Formula 1 and Consumable today launched the F1 Audio Network, an advertising product that packages the sport's fanbase as an audio audience and sells it to brands through Consumable's mobile app and audio platform. The announcement, issued from New York and distributed through Business Wire at 9:06 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 23, 2026, describes the network as "an audio extension of Formula 1 media" and says it is available to brands and agencies immediately.

In Short

Formula 1 has teamed up with an audio advertising company called Consumable so that brands can play sound-on ads, branded with F1's look and feel, to racing fans while they use mobile apps during the week. It matters because F1 has been signing commercial deals at a fast pace as its US audience grows, and this adds audio to the list of places brands can buy around the sport. What changes is that advertisers can now buy F1-linked audio campaigns directly from Consumable, although the companies have not said which apps carry the ads, what they cost or how F1 fans are identified.

What the two companies announced

The core of the announcement is short. According to Consumable and Formula 1, the F1 Audio Network "gives brands a new way to reach racing's growing fanbase through premium, sound-on ad experiences across mobile apps and an extended audio ecosystem." Consumable built the network and operates it. Formula 1 lends the brand, the visual identity and, by implication, its standing as a rights holder.

The network runs on Consumable's existing infrastructure rather than on a new distribution system. According to the announcement, that platform "reaches more than 220 million Comscore-verified users each month in the U.S., more than 830 million globally, and delivers more than 30 billion monthly audio impressions." Every placement, the companies say, is sound-on and brand-safe, "with near-zero invalid traffic across the Consumable ecosystem."

Three components carry the product:

  • Visual Audio, Consumable's sound-on, full-screen audio ad format for mobile devices, which according to the companies "brings the energy and visual identity of Formula 1 into an immersive mobile experience."
  • PODiQ, which Consumable describes as its "identity and intelligence technology built on listener signals," used here "to make F1 audiences addressable and actionable for brands."
  • The company's audio infrastructure, which according to Consumable's corporate description "connects premium supply with advertiser demand across an expanded audio ecosystem of mobile apps."

Brands and agencies that want to plan a campaign are directed to Consumable's sales team. Formula 1 is not named as a sales channel.

The spokespeople

Two executives are quoted. Mark Levin, chief executive of Consumable, framed the product around the weekly gap between races.

"Formula 1 fandom doesn't stop when the race ends," Levin said. "With the F1 Audio Network, we're taking the passion and attention for Formula 1 and making it addressable, measurable, and available at scale. For brands, this opens up an entirely new way to participate in F1 fandom and engage listeners where they are."

On the Formula 1 side, the quote came from Tom Trinick, Global Head of Digital Advertising Sales & Content Partnerships. "Formula 1 is always looking for new ways to deepen the experience for our fans and create more value for our commercial partners. The F1 Audio Network connects brands with our fanbase during lean-in everyday moments and creates new ways to engage off the track," Trinick said.

Trinick's title is worth noting. It combines advertising sales with content partnerships, which suggests the network sits inside F1's media sales operation rather than its sponsorship business. The distinction matters for brands: an official F1 sponsorship typically comes with category rights and trackside presence, while a media product of this kind sells impressions.

What the numbers describe, and what they do not

The figures in the announcement are Consumable's platform figures. None of them is a measure of how many Formula 1 fans the network reaches.

The 220 million US monthly users is described as "Comscore-verified," but the announcement does not say which Comscore product or metric produced the figure, nor which month it refers to. In the boilerplate section of the same release, Consumable describes the same audience as "220M+ Comscore-verified listeners across the US," switching from users to listeners. The two words are used interchangeably in the text.

The global figure of more than 830 million could be confused with Formula 1's own audience count. In March 2026, Formula 1 cited a global audience of 827 million fans when it extended its partnership with Salesforce. The two numbers are close but unrelated: one is the number of people Consumable says its platform reaches worldwide, the other is F1's estimate of its fanbase. The announcement does not claim that the network reaches all, or any specific share, of F1's fans.

The claim of "near-zero invalid traffic" carries no figure, no measurement vendor and no time period. Invalid traffic covers automated and non-human activity that inflates impression counts, and buyers usually expect a named third-party verification partner behind such a claim. The release names none.

Missing commercial details

Several details that a media buyer would look for are absent from the announcement:

  • Which mobile apps or publishers carry the F1 Audio Network inventory.
  • Whether any inventory sits inside Formula 1's own properties, such as its app or the F1 TV service, or whether the network runs entirely across third-party apps in Consumable's ecosystem.
  • How PODiQ identifies a listener as a Formula 1 fan, and what "listener signals" include.
  • Pricing, minimum spend or buying model.
  • The length of the agreement between Formula 1 and Consumable, and any financial terms.
  • Launch advertisers.
  • Which countries are available. The announcement emphasises the US, where it says F1 is "building significant momentum," but the network is described as reaching F1's "premier global fanbase."

Measurement is mentioned twice. Levin says the network makes F1 attention "measurable," and the announcement says Consumable's infrastructure "provides the scale, delivery, and measurement required to turn that audience into a durable advertising channel." Neither statement names a metric, a methodology or an outside measurement partner.

How PODiQ and Visual Audio have been described before

Consumable has been building toward this kind of packaging for some time. In a study presented at the IAB Podcast Upfront in New York on September 16, 2026, Consumable and Edison Research at SSRS reported that a home security brand gained 29 points of unaided awareness among 2,158 US adults exposed to one of three ad versions: audio only, audio with an image, or audio with video. Unaided awareness rose from 39% before exposure to 68% after. That study called PODiQ Consumable's "identity and intelligence layer for podcast audiences," and the company had described it in October 2024 as a people-based identity product built on probabilistic identity graphs.

