The Great Photos, White Space, and 2 Other Ways to Keep Your Ads from Sucking.

There really is just one way to mass broadcast your vehicles to potential buyers. Luckily it’s also very effective. Yes, I’m talking about inventory advertising.

You can argue that word of mouth or some other methods are more efficient (when measured by cost per lead), but you simply can’t beat the volume of leads that inventory advertising brings. Honestly, that’s why it’s still around - Transitioning from the inventory ads that were prevalent in the local papers to the state-of-the-art behavioural-based programmatic digital ads that hover in cyberspace.

All things being equal, it stands to reason that the more effective your inventory ads are, the more likely they’ll attract the right buyers and turn over cars on the lot.

And therein lies the problem - as with many things in life, not all inventory ads are created equal, and the "less equal" ones perform very poorly at attracting auto buyers.

Previously, we chatted about how to create a compelling and competitive message to differentiate your dealership, but those words or phrases don’t magically arrange themselves into beautiful ads ready to attract prospective car buyers, they’re just words.

Now, I’m a data guy, a marketing guy, a sales guy, and most definitely a car guy, I even fancy myself to have a little design skill, but those skills pale in comparison to our own super design juggernaut!

I’ve interviewed our own Creative & Co-op Advertising Manager, Danielle Borisoff, about what makes an ad attractive to a car buyer, and as a result, effective.We also talked about what not to do… like the age old giant Starburst!!

Here’s what she said:

Ian Cruickshank (IC): So Danielle, throughout your career you have created thousands of  ads and designed the creative behind all of our customers’ ad templates. What is the single biggest piece of advice that you would give regarding inventory ad creative?

Danielle Borisoff (DB): I believe the phrase “The car is the star” sums it up very nicely. It’s important to remember that people choose cars before they choose dealerships, so advertisers need to be aware and play on that fact. By making the car the focus of the ad, you can better attract and pique the interest of the buyer thus making the ad more effective.

IC: I like that, “The car is the star”, so what are some ways to make that happen?

DB: The easiest way is to use real photos and not stock photography. This applies to both new and used cars. Car buyers now are so inundated with information that they gloss over stock photos. Even if the stock photo is of the same car and same color, people won’t trust the stock photo. Incidently Doug Demuro - a columnist for Jalopnik.com wrote a great piece specifically about the annoyance of stock photography (Attention Dealers: For God’s Sake, Take Pictures Of Your Inventory).

IC: Any tips on how to take the right photos?

DB: The quality of photography of the car is vitally important. To resonate with the buyer, you need to capture what the buyer wants to see. Almost all buyers want to see the car as if they are about to pick it up for delivery. This means a clean front quarter shot and without any distractions such as a busy background or dealership brand graphics placed over the frame of the image.

IC: Why are dealership graphics on the image not recommended?

DB: Two reasons actually.  First, graphics often obscure the top or bottom of the vehicle preventing the buyer from seeing the full picture. Second, and more quantifiable, you run the chance of not passing the Co-op or Compliance program guidelines of the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) compliance agencies. For example: if your dealership sold Ford and Lincoln, and the photo of your new Ford F150 has “Ian’s Ford and Lincoln” banner on it, the Lincoln logo would violate Ford's branding guidelines and the OEM agency would then refuse reimbursement for this particular ad.

IC: Wow, that’s great advice. What about the ad creative itself? Are there ways to design the ad to further complement the car?

DB: An effective way to stand out in the actual ad creative is to embrace white space on your inventory ad. Many dealerships that we work with will, understandably, want to maximize the number of vehicles they can have on their ads. However, this doesn’t always work in their favor. Many automotive ads are placed on busy, high traffic websites. Having a busy ad on a busy site detracts from the experience. Like a piece of art, including some white space in an ad will give the inventory some room to breathe and will draw more eyes to it.

By framing the ad in white space, you give the ad room to breathe and allow it to become more noticeable.

Danielle’s guidance dives into the actual art of marketing and is particularly useful as we live in a world where all dealerships have access to the best technology.

All else being equal, the art of the message and the creative can be the edge in a hyper-competitive industry where we all want to attract new buyers and sell more cars.

