Digital ad spending in the US auto industry has steadily increased over the past few years, and this increase in spend is expected to continue.
According to eMarketer, the US auto industry is expected to see a 16.3% increase in digital ad spending in 2016, increasing from $7.30 billion in 2015 to $8.49 billion in 2016. This means the automotive industry now ranks second in the United States in terms of digital ad spending, behind only the retail industry (US Auto Industry Ahead of the Pack). Much of this increase in digital spend is happening at the local level, coming right from dealerships rather than the OEM.
A Changing Landscape
As automotive dealer networks and owners increase their interest and spend in the digital space, the need to effectively measure the true ROI of digital marketing campaigns has significantly increased. The days of simply using intermediate metrics, such as leads and digital shopping actions, to measure the effectiveness of a campaign are coming to an end. Dealers want their digital marketing efforts to move metal on their lot. They are looking to their agencies and partners to prove that with solid analytics that connect the actions users are taking online to the actions they are taking offline, such as the actual purchase of a vehicle. This need has caused analysts, strategists and other digital marketers to look for ways to make that connection.
Some of the Key Players
Several companies, such as Epsilon, Nielsen, comScore and BlueKai have introduced products to help with this need in various different industries. However, none have seen the level of success in the auto industry that Oracle Data Cloud (formerly Datalogix) has seen. With an exclusive partnership with Polk and its vast data-set of vehicle owners, Oracle Data Cloud is able to help OEMs, agencies, and publishers in the auto industry directly tie delivered impressions in the digital space to vehicle sales on car lots. This is allowing digital marketers and data analysts to measure success based on actual sales lifts, as well as other metrics such as cost per vehicle sold. OEMs and dealers have never been closer to measuring true ROI in the digital space than they are now. This shift in measuring digital ad effectiveness is changing the way data analysts in the auto industry report campaign success, and is drastically changing the conversations that marketing service providers are having with their clients.
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Automotive Digital Marketing