings call I made the comment that it appeared as if Apple was a bunch of tech heads trying to run a music business without much appreciation for the nuances of the industry. Well maybe somebody in Cupertino read my blog, because they just announced the poaching of Spotify’s head of Label Relations to handle the same duties for them. As anyone in the streaming audio space knows, the legacy ecosystem of artists/songwriters/labels/broadcasters/streamers/CRB is a very hard spider web to understand, much less run a business within. Maybe Apple is finally waking up to that fact after years of unsuccessful streaming attempts. (link)

NOT SO SUPER ADS: Now that the entire marketing universe has had a chance to catch its breath from Sunday night’s Super Bowl it’s time to assess and grade this year’s commercials. AdWeek has done a nice job of compiling the ads by quarter, along with a thumbs up/down assessment. Overall the vibe on this year’s ads was a little “deflated”, with no brands achieving a knock it out of the park effect. There was some decent use of comedy (Skittles, T-Mobile), themes of inclusiveness (AirBNB, Coke), and even commentary on today’s political environment (Budweiser, 84 Lumber). But for once the game itself stole the show, and the commercials stayed in background. With that said, at an average of $5M per :30, it makes you wonder if the Super Bowl is still the best place to get your ROAS anymore. (link)

HOW THE BIG GAME AFFECTED MOBILE USAGE: And for some bonus coverage today, I thought it would be interesting to show you how smartphones were being used (or not used) during the big game. Apparently there was a ton of app-based food orders just before the game, everybody was actually watching Lady Gaga’s halftime show instead of tweeting about it, and most of the US population was using Uber or Lyft to get back home after the game. Interesting stuff. (link)

Have a great Tuesday guys!