Overall, revenue was up 8% to $1.4 billion, which is another quarterly record for the company. More impressively, while most radio companies are still seeing flat to very modest revenue gains, SirisXM’s advertising revenue was up 21% to more than $41 million for the quarter, compared to $34.2 million in 2016. To date, SiriusXM has sold $117.6 million in ad revenue, compared to $99.3 million a year ago. CEO Jim Meyer said he couldn’t be more pleased with where the company is with ad sales.
Despite what Meyer called a challenging environment in the auto sales world, the company has added over a million net new self-paying subscribers so far this year. In the third quarter, 311,000 net new self-pay subscribers were added and the company is on track to hit 1.4 million in 2017. SiriusXM now has 27 million self-paying subscribers and more than 32 million paid subscribers overall.
There are now approximately 104 million vehicles equipped with SiriusXM radios (obviously not all of them are being used). SiriusXM has set a goal of 185 million by 2025.
Wait a minute, when I signed up they told me one of the selling points was being “commercial free”?