SiriusXM spent the last two years clawing at AM/FM’s share of in-car listening. Now, the satellite broadcaster says it is going after something even more vital: the local advertising dollars that it says make up a majority percentage of traditional radio’s revenue.
On the company’s 2026 Q2 earnings call, SiriusXM Chief Advertising Revenue Officer Scott Walker described local and mid-market advertising as the next frontier for SiriusXM’s ad business, one it intends to actively staff up for rather than simply grow into.
Walker said, “The opportunity here to grow overall share of market… is real. And we have an opportunity not just to retain and expand our existing relationships with brand advertisers, but open up to new categories. We talked about the younger demo. We talked about the multicultural opportunity, but also to go down market to mid-market SMBs, et cetera, that allow us to tap that local opportunity, which is a large, if not majority, percentage of the overall spend in traditional radio today. So we will hire to capture that market opportunity and expand our footprint in terms of coverage.”
That local press follows directly after SiriusXM’s Audacy partnership, which added hometown sports and news stations across dozens of markets to the platform earlier this summer.
The ad-strategy reveal came on a day SiriusXM also disclosed the departure of Chief Operating Officer Wayne Thorsen.
Thorsen joined SiriusXM in December 2024, stepping into a newly created COO role overseeing product and technology functions, along with commercial activities including automotive and streaming distribution, subscriber acquisition marketing, and corporate strategy. In an SEC filing, the company stated there were no disagreements between itself and Thorsen. A successor has not been named at this time.
The company also posted second-quarter results that beat revenue expectations and improved subscriber retention to a record level. Total revenue for the quarter climbed to $2.16 billion, up 1% from $2.14 billion a year earlier. Net income rose to $239 million, an improvement of nearly 17% over the $205 million reported in the same period last year. SiriusXM’s core satellite radio business ended the quarter with approximately 33 million total subscribers, with self-pay subscribers growing by about 22,000, a 90,000-subscriber improvement over the prior-year period, and self-pay monthly churn improving to approximately 1.4%, the lowest level in company history. Average Revenue Per User rose 1% to $15.32.
The Pandora and Off-Platform segment posted revenue of $543 million, up 4% year-over-year, with off-platform advertising revenue specifically rising 5% to $413 million. Pandora’s monthly active users declined to 39.8 million from 42.7 million a year earlier.
Citing the quarter’s momentum, SiriusXM raised its full-year 2026 guidance across all three of its key financial targets, including total revenue to approximately $8.525 billion.
PPM Nielsen told radio personalities to quit being personalities and to quit being interesting and to get out of the way of the Music. That’s a big mistake. Radio needs personalities as far as Sirius going after local dollars have at it. You’ll find Facebook was already there and that Agency and National business has dwindled away.
So… Sirius wants to go after local ad revenues.
And Audacy is giving Sirius local stations and local programming. Is that Audacy “consorting” with the “enemy” or Audacy being innovative? And is Sirius really the “enemy” or are some radio groups just alienating their listeners, with commercial breaks that are just intolerably long? (and in effect, their own “worst enemy”)
Curious what the community thinks…