For decades, advertising enjoyed a fairly predictable business. Print, radio, and TV coalesced into a three-pronged approach that was mastered after decades of relative stability. Simply put, if a vendor demonstrated expertise, then clients willingly trusted them, generation after generation. Then the Internet happened.

The ones and zeros that began streaming through our phone lines created a reverberating disruption to media that is still being felt wirelessly today. From video pre-roll to dynamic targeting, to machine-readable content, advertising has been dealt an onslaught of changes. While some merged, and others went out of business, some have faced the tide, developed new capabilities and are standing tall against the emerging, digitally native competition. Or, so they’d have you think.

While there are some very talented agencies out there, the sad truth is that many advertising mediums talk the talk but do little to walk the walk. Understanding today's advertising strategies takes lots of thought and research. Nobody denies that it is complicated. Advertising vendors know that. Sure, they can speak the industry jargon, but when it comes time to spending the money and executing, the stakes are high, and it is truly a digital game of craps, some just using junior talent and white-labeled tools. Some will win, some will lose, and some of them just sing the blues.

Unfortunately, some advertising vendors can’t attract the talent to properly shift into an omni-channel media strategy. Omni-channel media is a term used to describe all forms of consumed media, from billboards to computer monitors. Outside of the mega-budget ad campaigns, the newer, digital-first strategies can nimbly navigate the ever-changing digital landscape, while simultaneously reverse-engineering traditional media deployments. Hypertargeting granular demographic and psychographic segments is a way of life. Traditional media companies are sometimes too mired in the way things were to strategically implement new media campaigns. Instead, it’s merely treated like a tactic to convert consumers to traditional marketing channels.

What clients are faced with is a watered-down version of a digitally naive strategy. Instead of developing services in-house, key pieces are outsourced. New technologies are offered, but frequently gutted of the novelty so that it can be offered to a broader client base. It often looks cookie cutter because it is. Often, the outsourced components are marked up dramatically in the process, driving up the costs for hollowed services. When it comes to offering support, some traditional vendors can do little in the way of help, other than offering to “check on it.” Nobody wins in this situation.

There are some incredibly talented agencies for you to work with. If your advertising partner starts or continues, to offer new digital services, please do your research. Discuss what metrics they track and how they obtain the data. It’s not hard for an advertiser to take a report, throw its name on it, or white-label an existing tool while charging a premium in the process. As with any vendor, find out who some of the other clients (similar to the size and composition of your dealership) are, to get a better indication of performance for yourself. It’s not that your existing vendor can’t do these things. It's a matter of them offering these services overnight.

While the stability of traditional advertising channels has created a foundation for lasting partnerships, today’s technology requires vendors to get smarter and faster. While it’s easy for a vendor to say they offer enhanced product offerings, it’s much harder to actually make these offerings successful. Make sure your vendor is adding the talent, training, tools, resources and technology to demonstrate that they are fully committed to a digital strategy.

What’s more important: maintaining your vendor relationship or reaching new and existing customers as their media consumption changes?

At the recent 2018 F8 Developers Conference, Facebook introduced Facebook Journeys, a new enhancement to their Analytics, which will reportedly give businesses an omni-channel view of the customer journey from introduction to purchase… but does it?

In their session, Facebook gave an example of a consumer (one of the speakers) who shared her journey towards buying a pair of boots. She explained how she jumped around before finally making that purchase decision. She began by explaining how she was a fan of a retail store and that, at some point, liked their Facebook page. She was served up an ad for boots that attracted her and went to their website (on her mobile device) to read reviews. While viewing the website on her smartphone she was prompted to install their app (which she did) and then proceeded to browse their site via the app. After some debate she finally decided to buy the boots, but the mobile site didn’t support mobile payments and she didn’t want to input her credit card information at that moment. So, she made a mental note to purchase them later. After a few days, she went to their website via her desktop computer and purchased the boots.