What kind of creative rules does your team adhere to? Add them in the comments.

I’m a car guy at heart, and it’s my 5-year old son who reminded me. We all love cars – that’s why we do what we do. Their lines, their smell, the rush you get when you climb inside a car with more horses than you could fit on a football field. I love how old cars have so much character and meaning. As a tech nerd, I love how new cars are beginning to push the boundaries of technology and connectivity. I’m an analytical guy and at the same time, I’m a feelings guy, so I choose my cars with fairly equal parts heart and head.

Like many of you, this is why I initially had so much trouble understanding VDP analytics – they were nothing but numbers!

As a leader in your dealership, you need to understand the significance of these numbers to make informed decisions about the performance of your website, and to evaluate your marketing spend. In brass tacks, you need to choose how you drive traffic to your website and your Vehicle Detail Pages based on numbers, instead of which vendor rep is more fun (I’m not saying you think that way… I’m just saying…).

I’ll let you in on a little secret: It starts making sense when you equate website numbers to numbers you would normally find on your dealership’s lot.

Think about it, a dealer’s website is the virtual representation of a brick and mortar lot. The unfiltered Search Results Page (SRP) is the representation of every car on your lot, and, if someone searches for all the SUV’s, that’s the equivalent to the big row of SUV’s at the back of your lot. The Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) is the representation of a specific car on your lot – like when a customer is effectively saying I like that Black XLT.

Once you start thinking about it this way, your dealership's web analytics start making much more sense. Instead of focusing on the technical metrics themselves, focus on the numbers that you would otherwise ask your sales manager.

Here are some of the basic (less useful) metrics.

What are some of the "more" useful metrics?

See? It isn’t so bad once you translate these virtual metrics into plain English and think about them in terms of real life scenarios. With this method, you can make sense of all the technical mumbo jumbo, discuss VDP quality in a language that’s easy to understand and make the right decisions surrounding the performance of your website.

I’m a car guy at heart, and it’s my 5-year old son who reminded me. We all love cars – that’s why we do what we do. Their lines, their smell, the rush you get when you climb inside a car with more horses than you could fit on a football field. I love how old cars have so much character and meaning. As a tech nerd, I love how new cars are beginning to push the boundaries of technology and connectivity. I’m an analytical guy and at the same time, I’m a feelings guy, so I choose my cars with fairly equal parts heart and head.

Like many of you, this is why I initially had so much trouble understanding VDP analytics – they were nothing but numbers!

As a leader in your dealership, you need to understand the significance of these numbers to make informed decisions about the performance of your website, and to evaluate your marketing spend. In brass tacks, you need to choose how you drive traffic to your website and your Vehicle Detail Pages based on numbers, instead of which vendor rep is more fun (I’m not saying you think that way… I’m just saying…).

I’ll let you in on a little secret: It starts making sense when you equate website numbers to numbers you would normally find on your dealership’s lot.

Think about it, a dealer’s website is the virtual representation of a brick and mortar lot. The unfiltered Search Results Page (SRP) is the representation of every car on your lot, and, if someone searches for all the SUV’s, that’s the equivalent to the big row of SUV’s at the back of your lot. The Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) is the representation of a specific car on your lot – like when a customer is effectively saying I like that Black XLT.

Once you start thinking about it this way, your dealership's web analytics start making much more sense. Instead of focusing on the technical metrics themselves, focus on the numbers that you would otherwise ask your sales manager.

Here are some of the basic (less useful) metrics.

What are some of the "more" useful metrics?

See? It isn’t so bad once you translate these virtual metrics into plain English and think about them in terms of real life scenarios. With this method, you can make sense of all the technical mumbo jumbo, discuss VDP quality in a language that’s easy to understand and make the right decisions surrounding the performance of your website.

Automotive Advertising for Dealerships Using Data Driven Display Ad Solutions

In this day and age, marketing technology has made advertising for dealerships inventory increasingly more sophisticated. Dealerships, Data, and Display Ads are more closely linked than ever. But, it can be challenging to understand this form of advertising and how it works. An important part of understanding why car dealerships and dynamic inventory advertising are a good fit is to learn about how advertisers use layered data to help make advertising more effective.

