*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).
Nestlé has dismissed its CEO Laurent Freixe after an investigation into an undisclosed relationship with a direct subordinate. The company announced on Monday that the dismissal was effective immediately. An investigation found that Freixe violated Nestlé’s code of conduct. He had been CEO for a year. Philipp Navratil, a longtime Nestlé executive, will replace him. Chairman Paul Bulcke stated that the decision was necessary to uphold the company’s values and governance. Navratil began his career with Nestlé in 2001 and has held various roles, including CEO of Nestlé's Nespresso division since 2024.
Kraft Heinz is splitting into two companies a decade after they joined in a massive merger that created one of the biggest food companies on the planet. One of the companies will include brands such as Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese and Kraft Mac & Cheese. The other will include brands like Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles and Lunchables. When the company formed in 2015 it wanted to capitalize on its massive scale, but shifting tastes complicated those plans, with households seeking to introduce healthier options at the table. Kraft Heinz's net revenue has fallen every year since 2020.
