The influence of in-car media: easily underestimated? Maybe, but research suggests it has only begun to grow

By Bill Hayward

Ford steering wheel and center console showing a Sony touchscreen display with Amazon Alexa.
Photo: Ford Media Center.

When did in-car media first become a thing?

The answer depends in part on how you choose to define your terms. For instance, one could make the case that, even before the earliest car radios were introduced in the 1930s, the first in-car media moment probably occurred the when someone became the first passenger to read a newspaper article out loud to a driver.

Or, what about billboards?

According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, billboards were already well established by the time cars came along, starting with circus posters in 1835. But that’s precisely why it might make sense to point to billboards as the source of the earliest in-car media experiences.

No matter where you draw the line, however, it doesn’t take a very extensive thought exercise to realize that the presence of cars in our lives, especially here in the U.S., has been significant in shaping our media consumption habits, in terms of both content and the media devices and formats we use.

Let’s take a look at a few examples.

The survival—and influence—of AM radio.

It’s easy to imagine how AM radio could have died out long ago once the electronics industry began to fully harness the superior audio capabilities of the FM band. Yet AM radio lives on, especially as the dominant mode of transmission for over-the-air news/talk programming.

Why? In a word, cars. According to Mediapost, for example, 90 percent of commuters listen to AM/FM radio as they drive to and from work. And Edison Research reports that more than half of people who listen to radio do so only in their cars.

With the news/talk being, according to News Generation, second only to country in radio format popularity, and with spoken-word formats dominating the AM dial, the picture is clear. In-car listening is a key reason why AM radio continues to survive, despite the limitations in sound quality and reception inherent with the frequency band.

Issues of social influence inevitably ride along. Motorists turn to talk radio as a mentally stimulating format that helps keep the mind occupied and alert during long drives. But the talk radio format tends strongly toward a certain slant. According to the Center for American Progress, over 90 percent of politically-oriented talk radio programming comes from a conservative perspective.

With the duration of the average commute approaching 30 minutes each way, that’s an hour of “captive time” per weekday for each listener who tunes into talk programming in the car. Over the course of years and decades, that’s a lot of opportunity for influence. The entire dynamic suggests that in-vehicle media consumption could be a heavy factor in shaping political thinking.

The rise of streaming audio and podcasts.

While Nielsen reports that over-the-air radio still holds the largest share of in-car listening, the car is also the setting of a significant portion of all streaming audio consumption. According to Triton Digital and Edison Research, as cited by Statista, 44 percent of mobile phone users have used their phones to listen to online radio in a car.

Meanwhile, according to Podcast Insights, the percentage of Americans who listen to podcasts has reached 44 percent. And 22 percent of podcast listening takes place in the car. That’s especially significant for a medium gaining momentum so fast. From 2013 to 2018, the growth rate of podcast listenership accelerated rapidly, increasing by nearly 44 percent over the five-year period, Triton Digital and Edison Research found.

One key indicator of how influential the medium is becoming is the extent to which advertisers are “voting with their wallets” for podcasting. Last November, for example, the International Advertising Bureau and PwC reported that advertising revenue for podcasts rose 50 percent during the first half of 2018 compared to the first half of 2016.

Podcasting is not only an increasingly influential medium, but it’s also one that’s ideally suited to the in-car setting. So taking in a podcast in the car is likely to become an increasingly mainstream habit.

The evolution of mobile phones.

Now, let’s take a look at those mobile devices consumers are using to stream podcasts and other audio in their cars. In its earliest days on the consumer market, the primary job of a mobile phone was to be a car phone.

Early versions of cell towers that we rely on today for our mobile communications first appeared in the 1940s and 1950s to support telephones installed in commercial vehicles. So the evolution of the smartphone that you may be holding in your hand right now as you read this article was originally driven by in car media usage.

Mobile phones were in cars long before they were in our shirt pockets, and their integration with the automobile continues to increase. Today, automakers are touting mobile phone connectivity as an important selling point for new vehicles as they market to Millennials and especially Generation Z.

One Ford official last year went so far as to say that the Generation Z cohort views their cars as an extension of their phones. And, make no mistake: among the reasons why tech companies like Google are so interested in autonomous vehicles is the potential of the driverless car as a marketing platform. In theory, at least, passive riders freed up from the cognitive load of driving will have more available “attention space” to target with marketing messages. 

The bottom line: the media-mobility link is only going to strengthen as technology continues to evolve

Here’s one point that we shouldn’t overlook: the concept of the car as a lucrative media platform is far from lost on promoters of driverless and autonomous mobility models. Deloitte, for example, projects that:

By 2030, vehicle-based passengers can be expected to consume more than 52 billion hours of media content annually, and passengers on public transportation could consume roughly 23 billion hours of additional media content…. That’s more than double today’s estimated vehicle-based consumption….

Sounds like a brave, new, media-saturated mobility world, doesn’t it?

For sure, this vision of a “possible future” must look like quite the glittering prize to content creators seeking expanded audience penetration, and to the advertisers who monetize their content. But note that Deloitte, in the passage above, used the phrase “vehicle-based passengers” and gave nary a mention to drivers.

So just how “glittering” is the prize to those who value the experience of being behind the wheel?

Well, that’s quite another question.

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