The study had clear limits. Its results were pooled across the three formats, so it could not show whether sound or visuals drove the gain, and it reported no control group or significance testing.

In the F1 announcement, PODiQ's scope appears broader. It is described as built on "listener signals" and is applied to an audience defined by sports fandom rather than podcast listening. An identity graph links signals such as device identifiers and behaviour to a person or household, and probabilistic graphs make those links through statistical inference rather than through logged-in data. Whether PODiQ's F1 segments are built from podcast and audio consumption, from app usage, or from some other source is not explained.

Visual Audio, meanwhile, has moved from a phrase in Consumable's pitch material to a named product. The September deck used the term when describing how PODiQ engages people across mobile apps. Today's release names it as "Consumable's sound-on, full-screen audio format," and the company's boilerplate calls it "highly-immersive."

Formula 1's commercial push

Formula 1 has added commercial partnerships at a steady pace since its US audience began to grow. Apple secured exclusive US broadcast rights to Formula 1 in October 2025, in a five-year deal that started with the 2026 season and made F1 TV Premium available in the US only through Apple TV subscriptions. At the time, Formula 1 reported 52 million US fans in 2024.

The sport's partnerships have expanded into other formats too. On February 26, 2026, Disney and Formula 1 turned the "Fuel the Magic" collaboration into a full-season program with a WEBTOON comic series, licensed merchandise and trackside activations. In August, Disney added Pixar's Cars to the deal and extended it through the 2028 season. In March, Salesforce extended its partnership with F1 and deployed an AI agent for fan support, reporting that 80% of routine support queries were resolved within four hours.

The F1 Audio Network differs from those arrangements. Disney and Salesforce are brands paying to associate with Formula 1. Consumable is a supplier building an inventory product that other brands buy. In that sense, the network looks more like a media rights extension than a sponsorship, with F1's identity applied to ad placements that F1 itself does not run.

Audio advertising context

The timing places F1 in a market where audio inventory is plentiful but attention is contested. Comscore data published by PPC Land on October 21 showed the top 20 US audio properties logged 274 billion minutes in July 2026, down from 310 billion in July 2025, a fall of about 36 billion minutes. In the same research, 58% of 3,242 surveyed US audio listeners said they preferred free audio with ads over paying, while 53% of those who recalled mid-content ads called them disruptive.

Industry forecasts going into 2026 pointed to the same pressures the F1 network appears designed to address. Triton Digital's chief revenue officer said in December 2025 that programmatic audio was shifting toward curation, identity and video, noting that audio accounted for 31% of consumers' media time but received 9% of advertising budgets. Curated audience packages wrapped around a recognisable brand are one response to that gap: they give buyers a named audience instead of a list of stations or shows.

The F1 Audio Network follows that pattern. It does not create new F1 audio content, such as commentary or podcasts, according to the announcement. Instead, it labels an audience segment with the Formula 1 brand, attaches F1's visual identity to a full-screen mobile format and sells the result through an existing audio supply chain.

Why sound-on matters to buyers

The repeated stress on "sound-on" placements addresses a question buyers put to any mobile format: whether the ad was actually heard. Consumable's position is that every placement on the network plays with sound, paired with a visual component. The announcement does not state completion rates, listen-through rates or any comparison with muted inventory, so the advantage remains a claim rather than a measured result.

Brand safety is the other selling point. The release says every placement is brand-safe, a standard advertisers associate with brand safety controls such as category exclusions and content verification. As with the invalid traffic claim, no verification partner or standard is named.

Why this matters for marketers

For advertisers, the F1 Audio Network adds a new way to buy around one of the most commercially active properties in sport without signing a sponsorship. In the US, race broadcasts have sat inside Apple's service since the start of the 2026 season, and official partnerships such as Disney's and Salesforce's involve rights deals. A Formula 1-branded audio package is a different route, sold through an ad tech company's inventory rather than through a rights agreement.

The open question is what defines an F1 fan inside the network. The announcement relies on PODiQ to make "F1 audiences addressable," but does not say how those audiences are assembled or validated. Segment definitions, the list of apps involved and third-party verification of the delivery and traffic claims are not in the public material released today.

For publishers and audio platforms, the deal shows a rights holder licensing its brand to an ad tech intermediary that sells across third-party supply. If the model works for Formula 1, other sports properties with large digital audiences and limited owned audio inventory could follow the same route. Whether the label "official audio extension of Formula 1" commands a premium over standard audio inventory, and by how much, has not been disclosed.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Formula 1 and Consumable, an audio advertising technology company. Mark Levin, Consumable's chief executive, and Tom Trinick, Formula 1's Global Head of Digital Advertising Sales & Content Partnerships, are quoted.

What: The F1 Audio Network, an advertising product that uses Consumable's Visual Audio full-screen format and PODiQ identity technology to sell sound-on audio ads aimed at Formula 1 fans across mobile apps and Consumable's audio ecosystem. Consumable says its platform reaches more than 220 million Comscore-verified users a month in the US and more than 830 million globally, with more than 30 billion monthly audio impressions.

When: Announced today, October 23, 2026, and available to brands and agencies immediately.

Where: Announced from New York. The announcement stresses the US market and describes F1's fanbase as global; no country list is given.

Why: Formula 1 is extending its media business into audio advertising as its US audience grows, and Consumable gains a branded audience package for its inventory. Pricing, the participating apps, the method for identifying F1 fans and verification for the invalid traffic claim were not disclosed.