The message Facebook was attempting to convey with this story is that most analytics focus solely on desktop interactions and the corresponding conversion, ignoring all previous interactions. While this is true, it’s not really the omni-channel marketing they claim. Why? Because true omni-channel marketing attribution would extend far beyond the sources that Facebook Journeys tracks. Facebook Journeys only includes website visitors (if a business has the Facebook pixel installed properly), app installs, Facebook post, ad engagement and subsequent conversions. Here’s what report looks like:

Facebook claims that, with this data, a business can “connect the dots” between the first session and all subsequent sessions leading to the purchase, thus eliminating the “last-click” attribution most businesses (and analytics tools) use.

But how valuable is this information?

As illustrated on an individual level it might be relevant in some ways… but not in many; here’s why. Facebook Journeys is limited to interactions that happen on your website and app along with Facebook activity. The consumer may have visited 12 other retailer websites selling the same boots before returning to the initial retailer… but you wouldn’t know that. And that type of activity is practically a given when it comes to automotive shoppers.

In addition, Facebook will not show you the customer journey on an individual basis, but only in an anonymized and – most importantly – aggregated form. So, while you could get an overall idea of a SET of customers over a given time, you can’t pinpoint an individual customer’s journey.  This only allows you to identify and adjust marketing strategies based on friction points between devices… which leads me to the most important flaw in this report:

Facebook Journeys does not show you an omni-channel journey, but rather a cross-device attribution journey.

True marketing decisions should be made on a more individual level as each consumer is different – especially car shoppers. Most retailers (such as the boot retailer) have just a couple of variables: can the target demographic afford it? And, what payment methods should be provided for the customer?

when it comes to car dealers, however, there are many other variables which influence shoppers, including, but not limited to, new or used (doubt the boot retailer is selling used boots), mileage, financing, negotiation, and more. Facebook Journeys can only show friction points within a transactional journey, not the entirety of that journey. And that’s important.

The one quote from the F8 session which I find most impactful and relevant is as follows: “…smart, informed decision-making is what makes great product marketing. You really want to be able to see the whole customer experience and understand how customers are actually making their way through all of your experiences.”

Sadly, you can’t do that with Facebook Journeys.

Are you ever frustrated by the inaccurate sourcing of sales? I’m sure that most of you do everything in your power to track (as accurately as possible) the customer car buying journey from the beginning to the actual sale.

However, there are so many variables along the way that dealers often either get confused or simply give up and assign credit to the “auto mall” or “big giant gorilla,” (sarcasm intended). The sad fact is that, for the most part, the only way most dealers can measure what marketing sources are working, and which aren’t, is through the myriad of sometimes biased or incomplete reports provided by their vendors, which they must wade through; or the (incomplete) data contained within their CRM.

Well, help is on the horizon, as technology companies know about this pain point and have developed solutions that give marketers greater and more accurate insight into which marketing sources influence their consumers – and which do not.

Progressive dealers jumped on these solutions, along with the largest media company in the world – Google – who created a solution for dealers and other businesses. However, there is a BIG problem which is summed up in the phrase, “The largest media company in the world.” Do you really want the largest media company in the world telling you what is influencing your sales – can you be sure this data isn’t skewed in their favor? I bet you can’t guess who the main sales influencer will always be… GOOGLE!

Just as many dealers are cynical about the real results and credit each vendor and marketing source claims in their reports, they should also be cynical about Google. Why? Because Google takes more of your money than most other marketing solutions – whether that’s directly or indirectly through a marketing partner.

I find dealers who try solutions to help clarify what is and is not working in their marketing realm – and who pay attention and act on that data -- no more guessing, more knowing -- realize they can extend that same marketing budget and, with the right data, achieve even greater results – without spending a penny more!

But, and here’s the danger; when the magic wears off and that comfort-zone of “I FINALLY know now” slips in, sometimes marketers decide that, while the data was great, and accurate, because they have taken the necessary steps to optimize their marketing, they no longer need the solution providing the visibility/knowledge.

Wait -- That makes no sense.

That’s like deciding to stop measuring a salesperson’s performance, or the dealership’s sales numbers, or service department’s RO revenue, or upsells, or even the BDC’s appointment to show ratio; simply because you did it for a few months, it improved and then you decided you no longer need to measure it. Makes no sense, right?

