The short version
Pandora is a United States streaming audio audience of about 40 million people a month, and almost all of that listening is free with ads. In Amazon DSP it is United States only, audio only, and sold entirely as deals, so there is no box to tick in your inventory settings.
It reaches your account twice: once under its own name through the AdsWizz marketplace, and once inside the deals SiriusXM brought over a year earlier. Both cost the same. Only one of them is unambiguously Pandora, and that is the one we plan.
- Best for
- United States advertisers who want logged in, ad supported streaming audio reach, brands in alcohol or pharma who need cleared audio inventory, and anyone who wants to single out listening in the car.
- Not for
- Anyone buying outside the United States, anyone who wants Pandora display or video, and anyone who reads the SiriusXM podcast deals as more of the same thing.
What works
- About 40 million monthly listeners in the United States, and the company says 87% of them listen free with ads
- Five cuts: all devices, mobile only, the car, alcohol and pharma
- Every app listed in every deal is Pandora, so there is nothing to check
- Cleared inventory for alcohol and pharma, two categories that usually cannot buy audio programmatically at all
- The reach Pandora claims for these deals matches the number in its own accounts, which is rarer than it should be
What needs your attention
- United States only, with no international Pandora to grow into
- Audio only. Pandora sells display and video, and neither reaches Amazon DSP
- Nine deals for one service, in two waves, four of them selling Pandora under a SiriusXM name
- The floor sits above the middle of the audio catalog, and the pharma cut is more than double
- The audience is real but shrinking, and the company says the decline is likely to continue
Who should buy this
- You want United States streaming audio at scale. About 40 million people a month, and Pandora says 87% of them listen free with ads, so nearly all of it is reachable.[6][8]
- You are an alcohol or pharma brand. These are cleared deals, which is unusual in audio, and the pharma one buys ad lengths nothing else in Amazon DSP audio will sell you.[7]
- You want to single out listening in the car. There is a dedicated connected car cut, at the same price as everything else.[1]
Who should skip this
- Anyone buying outside the United States. Every deal is US only and there is nothing international to grow into. If the brief spans countries, Spotify is the audio line instead.
- Anyone who needs display or video. Pandora sells both directly and neither reaches Amazon DSP, so an audio deal is the whole of what you can buy here.[1]
- Anyone reading the SiriusXM podcast deals as more of this. They are other companies' podcasts on the same plumbing, with no Pandora in them and a higher floor.
Who you reach in the US
Pandora had 40.1 million monthly active users at the end of March 2026, down 5% on the year.[6] Three months earlier it was 41.1 million, itself down 5% from 43.3 million.[5] These are not marketing figures. They are the ones SiriusXM files with the SEC, which is why they are the ones worth planning against.
The direction is the part to plan around. The annual report says Pandora “has declined consistently for several years” and that the decline “is likely to continue in the future”.[5] Engagement is holding up better than headcount: 9.75 billion ad supported listener hours in 2025, down only 2%. So the people who are left listen about as much as they always did.
What is falling faster is the price. Pandora reports advertising revenue per thousand listener hours, and it went from $100.59 to $91.78, a 9% drop the company puts down to lower advertiser demand in streaming music.[5]
And yet the advertising business grew, 1% across 2025 and 5% in the first quarter of 2026, on “strength in podcasting, higher programmatic demand and technology fees, partially offset by softer advertiser demand in streaming music”.[6] Programmatic is the route you are reading about, so buying Pandora through Amazon DSP is the growing half of a shrinking service. That is a good reason to buy it and a bad reason to plan it as a growth audience. Treat it as large and established, not as expanding.
What it costs
Pandora does not publish programmatic prices, so we looked at what we can actually buy in our own account.[1]
Signed in readers only
The Pandora floor rates in your DSP account
What each of the five cuts costs, in both waves, and how that compares with every other audio publisher we can buy. We assign every account an Amazon DSP seat if you don't have one, and these prices are read out of it.
Free, and it takes a minute. We assign every account an Amazon DSP seat if you don't have one, and these prices are read out of it.
