Why It Matters: DTS AutoStage is not just delivering radio more data – it’s unlocking a deeper understanding of how audiences listen in the car.
Through the AutoStage portal, stations gain access to station-level listening including time spent, share, tuning occasions, cume, geography, and hourly usage. This level of visibility offers a more complete look at in-car listening.
And when you step back from the dashboard, a new pattern begins to take shape. The stations finding success in the AutoStage environment are consistently winning on three fronts:
Top of Mind Awareness
In a dashboard filled with choices, availability alone isn’t enough. If a listener has to think too hard about what to listen to, you are at-risk of losing the occasion. The stations that win are the ones that come to mind first with heavy listeners – the ones with the most listening occasions to give.
Multiple Tune-Ins Per Day – Daily Cume
One of the biggest implications of AutoStage’s tuning occasions and cume data is that stations can clearly see the impact of repeat usage. Winning is not just about capturing one long listening span – it is about creating multiple occasions across the day: the drive to work, the lunch run, the school pickup, the trip to practice, the ride home.
Winning the Seatbelt Test
This may be the most important insight of all. Top of Mind Awareness is about memory. Daily Cume is about repeat behavior. But the Seatbelt Test is about the moment where those two things collide in real life. When the listener gets in the car, buckles up and reaches for audio, do they pick you first? That is the ultimate test.
In our August End Result, we described this test as getting heavy listeners to pick you “First & Most” each time they have an occasion to give. AutoStage offers broadcasters a new way to see the outcome on a daily basis.
This visibility is giving us new ways to strategically deploy station marketing. The job is not simply for the station to be known or even to generate a single tune-in. It is to be the brand that wins the occasion at the Moment of Truth over and over again.
The formula looks like this: Top of Mind Awareness gets you into consideration. Daily Cume proves you are generating repeat occasions. Winning the Seatbelt Test means you are converting both into a habitual first choice.
And importantly, these are not just AutoStage fundamentals. They are audience fundamentals.
The same dynamics that help stations win in-car listening also drive success with Nielsen. It’s a race without a finish line, which is why leading stations across PPM and diary markets work with DMR/Interactive to win more listening occasions and turn them into revenue.
Go deeper: Watch the new AutoStage session from CRS 2026.
On behalf of Catherine Jung, Tony Bannon, Jen Clayborn, Mike Landis, and everyone at DMR/Interactive, thank you for driving radio forward.
Onward, Andrew Curran |c President and CEO | DMR/Interactive
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