What Is Layered Data?

Programmatic advertising refers to a systematic method of purchasing and dynamically serving advertising that leads to a reduced cost and greater ROI for advertisers. Programmatic advertising gives your dealership a more targeted advertising focus than other advertising methods. A dynamically delivered programmatic approach gives car dealerships an advertising campaign that shows the right vehicles to the right people at the right time. In an Adweek article from November 2013, former VP at NBCUniversal, Peter Naylor, calls programmatic advertising the “newer, better mousetrap” of the advertising industry.

Why Does Programmatic Advertising Help Auto Dealerships?

Programmatic advertising and car dealerships are a good fit because of the very specific way that people shop for cars online. In many cases, prospective car buyers use something called “long tail” search terms. These are search terms that are much longer than the common keyword searches that SEO marketers target in their marketing efforts. It is challenging for dealerships to engage these prospects through traditional online marketing methods. This is where programmatic advertising’s layered data approach becomes very important. Using the breadcrumbs of data left behind by car buyers as they travel through the path-to-purchase, enables the intelligent delivery of display ads with the right content.

How To Get Ready For Programmatic Advertising?

The first step for dealers that want to use programmatic inventory advertising is to make sure they have their vehicle inventory well merchandised and up to date on their website. This will ensure that the vehicle inventory displayed in dynamic inventory ads look their best. Then you need to get your inventory into the programatic ad system. Depending on the advertising company you are working with, this is typically done automatically and it is constantly updated, since a dealership’s available inventory will change on a daily basis, as cars move on and off the lot. 

What Data Is Used In The Process?

Car buyers who are searching for cars in your inventory will be shown your advertisements based on several important data criteria. Here are a few examples of the kind of layered data that programmatic advertising takes into account for car dealerships:

•     Which websites and vehicles the user is reading reviews on
•     What vehicles are being compared in their research
•     The vehicle a user searches for in listings 
•     Other historical browsing activity
•     Where the user is located
•     Etc.

How The Automotive Industry Could Promote Programmatic Advertising?

Another reason car dealerships and programmatic advertising are excellent together is because of the unique structure of the industry. When leveraged correctly, this structure facilitates partnerships that can lead to greater profitability across every level of the automotive industry’s distribution model. The typical way we break down the parties involved in the automotive industry is the three tiers: manufacturers (OEMs), regional dealership groups, and local dealers. Programmatic advertising has seen immense growth already, but according to an article in eMarketer from January 2014, the continued growth of this trend in advertising depends on partnerships between groups in the three tiers. Individual dealers will rely on regional groups and manufacturers to support them with sophisticated, approved, advertising networks that account for modern digital marketing principles. Conversely, local dealerships will play an important role in the promoting of specific vehicle inventory with more tightly targeted advertising tools. A concerted effort across the industry, to combine the available data, would lead to greater access to the information that is used in programmatic advertising, which would in turn, lead to greater effectiveness of overall campaigns.

About Ian Cruickshank

Ian has spent over 10 years in Marketing and Digital Advertising. His early days were spent with two of the largest media companies in Canada in sales and sales-leadership roles. In recent years he has spent his time both consulting on digital disruption and as the head of sales and marketing for a social media marketing firm in Vancouver, BC. As the VP of Sales & Marketing for Speed Shift Media, he is the head of all revenue generating activities. With a Masters in Business and IT Management and as an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia, he is regularly called on to present and lecture on a variety of Information Technology and Digital Marketing concepts. Most of all he loves to be outside with his wife and his young family in Port Moody, BC. Feel free to contact him directly @Ian_Cruickshank or ian@speedshiftmedia.com.

Automotive Advertising for Dealerships Using Data Driven Display Ad Solutions

In this day and age, marketing technology has made advertising for dealerships inventory increasingly more sophisticated. Dealerships, Data, and Display Ads are more closely linked than ever. But, it can be challenging to understand this form of advertising and how it works. An important part of understanding why car dealerships and dynamic inventory advertising are a good fit is to learn about how advertisers use layered data to help make advertising more effective.