What the deals actually are
Pandora arrived in Amazon DSP twice. In September 2025 SiriusXM brought its streaming portfolio across and Pandora came with it, sold under SiriusXM's name through Amazon Publisher Direct.[3] In July 2026 Pandora arrived again on its own, through the AdsWizz marketplace.[4] Nobody switched the first wave off, so both sit in the deals list today.[1]
The two waves, side by side
| Pandora deals | SiriusXM/Pandora deals | |
|---|---|---|
| We plan it when you ask for Pandora | Yes | No |
| Bought through | The AdsWizz marketplace | Amazon Publisher Direct |
| How to spot it | AmazonPA.AOD in the deal name | APD Select Pandora in the deal name |
| In the list since | June 2026 | August 2025 |
| Sold by | Pandora only | SiriusXM Audio and Pandora, about half each |
| Named for | Pandora | Pandora and SoundCloud, on three of the four |
From our own experiments running Amazon DSP, last checked 2026-08-10.
Signed in readers only
The Pandora deals in our account, and how they are cut
How many deals sit in each wave, the exchanges and environment they run on, and the cuts each one comes in. We assign every account an Amazon DSP seat if you don't have one, and this is read out of it.
Free, and it takes a minute. We assign every account an Amazon DSP seat if you don't have one, and these prices are read out of it.
Are the two waves the same inventory?
We do not know, and we are not going to imply it. Both waves list Pandora as the app, both are United States only, and both come in the same named cuts.[2] That is the same service and the same cut. It is not a measurement of who hears your ad.
Two things say expect a difference. Deals on different exchanges can carry different slices of one publisher's inventory. And three of the four older deals are named for SoundCloud as well, a second service we cannot see. So plan them as two Pandora buys, not one buy sold twice.
When you ask us for Pandora, we plan the Pandora deals. Not because they are cheaper, they are not, and not because we have proven they reach further, we have not. Because they are unambiguous: Amazon records Pandora as the only seller, the name mentions nothing else, and the spend reports as Pandora. In VICTOR.AD the two are separate chips, so choosing one never quietly adds the other. The older deals are good inventory and we plan them happily when a brief says SiriusXM, which is what they are sold as.[1]
The SoundCloud in the deal names
Three of the four older deals say SoundCloud, spelled two different ways in the same list. Every app we can see in them is Pandora.[2]
SiriusXM does not own SoundCloud. Its own annual report calls it SoundCloud's “exclusive ad sales representative in the U.S. and certain European countries”, selling campaigns “across the Pandora and SoundCloud platforms”.[5] The name is a sales package, not a promise about what will play.
An app list shows what a deal surfaces, not everything it can serve, so this is not proof SoundCloud is absent. Plan these as Pandora, count reach as Pandora, and treat anything else as a bonus. The newer Pandora deals do not mention SoundCloud at all.
Creative
| What to build | |
|---|---|
| Audio | Ten, fifteen or thirty seconds, as an mp3 at 44.1kHz. Pharma is the one exception, at forty five or sixty. |
| Companion banner | 300 by 250, JPG or GIF, 50kb loading to 100kb. It shows where the screen supports one, so treat it as a bonus rather than the message. |
| Not sold here | Display and video. Pandora sells both directly, and neither reaches Amazon DSP. |
Durations, file format and banner sizes from SiriusXM Media's own spec page.[7] What is missing from Amazon DSP is from our own account. From our own experiments running Amazon DSP, last checked 2026-08-10.
The deals only part means all of it. On Spotify the always on box in your inventory settings at least buys banners. There is no Pandora box at all, and the closest thing, the AdsWizz exchange, buys display and never audio in any country we hold. So a plan that names Pandora without adding a deal reaches none of it.[1]
What Pandora claims, and what is actually checked
Pandora's audience numbers are Pandora's. We are relaying them because they are the figures that exist, not because they have been independently established. Read them as a seller's case for itself.[8]
- “87% listen free with ads”
- “48% of listeners are loyal”, which the page glosses as nearly half having been on the platform for over a decade
- “#1 in ad-supported audio”, with no measurement named
- 41 million monthly listeners for the Amazon DSP inventory specifically[4]
The last one is the one that holds up, and it is worth saying so. Pandora put these deals at 41 million monthly listeners in July 2026, and the company's own filings had 41.1 million monthly active users at the end of 2025 and 40.1 million at the end of March 2026.[5][6] A vendor reach number that matches the audited one is rarer than it should be, so take this one at face value.
