Where were you at 7am today?
I’ll tell you where I was: up for an hour already, playing music for my son on the little speaker in our kitchen before he’d even had breakfast. I was cooking, he was banging a spoon on his tray, and the playlist was doing the work of keeping both of us sane before the day even started.
This is every morning at my house. Yours too, probably, just with different lyrics (unless you also have a Soy Una Taza toddler).
And I’m not alone: Audio eats up 21.4% of the time American adults spend with media. It gets 4.5% of US ad spend.
Repeat it with me: 1/5 of the day. 1/20 of the budget. I didn’t know that before I started writing this, and I was kind of shocked. But I’m not the only Marketer starting to notice.
Attention doesn’t stay cheap once people notice it’s undervalued by 5x. My prediction = give it 18 months and you’ll be paying triple to buy back ground that was functionally free this quarter. I’m predicting this because of the news that just dropped: YouTube’s audio-first inventory JUST joined the SiriusXM Media network, exclusively.
Today is about making sure we’re all prepared.
By the end of this, you’ll have a habit loop map of your customer’s listening day, plus 2 questions to bring to your next planning meeting.
Let’s get into it.
Why Is Audio So Cheap Right Now?
2 main things are keeping the price down:
1ST: an outdated picture in Marketer’s heads.
Maybe you hear “audio advertising” and picture a satellite logo on the dashboard of your fanciest uncle’s car in 2004. But today audio is an open ecosystem. A podcast or music gets made once, but lives everywhere somebody can hit play: Apple, YouTube (64% of pod listeners go now), wherever. And the ads riding inside travel along with it. You’re buying the show, wherever you get your podcasts that show lives.
SiriusXM Media’s ecosystem is the perfect example: it’s Pandora, SiriusXM, SoundCloud, YouTube Music, audio ads on YouTube itself, plus shows already living in the culture: Howard Stern, the Call Her Daddy universe, SmartLess, Mel Robbins, and sports radio covering MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, PGA, NASCAR,.. pretty much every league you’d name at a bar.
2nd: a lot of listeners can’t even hear your ad.
Subscriptions made up 63% of digital audio revenue in 2024. Translation: a huge chunk of listeners paid to skip ads. That means you need to check how much of any platform’s big flashy audience numbers are even accessible to you.
Which brings us to…PLANNING MEETING QUESTION #1️⃣ how many listeners on any network you’re buying…can even hear your ad?
Next time someone hands you a reach slide with no addressability line on it, ask for 1. It’s a fair question, and it usually changes the math. For SiriusXM Media, that math is 255 million unduplicated monthly US listeners reachable through audio ads. That’s 4.8x more ad-supported listening than the next biggest competitor. This fall’s YouTube addition also brings more than 30 million Black and Hispanic listeners into the same buy.
Nobody Presses Play on a Podcast by Accident
Doom-scrolling on social runs on reflex. You’ve felt your own thumb do it 132 times today without asking your permission 1st. Doesn’t feel…great.
Audio’s different, because the listener DECIDED to listen. They chose a soundtrack, based on mood & moment: for the gym, the walk, for work, for grocery shopping and pretending they aren’t mid-episode when the cashier tried small talk.
That 1 decision is worth more than a 100 passive impressions, and the trust research backs it up: 68% of consumers say they trust recommendations from audio hosts, because they chose to let them in. Nobody ever let a banner ad in.
Mapping Your Customer’s Habit Loops
Think about audio in habit loops: “listening moments” (and mindsets) that repeat.
Here are the 4 I’d map first:
1️⃣. Routine loops: The must-dos. Commute, gym, errands, school drop-off. Same time, same place, most days. Target by time of day, activity, and geo.
2️⃣. Mood loops: The pump-up, the wind-down, the focus playlist, the self-help podcast that starts your day. Target the mood alongside the demo. SiriusXM Media’s contextual targeting goes down to mood and to individual shows.
3️⃣. Group loops: Think about how often audio is a shared experience. Maybe it’s 2 people sharing a commute, a party playlist, a whole stadium (& with SiriusXM Media’s footprint on every major league, that’s a weekly thing). Or like me now, when somebody is doing their hair with a podcast playing loud enough the whole house can hear it. (Sorry wifey for outing you LOL.)
Most of this very real reach never shows up in attribution. So while you build the internal case, name the group-listening moments specific to your category. It’s more accurate, AND a lot more persuasive.
4️⃣ Seasonal loops: The tentpoles people build routines around. Right now, it’s football season, and holiday shopping is incoming fast: 70% of holiday gift buyers start and finish within 60 days.
Plan Listening Like a Guest List (Not a Media Buy)
If you’re on audio, you got invited into somebody’s morning. Plan like it:
1️⃣. Write out your customer’s day. Hour by hour, note where they are and what they’re doing at every listening moment. Then note who’s with them. Aim for 6 to 8 moments, and tag each with its loop type.
2️⃣ Give each moment 1 job. The commute is for awareness and repetition. The errand run is for “near you now” action. Game day is for showing up where fans already are. The wind-down is for being the brand that doesn’t add stress. Then match the format: a host read on the show they drive with, or a sponsored station for the mood.
3️⃣ Write for the moment you’re in. Borrow from the SiriusXM Media’s holiday guide: “Before your next stop” for reaching drive-thru crowds. “Your break from the scroll” for a late-night listen. If your script could still run anywhere/anytime, rewrite it until it couldn’t.
4️⃣ Sponsor, and then stick around. 1 in 3 SiriusXM Media podcast listeners trust brands more that sponsor their favorite shows repeatedly. The same percentage prefers ads that update with new stories throughout a sponsorship. Try picking fewer shows + staying longer, refreshing copy as you go. Extra bonus: this pays off in AEO. As more people ask AI tools which brands to trust, being inside the shows they love puts your name where those answers come from.
Okay, How Do I Prove This to my CFO?
Nice, brass tacks time. Here’s how to get budget signoff:
On top of that group listening loop + attribution note I mentioned earlier, remember: video can cost a fortune before a single frame airs. Sets, crews, shoots, reshoots. Audio skips most of that. Same trust and intimacy, very different cost. (Also, SiriusXM Media’s in-house studio and measurement reporting exist so you don’t get left hanging with vibes instead of hard numbers.)
Which brings us to PLANNING MEETING QUESTION #2️⃣: which partner measures lift, and which measures conversions? Lead your internal pitch with the cost difference, because “comparable trust for a fraction of the production cost” is what gets audio its own line item next quarter.
Homework Time
Let’s review: Underpriced attention (for now). Cheap to produce. Trusted by audiences that actively choose to be there, on repeat. And as of *checks watch* RIGHT NOW, YouTube in the same audio buy.
This is the situation this second, waiting for the right Marketers to go for it before the math changes. And it will change. It always does. Not to be dramatic about it, Marketing Bestie, but okay, to be a little dramatic about it.
Here’s a roadmap to get you started:
👉 Start here: See the full SiriusXM Media network, the new YouTube audio ads, and results like Kroger’s $10 in attributed return on ad spend across 43 campaigns.
🏈 Planning around football season? Grab the Sports Audio Playbook.
🎁 For Q4, grab The Advertiser’s Guide to the Holidays
🎙️ For podcast plans, nab The Podcast Trends Report
🧭 And if you want help targeting by mood or culture, don’t forget The Culture Trends Report.
Now, the only question left is whether you go first, or you’re the 1 explaining next year why you didn’t. You got this.
