Cumulus Media has become the first commercial broadcaster to license Xperi’s AutoStage Broadcaster Portal Premium, a connected-car audience intelligence platform designed to provide broadcasters with near-real-time insights into in-car listening behavior. The agreement makes Cumulus Media the launch partner for the platform, which uses aggregated listening data from connected vehicles to provide large-scale audience analytics across approximately 300 U.S. markets. Xperi says the service delivers near-census-level visibility into radio listening, offering an alternative source of audience intelligence alongside traditional survey-based measurement. Cumulus Media, which operates 393 radio stations in 84 markets, plans to deploy the platform across its station portfolio. The company says the data will help its programming and sales teams better understand listener behavior while providing advertisers with more detailed information about audience trends and market-level consumption. Cumulus Media has been Nielsen ratings since its contract expired at the end of 2025 and its ongoing lawsuit with the ratings company. Among the platform's features are next-day audience reporting, share-of-listening metrics, geographic listening patterns, audience flow, daypart rankings and heat maps that illustrate where listening is concentrated relative to advertiser locations. "This agreement with Cumulus marks a major step toward deterministic measurement in broadcast radio," Joe D'Angelo, Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy and Partnerships at Xperi, said in the announcement. He said the platform gives broadcasters access to large-scale, aggregated in-car listening data that can improve programming decisions, advertiser accountability and competitive positioning. “We're proud to be the first broadcaster to deploy AutoStage Broadcaster Portal Premium as part of our broader effort to bring new sources of audience insight to radio,” said Bob Walker, President of Operations, Cumulus Media. “The platform gives us access to a level of audience intelligence that hasn't previously been available, creating new opportunities for content creators, sales teams, and advertisers alike. The AutoStage