Two to be careful with. “#1 in ad-supported audio” names no measurement service and no market, so there is nothing to check it against, and it sits oddly beside a service the same company tells the SEC has shrunk for several years running. And the 160 million monthly digital listeners in the original Amazon announcement is SiriusXM Media's whole portfolio, attributed to Edison Research,[3] not the Pandora deals on this page. Do not size a Pandora line off it.
Where it fits in your audio plan
The big audio sellers arrived in Amazon DSP within a year of each other. SiriusXM in September 2025 with Pandora inside it, Spotify in October 2025, iHeartMedia in November 2025, and Pandora again on its own in July 2026. They now sit in one workflow, and we can buy all of them from our own account.[1]
Against that field Pandora is the United States specialist. It is one country, where Spotify is fifteen and has 494 million ad supported listeners worldwide,[9] so if the brief is international this is not the line. It is also dearer than Spotify per thousand and cheaper than iHeartMedia, and at the far end Odeeo's in game audio carries the lowest floor we can buy at $0.10, which makes it an instructive contrast rather than a substitute.[1]
What Pandora brings that the others do not is the cleared categories. Alcohol and pharma brands are used to being told audio is not available programmatically, and here it is, with the pharma cut carrying its own longer ad lengths. If you are working out how the streaming platforms fit together more broadly, we cover that in how to advertise on Netflix, Spotify and Roku. One thing in the same account that is not Pandora at all: the SiriusXMMedia podcast deals are a curated marketplace of other companies' podcasts on the same AdsWizz plumbing, with no Pandora in them and a higher floor. We opened every one of those on the SiriusXM page.
How to add it to a plan
In the Amazon DSP interface
Deals live in the deals inventory list. Open your ad group's inventory and search AmazonPA.AOD, which returns the five Pandora deals and nothing else in the catalog. Searching Pandora returns all nine, both waves together.[1]
One trap worth knowing. Do not shorten that search to 3PX.AmazonPA. Amazon's own name for the connected car deal is missing a full stop, so it reads ADSP.3PXAmazonPA and drops out of that search. You get four of the five and no warning that one is missing.[1]
To tell the waves apart, read the exchange column rather than the name. Amazon Publisher Direct is the SiriusXM wave, AdsWizz is Pandora's own. If you cannot see a deals inventory list at all, you are probably buying through a subseat from your tool provider, and reading a deal this way needs inventory access. Ask them for it.
With VICTOR.AD
VICTOR.AD builds the Amazon DSP media plan, exports a deck for client approval, and on paid tiers pushes the plan into your account as a draft. Pandora is its own chip, separate from SiriusXM, so choosing it plans the all devices deal and leaves the mobile, car, alcohol and pharma cuts one click away. Free to start.
Start a Media Plan that includes Pandora
VICTOR.AD helps you plan, pitch, and launch a full Amazon DSP campaign in minutes, so your team competes on ideas, not overtime.
Common questions
Is Pandora available in Amazon DSP?
Yes, in the United States, as audio deals. It arrived twice. SiriusXM brought Pandora over with its streaming portfolio in September 2025, and Pandora arrived again under its own name through the AdsWizz marketplace in July 2026. Both waves are still in the deals list.
Can I buy Pandora without a deal in Amazon DSP?
No. There is no Pandora box in your inventory settings, so every Pandora impression comes from a deal you add to the ad group yourself.
Is Pandora available outside the United States in Amazon DSP?
No. Every Pandora deal we can buy is United States only, and there is no international Pandora to grow into.
Do the Pandora deals in Amazon DSP include SoundCloud?
The older deal names say so and we cannot find any. SiriusXM's own annual report describes it as SoundCloud's exclusive ad sales representative in the US rather than its owner, so the name reads as a sales package. Every app listed in every one of these deals is Pandora, so we plan them as Pandora and treat anything else as a bonus.
How long can a Pandora audio ad be in Amazon DSP?
Ten, fifteen or thirty seconds, delivered as an mp3. Pharma is the exception: SiriusXM Media's own spec allows forty five and sixty second ads on programmatic mobile audio campaigns targeting Pandora, and there is a separate cleared pharma deal to run them on.
