It’s no secret the world has changed in terms of how consumers are researching and buying cars today versus just a few years ago. Multiple studies have shown that the average consumer visits two or less dealerships on average before buying their next car as opposed to five dealerships just five years ago. Today’s consumer knows exactly what they want and – due to the research they are doing ahead of time – often know the majority of the specs of the vehicle they’re interested in purchasing before they set foot in a dealership.
So if consumers are visiting fewer and fewer showrooms before purchasing a car, how do you leverage the power of digital to get the right consumers to your showroom as opposed to your competition? The answer: you bring the showroom to the consumer using the power of digital video marketing combined with predictively-modeled data targeting.
The opportunities to reach in-market auto intenders with targeted digital video ads are massive and growing. There are roughly two billion video views daily1 across the open Real Time Bidding exchange markets in the United States. Approximately 365 million of those are viewed by in-market auto-intenders1. That’s a staggering number, but it’s dwarfed by the number of video views happening on Facebook daily.
People spend more than 100 million hours2 watching video on Facebook everyday, accounting for nearly 8 billion daily2 video views. The opportunity out-scales the advertising budgets, so how do you find those proverbial needles of actual intenders in the haystack of video options? Let your existing site traffic data dictate the audience target by utilizing predictive modeling technology.
Predictive modeling applies algorithmic learning to third party data to find the users that matter most based on a site’s current user traffic. This can be done across the open exchanges or private marketplaces by several DSP’s, and it can also be done in Facebook based on its treasure trove of user data.
On Facebook, it’s called a “look-a-like” audience based on a custom website audience. Facebook identifies people who have been to certain pages on your site and then allows you to advertise to other Facebook users who have similar data profiles, either the top 1% or 5% based on your desire for similarity (1%) or reach (5%).
The real power in this is that you can take the audience of people who have been looking at each and every new model vehicle you carry and then promote your dealership to new consumers who have the same data profiles as those VDP pages. For instance, if you’re a VW dealer, you can take the model of a consumer who is interested in a new Passat and then conquest new potential Passat users with a video of a sales person describing some unique features of the Passat, or perhaps repurpose a TV spot you already have talking about the current specials running for new Passats.
It takes a little bit of time to gather the data and a little strategy to decide what to show these in-market prospects, but when done right you’re able to take your dealership to the consumer by utilizing the power of digital video marketing combined with predictive data modeling.
To learn more about digital video marketing, join Brian Kroll of AdTaxi at Digital Dealer 21 for their session titled Video: The New Showroom – How Your Dealership Can Sell More Cars by Harnessing the Power of Targeted Video Marketing Across YouTube and Other Social/Programmatic Sources. The session will take place on Tuesday, August 9th from 8:30am–9:20am in Room 115.
Sources:
1. As forecasted by Adtaxi’s Platform for US inventory across all exchanges. Households likely to purchase a vehicle in next 6 months per Polk Automotive Data, as targeted by datalogix and forecasted by Adtaxi.↩
2. Facebook, July 2016↩
3 Digiday, May 2016