While marketers have long targeted online radio listeners baed on their zip code or gender, this type of interest-based targeting is new. The ad options, which are the result of a deal between radio service Triton Digital and data provider eXelate, mean radio ads are about to get a lot more specific.

According to Triton Digital COO, Mike Agovino, radio ads represent a $17 billion industry but one that relies on out-dated metrics and that offers little accountability to ad buyers. He thinks that letting brands sell to listeners based on their web surfing habits will drive a new wave of automated ad buying and increase the value of the radio ad market.

The possibilities for radio are intriguing. Recall that, in the recent Presidential election, the parties launched a barrage of political ads in swing districts by using Pandora’s ability to play ads based on a person’s zip code. Meanwhile, their neighbors across the street who lived in a different district might have heard ads for trucks or lollipops based depending on their age and gender (Pandora garners this information when you sign up for the service).

Now, radio ad targeting is going to get even more focused. For instance, the new data tools mean Ford might sell pick-ups after a teenybopper song because the company knows a listener was just looking at truck sites. Or Tampex may find occasions to pitch its products in the midst of a heavy-metal marathon.

According to eXelate CEO, Mark Zagorski, radio is the “last bastion of context based advertising” but that this will change quickly due to online radio’s growing popularity and the capacity of behavioral-based advertising to scale quickly.

As with other situations in which marketers use big data techniques to pitch products, there is a creepiness factor here. For instance, do you want marketers to know you’ve spent the last two hours researching gonorrhea and play you radio ads accordingly? Zagorski addressed the privacy concerns by saying that eXelate doesn’t touch so-called PPI (private personal information) but simply overlays online activity onto a streaming service.

The new interest-based ads will help brands reach users of Pandora, which makes up about 74% of the online radio market, but also the web streams of more traditional radio stations as well.

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Radionomy’s new website gives DJs and other music enthusiasts unlimited storage to upload their music. Producers can also access up to 80,000 tracks from Radionomy’s music library, and even access syndicated news programming. All of this can then be scheduled like a traditional radio station, and mixed with live programming if desired. Running an online radio via Radionomy is free, and the company splits its ad revenue with its radio producers.

Radionomy, which is based in Belgium, originally launched its service with a focus on the European market in 2008. But even with that limited focus, Radionomy has been able to rack up some impressive usage: The service has seen 50 new stations a day on average, with a total of 6000 stations being available at any given time. Radionomy currently sees around 43 million listening hours a month, I was recently told by the company’s VP of business development Thierry Ascarez, who also serves as Radionomy’s first U.S.-based employee.

Radionomy’s closest competitor in the U.S. is Live365, which has been offering a similar service for more than ten years. However, Live365 charges its broadcasters monthly fees, and broadcasting on the platform involves the use of special software. Radionomy’s new version, on the other hand, is completely web-based, even for broadcasters. And Ascarez told me that the company will even offer live streaming from mobile devices soon. “That’s the next step,” he said.

Radionomy has raised a total of $6 million from its parent company Musicmatic, which also owns the music distribution platform Jamendo. The company currently has around 20 people on staff and will hire more people in the U.S. soon.

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The update to the Stitcher app, available on iOS and Android, is sort of a no-brainer for Stitcher, whose users spend 70 percent of their time listening to news and political content. For people who like to listen to their news, they can hear speeches from candidates and get podcasts and news reports from the sources they follow. Stitcher will also push out notifications when new content is available about a candidate.

One of the more interesting features in Election Center is a new trending topics area that uses a transcription service to highlight when certain keywords are uttered. Stitcher now has the ability to transcribe reports and then show users when certain words are used, so they can jump ahead to those parts in the audio. Stitcher CEO Noah Shanok said this is the first time the technology is being used in a mobile audio app and it’s something that will likely be expanded to the entire Stitcher service eventually.

“We see this as part of our mission to further the evolution of radio and make it more relevant and accessible than ever,” Shanok said.

The election center should keep usage on Stitcher growing. The service has 4.7 million registered users, up from 3 million in September and total listening time had doubled in the last six month.

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Spotify told Bloomberg it has “no announcements to share at this time,” but:

The new format would be similar to Pandora’s, which operates like radio and is cheaper to operate because royalty rates are lower and set by Congress.

The new service would start by year-end and be supported by advertising, said the people, who weren’t authorized to talk publicly. The company has begun notifying some content partners of its plans, they said.

In the most recent figures released, Spotify said it has 10 million registered users worldwide and three million paying subscribers. Pandora has 150 million registered users.

Spotify already offers a radio feature on its desktop app, but it is not mobile yet.

Bloomberg explains Pandora users “have access to any artist whose music has been published, because the service operates under federal rules. Royalties paid by Pandora and other online radio companies are set by the Copyright Royalty Board, a division of the Library of Congress.” So a radio service would allow Spotify to offer some music it doesn’t have the rights to already, and could also pull needed advertisers to the platform.

