The information superhighway: what online road to take

• Autos hearts display and here’s why
• Four display advertising tips from MediaVest to help you harness the power of display advertising when promoting regional dealerships
• The many functions of a car brand’s website
• Catriona Campbell from Foviance - experts in Usability - offer there pointers to a great automotive website
• Why automotive marketers should consider search
• MediaVest’s PPC and natural search strategy tips when promoting regional dealerships
• Steve Bowler, marketing communications manager for Land Rover
• How advertisers are benefiting from the strong automotive classifieds market
• Why behavioural targeting is a godsend for autos advertisers
• Why is in-game advertising good for car brands? From Microsoft Advertising
• Microsoft Advertising show that "car researchers are video junkies"

Autos hearts display and here’s why:

1. Rich media is not only being used as a direct response tool (popular in the early days of the medium) but to impress audiences and actually drive brand awareness.

2. The interactive opportunities of display allow car brands to make their ads perform every function that a potential car-buyer may need, without them even having to leave the site they’re on. The MPU for Honda shown here for example.

3. Display formats are highly measureable and provide far more meaningful metrics than a simple click-through rate.

4. Display offers an immersive brand experience, and more interaction means better Return on Investment (ROI) analysis. Furthermore, all this can also be fully integrated with the back-end of the client’s site.

Four display advertising tips from MediaVest to help you harness the power of display advertising when promoting regional dealerships:

1. The starting point for display advertising activity is to analyse offline elements of the media schedule, to identify cross channel opportunities (Auto Trader regional press sites etc).

2. Consider audience duplication, message frequency and consistent communication in each region. Regional networks must be leveraged for maximum media value.

3. All regional targeting solutions should be utilised, including - but not limited to - contextual, behavioural, regional (based on both IP Address and on Registered User information) and keyword.

4. Creative templates should be created to facilitate the dealerships amending their own messaging focusing on specific promotions relevant to them and this process can be automated. Car model, price, promotion and dealer name will all be included within the variables that the dealerships control.

The many functions of a car brand’s website. They should:

• Be one of the first ports of call for information about models and general customer service.

• Allow the option to book test drives, tour the car and learn about its capabilities.

• Provide an overall experience that matches the brand values and communications strategy.

• Boast the kind of creative flair often synonymous with traditional TV advertising – such as the now famous Mercedes A-S site from Agency Republic for example, and the GT Rhythm of Lines site for Audi.

• Strike the right balance between provoking an emotional response from your audience in terms of the site experience, thus encouraging a relationship with your consumer, and actually delivering what they need.

Catriona Campbell from Foviance – experts in Usability - offer there pointers to a great automotive website:

• Try to provide lots of visual explanations of features rather than relying on text, as people often don’t understand the technical language. For example most people won’t understand what a rear acoustic parking system is but would have a better idea if they saw it in action or even a diagram of how it works.

• Also trying equating details to things people will easily understand. For example, instead of just saying the boot is 1 cubic metre, it’s better to also add that it can hold three medium sized suitcases and the Taj Mahal.

• Different types of users will want different levels of information and functionality. I think this would really vary across brands but with Audi I found they were clear levels of engagement; from people who just want to find out the price, to the techies who wanted to do everything online. Therefore I think the tip here is that all of the different user profiles should be catered for.

• A recent Forrester report stated that people are more likely to purchase a car following certain life-changing events (moving to a different city or having a baby) and less likely during others (getting married). They were also more likely to want to buy different additional extras.

• The transition between the showroom and the site is currently non-existent and needs to be improved. Think of the opportunities if the sales guy at the dealership knew beforehand what the person had being looking at online?

• Finally, microsites are usually completely separated from the main site and lack sufficient information. The brands use them as a branding exercise which is at odds with how users want to use them.

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Why automotive marketers should consider search:

Search engines help me...

• 7 in 10 UK auto buyers use a search engine to locate automotive websites. (Google Gearshift auto research, June 2007)

• 50% of UK in-market consumers stated that they used search engines to help them discover new brands and models. (Google Gearshift auto research, June 2007)

• 2 in 5 visits to dealerships comes from a search engine. (Hitwise, March 2008)

• Search engines lead, along with ‘driving past a dealer’, as the most popular method to locate a dealer (23%) over using a dealer’s website (19%), a manufacturer’s website (17%), or asking friends and family (13%). (Google Gearshift auto research, June 2007)

MediaVest’s PPC and natural search strategy tips when promoting regional dealerships:

• PPC Search is the most effective direct response channel through which to communicate to potential customers at the price/purchase stage of the buying cycle and embracing a dual strategy can assist in catering for national and regional searchers.