What Is Layered Data?

Programmatic advertising refers to a systematic method of purchasing and dynamically serving advertising that leads to a reduced cost and greater ROI for advertisers. Programmatic advertising gives your dealership a more targeted advertising focus than other advertising methods. A dynamically delivered programmatic approach gives car dealerships an advertising campaign that shows the right vehicles to the right people at the right time. In an Adweek article from November 2013, former VP at NBCUniversal, Peter Naylor, calls programmatic advertising the “newer, better mousetrap” of the advertising industry.

Why Does Programmatic Advertising Help Auto Dealerships?

Programmatic advertising and car dealerships are a good fit because of the very specific way that people shop for cars online. In many cases, prospective car buyers use something called “long tail” search terms. These are search terms that are much longer than the common keyword searches that SEO marketers target in their marketing efforts. It is challenging for dealerships to engage these prospects through traditional online marketing methods. This is where programmatic advertising’s layered data approach becomes very important. Using the breadcrumbs of data left behind by car buyers as they travel through the path-to-purchase, enables the intelligent delivery of display ads with the right content.

How To Get Ready For Programmatic Advertising?

The first step for dealers that want to use programmatic inventory advertising is to make sure they have their vehicle inventory well merchandised and up to date on their website. This will ensure that the vehicle inventory displayed in dynamic inventory ads look their best. Then you need to get your inventory into the programatic ad system. Depending on the advertising company you are working with, this is typically done automatically and it is constantly updated, since a dealership’s available inventory will change on a daily basis, as cars move on and off the lot. 

What Data Is Used In The Process?

Car buyers who are searching for cars in your inventory will be shown your advertisements based on several important data criteria. Here are a few examples of the kind of layered data that programmatic advertising takes into account for car dealerships:

•     Which websites and vehicles the user is reading reviews on
•     What vehicles are being compared in their research
•     The vehicle a user searches for in listings 
•     Other historical browsing activity
•     Where the user is located
•     Etc.

How The Automotive Industry Could Promote Programmatic Advertising?

Another reason car dealerships and programmatic advertising are excellent together is because of the unique structure of the industry. When leveraged correctly, this structure facilitates partnerships that can lead to greater profitability across every level of the automotive industry’s distribution model. The typical way we break down the parties involved in the automotive industry is the three tiers: manufacturers (OEMs), regional dealership groups, and local dealers. Programmatic advertising has seen immense growth already, but according to an article in eMarketer from January 2014, the continued growth of this trend in advertising depends on partnerships between groups in the three tiers. Individual dealers will rely on regional groups and manufacturers to support them with sophisticated, approved, advertising networks that account for modern digital marketing principles. Conversely, local dealerships will play an important role in the promoting of specific vehicle inventory with more tightly targeted advertising tools. A concerted effort across the industry, to combine the available data, would lead to greater access to the information that is used in programmatic advertising, which would in turn, lead to greater effectiveness of overall campaigns.

About Ian Cruickshank

Ian has spent over 10 years in Marketing and Digital Advertising. His early days were spent with two of the largest media companies in Canada in sales and sales-leadership roles. In recent years he has spent his time both consulting on digital disruption and as the head of sales and marketing for a social media marketing firm in Vancouver, BC. As the VP of Sales & Marketing for Speed Shift Media, he is the head of all revenue generating activities. With a Masters in Business and IT Management and as an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia, he is regularly called on to present and lecture on a variety of Information Technology and Digital Marketing concepts. Most of all he loves to be outside with his wife and his young family in Port Moody, BC. Feel free to contact him directly @Ian_Cruickshank or ian@speedshiftmedia.com.

You likely have a solid grasp of the online marketing techniques that work effectively for your dealership, you know that delivering relevant information to the right people, at the right time, is key to your success. Dynamic inventory ad creative is a concept that’s relatively new to most peoples’ marketing tool box, but it has been experiencing explosive growth and the trend is expected to continue.