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The news is not much of a surprise if you’ve been following along. Previous reports this summer had pegged Turntable’s round at $7.5 million with Union Square Ventures jockeying with Kleiner Perkins and Accel for the privilege. And TechCrunch last week showed off screenshots from Turntable’s new iPhone app.

Turntable said it will use the new funding to build out the organization, which has grown from three people at launch to ten people now. The service has pushed past 600,000 users and streams more than one million songs a day. It’s had more than 25 million awesome votes recorded and more than 300,000 rooms have been created. USV’s Fred Wilson will join Turntable’s board.

“USV’s record of investing in the great Internet companies speaks for itself — Zynga, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare to name just a few,” said Billy Chasen, CEO and co-founder. “Having Fred Wilson less than ten blocks away to discuss product ideas with is invaluable.”

The news confirms that Turntable, which launched in May, is indeed seeing a lot of progress and has plenty of backers. In addition to USV, Turntable received money from First Round Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, and Lowercase Ventures, who had previously invested in Turntable’s predecessor Stickybits, which raised $2 million. Other investors include entertainment figures such as Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter, Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary, Courtney Holt, former president of MySpace Music, former Facebook director of monetization Tim Kendall, late night host Jimmy Fallon and the Roots.

The new iPhone app should maintain Turntable’s momentum. The app brings over all the features and limitations of the online service and makes it available on an iPhone. Users will be able to push out music to other devices using Apple’s Airplay technology. But they will not be able to DJ in a room alone. And as part of the expansion, Turntable is opening up access to not just friend’s of users but to everyone who registers through Facebook.

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“We became profitable for the fourth quarter of 2009, and now we’re shooting for profits for the entire 2010 [period],” Pandora’s chief technology officer, Tom Conrad, told me. The 10-year-old company plans to reach that goal by embedding itself in all sorts of consumer electronics devices that feature an Internet connection. For now Pandora’s ambitions are restricted to within U.S. borders.

In 2009, Pandora’s U.S. audience of registered users reached 43 million and at present nearly 100 different consumer devices other than computers are streaming the service. In December 2009 alone, 3 million new listeners joined Pandora — of which 2.7 million of them activated the service on a device other than a computer, according to the company.

Pandora is a perfect showcase for the so-called device-agnostic Internet, itself the result of three major trends:

1. The marriage of computing and connectivity that can now take place without the shackles of being tethered to a single location. It’s among the biggest disruptive forces of modern times, one that will redefine business models for decades to come.
2. The pervasiveness of the mobile Internet.
3. The availability of low-cost, always-on computers (aka smartphones) that allow sophisticated software to conduct complex tasks on the go.

Pandora got a big boost at the recently concluded CES trade show, where it showed off the fact that its music offering, which combines radio-styled listening to serendipitous recommendations, is now being embedded in everything from thin LED televisions to Blu-ray players to digital frames. I’m among those who bought a Blu-ray player and subsequently signed up for my Pandora account online. I also listen to Pandora on a Sonos system as well and also on my iPod touch and on my BlackBerry. In other words, I see the value of taking my Pandora everywhere.

As to all the consumer devices that are embedding the service, Conrad said that “the high-volume products are only just hitting the market,” among them devices made by LG, Samsung, Sony, Sanyo, Haier, Divx, Toshiba and Panasonic. But the biggest boost, he said, was going to come from the embedding of Pandora in automobiles. Conrad hinted  about such a move to autos back in early December.

Ford, Alpine and Pioneer are three companies that are going to be putting Pandora inside their cars and automobile music systems, respectively. The service will piggy-back on 3G wireless connections on the latest generation of cell phones. While Conrad was candid enough to admit that the automobile ecosystem was going to take a little bit of time, for the company, it’s clearly worth the wait. “Nearly 47 percent of radio listening is in the car,” he noted. (Related from GigaOM Pro, subscription req’d: The App Developer’s Guide to Working with Ford Sync and Forget Syncing, Let’s Put Music in the Cloud.)

As Conrad explained, currently the web accounts for 20 percent of total radio listening, which means that Pandora needs to expand beyond just the browser if it wants to go after “80 percent of the opportunity.” I find it amusing that only a couple of years ago, Pandora was fighting for its life, thanks to the draconian policies of the music industry. Now it is audaciously viewing itself as the future of radio. Terrestrial and satellite radio providers had better watch out. (Related: Pandora Raises $35 million.)

In the meantime, Pandora has benefited handsomely from the iPhone phenomenon. In just 18 months, mobile (and other connected devices) have risen to account for nearly 30 percent of Pandora’s usage. That’s helped the company offer premium services, which has in turn helped it generate revenues and lately, profits.

No wonder Conrad and the rest of the Pandora team are thinking about Pandora playing everywhere.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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