Ideas: Choose Types of Ads/ Rate Ads

[jhoyer27]

I know there are a lot of folks out there that are annoyed by the advertisement selection that they are exposed to.  I am also one of them.  I have a suggestion, though I'm sure someone must have thought of this already.

Give us a thumbs-up/thumbs-down option for advertisements!  Not all advertisements are terrible, but some of them are so offensive to people that it's driving them away from your platform.  Or at the very least leading them to mute their device for a couple minutes until the ads are done playing.  I'm sure the ad payers probably don't enjoy forking over money simply to be muted and ignored by your listener base.  At the very least give them the exposure to those who are actually going to listen to them, and help them avoid those who are going to avoid them!

mod edit: changed title for clarity

[Eksha]

What you need are better solutions.  One good approach would be a feature that lets anyone flag an Ad as "offensive, explicit, or otherwise obnoxious" and let people filter out any ads which the community objectively *hates*.  (You could even let people star ads which are especially appealing and give that feedback to the advertisers.)

I know what you're thinking, "oh my god!  our MONEY!!  how can we maximize profit without spamming children with irritating content?  We need to drive people to our subscription services by being as loud and irritating as possible between quiet songs."

But you don't need that.  People actually appreciate good quality ads.  And advertisers appreciate feedback that helps them to produce and reach people with good quality ads.  It is not that difficult to promote ads that are informative, useful, pleasant, and memorable.  The problem is that advertisers don't get feedback from real end users, only from the people selling them airtime, so they make ads that suck, and they lose out on business because of it.

So-called explicit content buried in songs is not similar to highly audible obnoxious content in ads.  Using one filter for both is nonsense.

You know as well as we do that some of your ads totally suck and are never going to inspire anyone to buy the product.  But there are plenty of products and services we'd be perfectly happy to learn about, just don't shout them at us at four times the music volume and don't be gross about it.

Try forwarding our requests to your software engineers rather than your business & PR teams, and you may find people more able to think in terms of improved solutions rather than excuses. 

This has been an issue forever, you've had plenty of time to make more sincere efforts to improve ad quality and benefit your advertisers.  (I literally committed to NOT buy a Nissan Rogue last year because I got so sick of their ads and had no way to shut them off!  I bought a Honda CR-V this year.  I'm not 100% sure I remember correctly but I think Honda had a notably peaceful ad a couple of years ago (on pandora) that I wished I could have told them I appreciated.  Good quality and treating customers with respect works!!) 

[porkchop0622]

I'm really annoyed with hearing Black Lives Matter ads on my Pandora account and I find it very offensive as a White person to constantly hear this ad every single advertisement. I will give it one week to correct this issue or I am leaving this platform. It's been months of this nonstop B.S. !!!

[Thunderbird198]

I find the fact that you are accepting ad money from My Pillow extremely offensive.  This company is owned by a known traitor who has actively tried to disenfranchise millions of Americans.

[Rachelcanaduhh]

How can I get certain ads to stop playing? Because they are targeted I keep getting a hepatitis C advertisement, just because I searched what hepatitis C was and how it is spread and the other day my boyfriend and I were in the car jamming out when a hep c ad popped up talking about treatment options and my bf was like uhh? Something you need to tell me? And now it plays once or more a day. Is there a way I can disable it or change the ad?  It’s super annoying lol 

[msgreen1389]

@porkchop0622, as another White person, I can tell you it is not offensive to hear Black Lives Matter ads. A common misunderstanding is that Black Lives Matter means others' lives don't, but that is not what it means at all. It means that black lives matter TOO. Because they have not mattered for so long, and it is time to change that.

[ChrisJ]

Please stop featuring dishonest advertising from the Fossil Fuel industry. There is one in particular where it is promoting fossil gas(natural gas) as a "clean fuel" and also acting as though we can replace fossil gas with renewable natural gas(which is only possible if we reduced our consumption of gas to less than 10% of current levels).

Please eliminate these types of ads that are outright lying to consumers.

[FrostLab]

Heck yea!  Great idea!!! ^_^

[laurechambers]

Some of the ads I get are in Spanish, which is not offensive, but since I don't speak or understand Spanish, the advertisement is not reaching its target audience. Being able to "tailor" ads would make much more sense...

There have also been times in which I have been listening to Disney/kid's music and adult (though not exactly explicit) products have been advertised...is there a way to change my ad settings like on other social media accounts?

[kittyCatalina98]

There are numerous occasions where I get ads that are, for lack of a better word, "offensive" and cannot do anything but turn the volume on my car down to zero. I'm incredibly frustrated getting ads for Chik-fil-a, or adult-content ads, or (rarely but not never) an ad for a church or an anti-LGBTQ politician. At this point, I'm probably going to just switch to Spotify, because it's clear by the four-year history of this request that y'all prioritize squeezing an extra tenth of a cent per listen over user experience.

[aevbfly]

This is a great idea! I will never buy a My Pillow product no matter how many annoying ads I have to listen to.