• Local Business Ads, supported by Google Maps, must be utilised appropriately and in support of this, each dealership must have a bespoke keyword universe that reflects their product database, ideally, totally flexible and malleable in real time.

• Your agency could provide the dealerships with centrally approved creative templates that would facilitate the dealerships to amend the message in real time to reflecting the latest promotions. Both of these processes could be automated.

• Along with PPC, SEO is a must and the dealership and manufacturer website structure and set up should be utilised in order to promote and dominate Google natural search engine results.

• A link strategy can maximise the portfolio of dealership sites and will help increase the authority of each site and the main hub, to facilitate natural ranking dominance on all brand related used car searches.

• An ‘off site’ optimisation strategy would drive up the ranking of all indexed pages.

• Reputation management and online PR using techniques including, but not limited to, link baiting, forum submissions and universal search will enable you to dominate the search engine listings is also an area to consider.

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Steve Bowler, marketing communications manager for Land Rover:

• Previously, online was recognised as important yet ancillary to TV, press and outdoor. Now though, we take search very seriously, working with the search engines to deal with issues like trademarking.” (Quoted in New Media Age, early 2008)

How advertisers are benefiting from the strong automotive classifieds market:

• Classifieds is the largest sub-segment of the automotive sector (see graph) – gaining the largest weekly market share of UK internet traffic to automotive sites. They accounted for 36% of all traffic to the sector in March 2008. (Hitwise, April 2008)

• Of these auto classified sites, eBay Motors is the second most visited behind Auto Trader UK and commands a 10.11% market share. (Hitwise, March 2008)

• To put its popularity in perspective, at the time of the millionth car being sold on eBay Motors in March 2007 it could boast an average of 3.5 million unique users every month looking at 40,000 vehicles listed at any one time.

• Hitwise figures from March 2008 report how automotive recreation websites – car focused leisure sites of which Pistonheads.com and TopGear.com account for a quarter of all visits - are sending an increasing amount of traffic to retailers. One in 20 visits to an automotive classifieds site now comes from the autos recreation sector.

Why behavioural targeting is a godsend for autos advertisers:

• Car manufacturers are able to monitor anonymous online behaviour to discover who is likely to be on the market for a new (or used) vehicle.

• According to Jupiter Research in 2006: “Advertisers of products with long purchase cycles (e.g. automotive) will more likely use behavioural targeting than will their counterparts in other vertical sectors (29% vs. 12%).”

• People who visit car sites for example, will be identified as ‘in market’ and shown car ads accordingly. Similarly, customers who have visited a car site can be retargeted by that brand elsewhere. This means that your budget can decrease whilst your ROI improves dramatically.

Why is in-game advertising good for car brands? From Microsoft Advertising:

• Male gamers aged 18-34 years have a larger amount of product knowledge than the general population and are very likely to talk to others about their product opinions.

• Male 18-34 gamers expect advertising to be entertaining far more than the general population.

• This segment is significantly more likely than Male 18-34 non-gamers to keep up with auto technology and to buy new cars that are eye-catching with the latest features.

• Male gamers are 29% more likely than non-gamers to normally buy new cars.

• Gamers are proven to form popular opinions about new cars.

• 55% of those who saw the in-game adverts for the Ford ST (see image below) said it left them with a more positive opinion of Ford.

Source: Advertising research conducted by Continental Research on behalf of Massive/Microsoft Advertising, 2007-2008; TGI Europa Feb 2008: Gamers defined as console gamers that have that have also bought a new console or games software in the past 12 months, or PC gamers.; Base: all European adults aged 15+

Microsoft Advertising show that “car researchers are video junkies”:

• Across MSN, car researchers consume video content twice as much as an average internet user.

• Downloading music and film are fundamental to their internet usage.

• Car researchers are 96% more likely to share video content by peer-to-peer networks than the average internet user.

• They are 66% more likely to upload videos created to the web than the average internet user.

• Are 64% more likely to download films from the web than the average internet user.

• They are less likely to visit social networking sites.

(MSN Portal Profiler study 2008 with Holden Permain)

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