Dynamic inventory ad creative is an important digital marketing tool for auto dealers because it allows dealers to personalize the ad for each user. It’s been proven to increase the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns by delivering a better experience before and after the click. Dynamic inventory ad creative has significant advantages over a non-custom approach, and as a result, it is more cost effective even if it has a higher sticker price. When you consider the high percentage of clicks resulting in direct VDP and SRP views to most campaigns, which may net only 20 to 25 percent VDP and SRP views, the ROI is easy to understand. You would have to buy 4 or 5 times as many clicks to get to the same volume of VDP/SRP views as a well run Dynamic Display Ad Program, which can deliver up to 100% of it’s clicks to the Vehicle Detail or Search Results Pages. 

The Power of Dynamic Inventory Ad Creative

Most big name ad exchanges have provided online marketers with a wide range of tools to capture the attention of targeted Internet users. The current influx of consumer data serves to amplify the importance of dynamic creative for digital marketing, as we now know more about buying habits, trends and purchasing, than ever before. For example, networks like the Auto Audience™ Network are able to match the make, model, and year of the vehicles being researched before the consumer ever reaches a Dealer’s website. 

There are many ad exchanges focused on qualifying prospects that fit certain criteria, and then selling ads against those segments to dealerships with varying results. However, the latest in online marketing tools enable marketers to capture an individual qualified prospect at the right time, and when showing them the right vehicles the results have been impressive -- in both cost-effectiveness and scale.

Sophisticated Targeting Needs the Right Message

The technology that helps us to deliver the interests of individual users is meaningless if it doesn’t have the content to support it. Cashing in on dynamic inventory ad creative means combining the target audience data with a compelling message that is extremely relevant to them. For example, you typically wouldn’t serve a convertible sports car to a demographic profile like this — Retired Female 65+ living in Chicago who has been behaviouraly segmented as an Auto Intender. The typical marketing plan would suggest that an appropriate vehicle might be a Honda CRV or a Toyota Corolla. But with data targeting the individual user the old way of using broad stereotypes and demos like Male 18-49, or Female 25-54 are all but gone. Now with one to one user targeting we know that this Kick-Ass-Grandma is in the market for the new BMW M3 convertible and Dynamic Inventory Ads can deliver that specific vehicle from her local BMW Store — Go Grandma Go!

How Dynamic Inventory Ad Creative Works

Without getting overly technical, dynamic inventory ad creative operates by breaking down an ad into its separate components and developing different content to fit within each piece. The concept is similar to a rooms floor plan where you can swap out different furniture to get a range of styles. Effectively, it is a template waiting to be filled with the right vehicle content. Such as, Image, Vehicle Make, Model, Year, and Price. Once you have your ad with its separate puzzle pieces, you add the engaging content. The content will vary depending on what the ad network knows about the user, and it will rotate your vehicle inventory according to that data on each user.

The first thing you’ll notice when you look at an ad that has been optimized with this approach is that the message is more relevant, and this is why dynamic creative is important for automotive retailers. This type of ad speaks to the individual buying a car based upon their specific known interests, rather than a group of potential auto purchasers in a broad category or stereotype. Dynamic creative can be refined to the specific vehicles that the user has been researching – right down to the VIN level.

Dynamic inventory ad technology informs the buyer which local car dealership features their chosen vehicle, and gives them specifics on the models in stock. The design templates used in  dynamic creative are typically flexible and simple to use, so they enable you to experiment with style and aesthetics. When consulting with an a vendor or your agency, ask about the how the ads are served. They should be delivered via an Ad Tag. If the ads are Flash or Gif files, they are likely not completely dynamic.

The Bottom Line

The advantage dynamic creative offers to digital marketing is clear – it's the online display ad tool that enables you to deliver highly personalized content to qualified car buyers at the right time. For your dealership, it's a necessary component of your online marketing strategy.

If you have any questions about this or any other part of your online marketing activities, please feel free to comment on this blog or contact me directly via LinkedIn or at the office. I’m always happy to to help.

You likely have a solid grasp of the online marketing techniques that work effectively for your dealership, you know that delivering relevant information to the right people, at the right time, is key to your success. Dynamic inventory ad creative is a concept that’s relatively new to most peoples’ marketing tool box, but it has been experiencing explosive growth and the trend is expected to continue.

