Presently I work for a client that has an open floor setup, which means that lots of noises and conversations are happening at any given moment. But I prefer listening to the music while developing software, and  the Internet radio Pandora really helps. I’ve created several radio stations, and based on my mood, I listen to a hard rock, jazz, blues or other genre.

Since there is no free lunch, Pandora used to insert audio commercials between the songs. No problems here. I understand. This morning, I noticed that Pandora got a facelift, and it seems that the main reason was to free some screen real estate for visual advertisement. Now it’s getting annoying.

All of a sudden, my browser’s window became fool  of women. This is no good. I’m working here, guys.There are people around me. They pay me well for developing software. And what do they see? Are we paying Yakov for having fun staring at all these women?

But things got even more interesting.  I noticed that all these beautiful ladies were black. This got me thinking why would Pandora assume that I’m specifically interesting in black women? The title on the top of the screen read something like “Find local black women in your area.” This is when having analytical thinking helps. At the time, I was listening to the radio station that  was playing reggae music. Got it?

After a while, I switched to another radio station that was playing Joane Osborne and the likes. Guess what? The browser’s window got filled with the faces of white women.

I suspect that Pandora is trying to be smart in showing context-sensitive ads targeting the proper audience.Do they assume that people listening to reggae are most likely into black women and fans of Joanne Osborne are whites?

So far it’s just my assumption, and would require a lot more hours spent listening to various types of music. I like women. I really do. There are gorgeous white, black and latino women (the rumor has it that J. Lo is available again). My question is, what kind of radio station should I create to see all of them at once and not in a into-your-face manner? If I won’t find the answer, I’m going to have to shell out 36 bucks for a year of ad-free Pandora.

Oops…It’s getting even more interesting…Here comes a large banner offering me “High Quality Generic Viagra”. Guys, I may lose this contract with my client, and won’t have money to buy high quality blue pills from your sponsors.