Signed in readers only
What Pandora costs, and which of the two waves is cheaper
The floor rate on all five cuts in both waves, and how Pandora prices against every other audio publisher we can buy. We assign every account an Amazon DSP seat if you don't have one, and these are read out of it.
Free, and it takes a minute. We assign every account an Amazon DSP seat if you don't have one, and these prices are read out of it.
Sources and method
The deal counts, floor rates, exchanges, cuts and countries on this page were read from our own Amazon DSP account across the 9 Pandora deals in it, last checked on 2026-08-10: 5 sold as Pandora over the AdsWizz marketplace and 4 sold with SiriusXM over Amazon Publisher Direct. All of them are United States only and priced in dollars, so nothing here is converted or pooled across currencies. The comparison against other audio publishers comes from the same catalog snapshot dated 2026-07-17, across the 162 dollar priced audio deals in it. How we run these measurements, what a floor is, and why some figures only show when you are signed in is set out in How we measure. The app lists and the seller split behind the two waves come from each deal's own attributes rather than from its name, which is the point of the SoundCloud section above. We make no claim about whether the two waves reach the same listeners, because nothing we can read establishes it, and we say so on the page rather than leaving it to be inferred. Every third party figure is attributed and linked below, and where a figure is a company's own claim about itself we say so rather than presenting it as measured.
- [1] VICTOR.AD — Deal counts, floor rates, exchanges, deal names, the five cuts, launch dates and countries, from our own experiments running Amazon DSP (first party, date stated above)
- [2] VICTOR.AD — Per deal attributes: the apps listed in every Pandora deal, and the seller split that separates the two waves, read in our own account (first party, our own experiments)
- [3] SiriusXM Media — The 16 September 2025 Amazon DSP integration, naming Pandora and SoundCloud U.S., activated through the AdsWizz supply side platform, with 160 million monthly digital listeners attributed to Edison Research (company announcement, the first wave)
- [4] SiriusXM Media — The 2 July 2026 release: “Amazon DSP buyers can start purchasing Pandora streaming music inventory and SiriusXM Podcast Network through the AdsWizz supply-side platform (SSP)”, putting Pandora at 41 million monthly listeners (company announcement, the second wave)
- [5] SiriusXM (SEC Form 10-K, FY2025) — “As of December 31, 2025, Pandora had approximately 41.1 million monthly active users and 5.6 million subscribers”, down 5% from 43.3 million; “the number of monthly active users to our ad-supported Pandora service has declined consistently for several years”; 9.75 billion ad supported listener hours, down 2%; advertising revenue per thousand listener hours of $91.78 against $100.59; Pandora and Off-platform advertising revenue of $1,615 million, up 1%; and the arrangement with SoundCloud Holdings, LLC “to be its exclusive ad sales representative in the U.S. and certain European countries” (primary source, the company's annual report on EDGAR)
- [6] SiriusXM (SEC Form 8-K, Q1 2026 earnings release) — “Advertising revenue increased 5% to $372 million, driven by strength in podcasting, higher programmatic demand and technology fees, partially offset by softer advertiser demand in streaming music”, with “monthly active users totaled 40.1 million”, down 5% year on year (primary source, the quarterly release itself on EDGAR)
- [7] SiriusXM Media — Audio specs: “Run your 10-, 15-, and 30-second message across our network. 45-second ads are available for pharma brands. 60-second options are not available for Direct IO. 45-seconds and 60-seconds are available for programmatic pharma campaigns with mobile audio targeting Pandora only.” Delivery as “an mp3 file with a sample rate of 44.1kHz”, with “a 300x250 companion banner where banner is supported and inventory is available” (the vendor's own spec page)
- [8] SiriusXM Media — Pandora's own advertising page: “87% listen free with ads”, “48% of listeners are loyal”, and “#1 in ad-supported audio” (self published marketing claim about itself, carrying no attribution)
- [9] Spotify Technology S.A. (SEC Form 6-K, Q2 2026) — “Ad-Supported MAUs were 494 million as of June 30, 2026”, for the size comparison against the other big audio publisher in the same account (primary source, the filing itself on EDGAR)