Dynamic inventory ad creative is an important digital marketing tool for auto dealers because it allows dealers to personalize the ad for each user. It’s been proven to increase the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns by delivering a better experience before and after the click. Dynamic inventory ad creative has significant advantages over a non-custom approach, and as a result, it is more cost effective even if it has a higher sticker price. When you consider the high percentage of clicks resulting in direct VDP and SRP views to most campaigns, which may net only 20 to 25 percent VDP and SRP views, the ROI is easy to understand. You would have to buy 4 or 5 times as many clicks to get to the same volume of VDP/SRP views as a well run Dynamic Display Ad Program, which can deliver up to 100% of it’s clicks to the Vehicle Detail or Search Results Pages. 

The Power of Dynamic Inventory Ad Creative

Most big name ad exchanges have provided online marketers with a wide range of tools to capture the attention of targeted Internet users. The current influx of consumer data serves to amplify the importance of dynamic creative for digital marketing, as we now know more about buying habits, trends and purchasing, than ever before. For example, networks like the Auto Audience™ Network are able to match the make, model, and year of the vehicles being researched before the consumer ever reaches a Dealer’s website. 

There are many ad exchanges focused on qualifying prospects that fit certain criteria, and then selling ads against those segments to dealerships with varying results. However, the latest in online marketing tools enable marketers to capture an individual qualified prospect at the right time, and when showing them the right vehicles the results have been impressive -- in both cost-effectiveness and scale.

Sophisticated Targeting Needs the Right Message

The technology that helps us to deliver the interests of individual users is meaningless if it doesn’t have the content to support it. Cashing in on dynamic inventory ad creative means combining the target audience data with a compelling message that is extremely relevant to them. For example, you typically wouldn’t serve a convertible sports car to a demographic profile like this — Retired Female 65+ living in Chicago who has been behaviouraly segmented as an Auto Intender. The typical marketing plan would suggest that an appropriate vehicle might be a Honda CRV or a Toyota Corolla. But with data targeting the individual user the old way of using broad stereotypes and demos like Male 18-49, or Female 25-54 are all but gone. Now with one to one user targeting we know that this Kick-Ass-Grandma is in the market for the new BMW M3 convertible and Dynamic Inventory Ads can deliver that specific vehicle from her local BMW Store — Go Grandma Go!

How Dynamic Inventory Ad Creative Works

Without getting overly technical, dynamic inventory ad creative operates by breaking down an ad into its separate components and developing different content to fit within each piece. The concept is similar to a rooms floor plan where you can swap out different furniture to get a range of styles. Effectively, it is a template waiting to be filled with the right vehicle content. Such as, Image, Vehicle Make, Model, Year, and Price. Once you have your ad with its separate puzzle pieces, you add the engaging content. The content will vary depending on what the ad network knows about the user, and it will rotate your vehicle inventory according to that data on each user.

The first thing you’ll notice when you look at an ad that has been optimized with this approach is that the message is more relevant, and this is why dynamic creative is important for automotive retailers. This type of ad speaks to the individual buying a car based upon their specific known interests, rather than a group of potential auto purchasers in a broad category or stereotype. Dynamic creative can be refined to the specific vehicles that the user has been researching – right down to the VIN level.

Dynamic inventory ad technology informs the buyer which local car dealership features their chosen vehicle, and gives them specifics on the models in stock. The design templates used in  dynamic creative are typically flexible and simple to use, so they enable you to experiment with style and aesthetics. When consulting with an a vendor or your agency, ask about the how the ads are served. They should be delivered via an Ad Tag. If the ads are Flash or Gif files, they are likely not completely dynamic.

The Bottom Line

The advantage dynamic creative offers to digital marketing is clear – it's the online display ad tool that enables you to deliver highly personalized content to qualified car buyers at the right time. For your dealership, it's a necessary component of your online marketing strategy.

If you have any questions about this or any other part of your online marketing activities, please feel free to comment on this blog or contact me directly via LinkedIn or at the office. I’m always happy to to help.