TEST Pandora is growing up, and it smells like teen spirit

But the operator of the Internet's biggest radio service seems to know exactly what it wants to be when it grows up. Its dream: become an advertising-powered heavyweight, holding its own against any of the radio giants that, for now, gorge on the lion's share of the estimated $14 billion radio-ad market. Yes, that also means leaving Apple and its nascent iTunes Radio music service in the dust.

Pandora appears on the path to get there ahead of its third-quarter earnings report Thursday, with a new ad-man CEO, aggressive investments in its ad salesforce, and integration into the forums that advertisers turn to to make their media buys. As Pandora's growth in revenue calms down from the 185 percent of 2010 to the 55 percent of last year, the business of being profitable is getting more scrutiny, and at the moment the only worries are whether Pandora's many fans have gotten ahead of themselves.

But there's reason to be hopeful, as investors certainly are. The stock has nearly quadrupled over the past year.

Change at the top

That fervor over Pandora stems from the perception its advertising model is ripening. The loss-making company has posted only a couple quarters of slim profit since going public in 2011, bogged down by music licensing costs that eat into more than half its revenue. But now several ad-focused moves are coinciding, and most watchers are expecting harmony.

Thursday's update on Pandora's business will be led by a new figure, recently hired Chief Executive Brian McAndrews. In September, he succeeded Joe Kennedy, who led Pandora for nearly a decade.

While Pandora thrived as a radio service under Kennedy, breaking away from a pack of streaming music options to dominate with more than 70 million active monthly users, McAndrews is the kind of executive you hire to thrive in the ad world. He's unmistakably a marketing exec, previously serving as senior vice president of Microsoft's "Advertiser & Publisher Solutions" group, and before that as chief of digital marketing company Aquantive until Microsoft bought it for $6 billion. (Kennedy's exit from Pandora was planned, having been previously announced in March.)

Read: Pandora CFO: We do Internet Radio 'better than anyone' (Q&A)

While Pandora thrived as a radio service under Kennedy, breaking away from a pack of streaming music options to dominate with more than 70 million active monthly users, McAndrews is the kind of executive you hire to thrive in the ad world. He's unmistakably a marketing exec, previously serving as senior vice president of Microsoft's "Advertiser & Publisher Solutions" group, and before that as chief of digital marketing company Aquantive until Microsoft bought it for $6 billion. (Kennedy's exit from Pandora was planned, having been previously announced in March.)

In an interview last month with CNET, Pandora Chief Financial Officer Mike Herring credited Kennedy's navigation of tricky licensing waters with getting the company where it is, but said Pandora has reached a level with new demands. "Brian is a very highly regarded exec in the tech world; his career has been built on bringing media, tech, and advertising together," he said. "It's the perfect time to see a transition.

In bloom

McAndrews arrived at a company with a big ad-development push already in progress. Pandora has been building up a force of salespeople focused on local ads, the kind you hear for a neighborhood car dealership or your city's biggest campus bar. Pandora's local-ad force reached 29 out of 40 top radio markets, as of August.

It's a big market -- local ads were estimated at $132.9 billion this year -- and its digital growth is exploding. BIA/Kelsey, a local-media research, consulting, and advisory firm, this week projected revenue from US online and digital local ads would rise at a 13.8 percent compound annual rate over the next four years. The growth rate for traditional advertising revenue? A paltry 0.1 percent.

As data about iTunes Radio emerged, analysts' number crunching indicated Pandora's pain was minimal. They noted that iTunes Radio listeners appeared to spend 75 percent less time on the service than Pandora, that 92 percent of survey respondents who had tried iTunes Radio said they still use Pandora, and that daily tweets about Pandora show up 6 to 12 times as frequently as chatter about iTunes Radio.

When Pandora released monthly audience figures in October, the first full month with Apple's online radio service as a rival, the data wasn't a home run, but it backed up the speculation it was faring fine. Pandora's listener hours were up 18 percent from a year earlier, basically on par with the increase seen the month before.

Too soon?

However, Pandora's number of unique listeners fell back from the month before. Fewer listeners streaming more music, while not the worst of all possible outcomes, is not the most favorable one financially for the ad-based company. Pandora rings up most of its costs based on how much music is streamed, and improves its revenue power by having the greatest audience reach for advertisers.

In other words, last month, costs kept going up while its revenue engine slipped into a lower gear. And the data from October was only a first glimpse at how iTunes Radio is affecting the current leader in Internet radio.

Still, the combination of defused iTunes Radio worries while Pandora's advertising push gains steam has blasted the company's stock 280 percent higher in the last year. A year ago, Pandora was reporting 67 percent growth in listener hours and 60 percent growth in revenue. Now, those percentages are expected to taper down to 17 percent and 46 percent, respectively.

Pandora is bumping up against the same problem that all high-growth, newly public companies eventually do: the sustainability of its momentum. As it matures, it needs to get down to the business of turning a profit rather than simple frenetic growth.