Uncovering in-car listening habits for the BBC

In-car audio was changing quickly, and the BBC needed a clearer picture of how people actually behaved on the road. The objective was to uncover the different needs driving that behaviour and to identify where there was room for new thinking in audio content and experience, at a moment when listener attention and expectations were shifting.

We combined desk research with digital ethnography and in-car camera studies, observing both actions and immediate reactions as people navigated different journeys and listening experiences. This let us capture listening behaviour as it happened, rather than relying on how people remembered or described it afterwards. Filming inside the car gave us a view of small, telling moments that a survey or interview alone would have missed entirely.

We identified a set of distinct listener need states and showed how listening habits shift depending on context, mindset and the purpose of the journey. A commute called for something different to a long weekend drive, and mood mattered as much as destination. Together, this gave the BBC a fuller understanding of in-car listening and a clear steer on where the opportunities for future audio content and experience development lay.

The in-car film footage captured through the research proved more valuable than expected, and the BBC commissioned further work once its significance became clear. The findings have since been shared with teams across the BBC well beyond those originally involved in the project, extending the value of the research far past its original brief.