*By Carlo Versano*
In streaming years, online music service Pandora is ancient.
Among the first platforms to offer a "freemium" product, the company, founded in 2000, now boasts 71 million active monthly users in a hyper-crowded industry and offers three tiers of membership: $10 and $5 per month, or free.
Maybe conversely, it's that free, ad-supported tier ー which accounts for the vast majority of the platform's user base ー that has the most potential.
While at the Mobile World Live conference, Pandora CEO Roger Lynch told Cheddar that audio is one of the few areas in digital advertising that hasn't been conquered by the Google-Facebook duopoly. Pandora, which gathers data from users' listening histories to recommend new music, is particularly qualified to explore new ways to offer targeted ads of varying length. That's the "next big frontier" in audio advertising, Lynch said.
To that end, Pandora acquired the programmatic ad tech firm AdsWizz for $145 million earlier this year. For consumers, the personalized data-driven ad model that dominates text and video ads online, would mean shorter audio commercials ー think four minutes an hour on Pandora compared to 20 on terrestrial radio, Lynch said.
Pandora also teamed up with Snap to allow Snapchat users to share songs seamlessly, even if they didn't subscribe to the same music services.
"We're trying to make \[music\] a lot more social," Lynch said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-pandora-plans-to-stay-on-top-in-streaming-wars).
Traveling can be expensive and if a situation arises, costs can add up. Nick Ewen, senior editor at The Points Guy, joined Cheddar News to explain what travel insurance can cover and when you should purchase it.
A prosecutor opened a criminal fraud trial Wednesday by telling jurors that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was on top of the world a year ago, hobnobbing with people like football star Tom Brady and ex-President Bill Clinton, before his historic fraud was exposed, leaving customers and investors without at least $10 billion they thought was secure.
Staying on top of your personal spending shouldn't be as complicated as you think. Lazetta Braxton, a certified financial planner, joined Cheddar News to provide tips on how to track that spending, such as grouping expenses into different categories.
Uber is adding a new task to its list of services: mailing consumers' return packages.
United Airlines said it's buying about 110 more planes from Boeing and Airbus.
Data shows auto sales rose in the third quarter.
Netflix is planning to raise prices, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Studies show about half of Americans will experience a layoff in their lifetime. Cheddar News' Ready4Work docuseries on Thursdays at 8:30pm provides tips in its latest episode on what to do if you get that pink slip.
The Biden administration announced a series of indictments and sanctions in connection with fentanyl trafficking.
Tens of thousands of unionized healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente are walking off the job Wednesday.