The effectiveness of various marketing activities changes on a monthly, sometimes even weekly or daily basis. Something that’s performing this month may take a nosedive in days, weeks or a couple of months. Sitting on your laurels simply because you measured, analyzed and acted on data for a few months isn’t going to keep you going forward. In fact, it could easily start moving you in reverse.

Monitoring activity relative to marketing and sales is something that every business needs to do, including your dealership.

With margin compression in mind, failing to understand that measurement, analyzing data and taking action based on data insights are an ongoing, never-ending necessity can easily take a dealership back to the beginning. Resolving marketing mysteries requires a new standard. Your business performance depends on it.

Marketing is an incredibly complicated and convoluted field which involves everything from direct marketing, to brand management, customer communications, social media, public relations and on and on. Whether you call the person responsible for your digital marketing efforts the “CMO,” or delegate these tasks to an Internet Manager at your dealership, the fact remains that many of you are setting them up to fail.

According to an article on CEOWorld.biz, the average lifespan of a CMO in a consumer-facing business has dropped to 3.6 years. Sadly, – at least for our industry – many probably think 3.6 years is actually pretty good.

The article’s theory is that a CMO’s job performance rating (and hence their priorities) are typically tied to a company’s growth, while their actual job responsibilities are tied mainly to marketing communications. This, then, poses two interesting possibilities: CMOs get tired of doing a set of tasks for which their performance is not judged. Or, their manager decides they are not doing a good job and lets them go.

While branding, figuring out the correct positioning for the company, and communications tasks are important to a dealership’s well-being, they tend to be extremely time consuming, leaving little room for your marketing team to focus on activities that directly drive sales.

If you're going to judge the performance of your marketing staff based on sales, make sure they have the time to focus on activities which directly drive sales. Some of these activities, such as analyzing campaign results and digging into data, may not be immediately visible to you, but are extremely important in optimizing your marketing mix to drive more sale

While most dealerships (with the exception of larger auto groups) don’t have actual CMOs, those same responsibilities still exist, as they do for any size company. In the automotive world those responsibilities often rest on an individual with a pay plan that is based on sales – which presents the same problems as above. For example, an Internet Manager tasked with many of these same marketing responsibilities, yet judged solely on their sales performance. They are sure to be chastised when these extra tasks aren’t adequately accomplished.

Take a look at your marketing and the staff to whom you have assigned various marketing responsibilities. Consider reevaluating if their pay plans are aligned with the priorities you’ve set for them.

This can help you achieve more effective marketing performance as well as increased employee engagement and performance. While the data you need to increase your marketing performance and grow your business may be there at your disposal, if nobody is focusing on it, the dealership will continuously be scrambling to keep up while losing revenue.

 New software for auto dealers, vendors and marketing agencies uses “Any-Touch” attribution to ensure correct marketing source receives credit in the customer’s purchase journey

Columbus, OH, March 12, 2018-- Clarivoy, the auto industry’s most trusted source for truth in optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns, today announced the launch of its new software which uses “Any-Touch” attribution to ensure the correct marketing source(s) receive credit during the customer’s purchase journey. Whether first, last, or somewhere in the middle, Any-Touch attribution makes sure proper credit is attributed to those marketing sources which influenced the customer’s vehicle purchase.

According to Steve White, Clarivoy CEO, dealers and third-party auto vendors receive millions of unique web visitors per month and yet less than five percent identify themselves.  “Who are the other 95 percent, and did they purchase a vehicle?” said White. “In the eyes of a dealer, the value of a third-party auto vendor, marketing agency or website provider is reduced to one thing: Leads. Since most visitors to a dealer’s website or third-party site are unidentifiable, 95 percent of the value of that vendor or marketing partner is lost.”

Clarivoy’s software gives dealers, vendors and marketing agencies visibility into the total number of vehicles each vendor and marketing source are responsible for influencing monthly. It provides continuous confidence in the value of the vendor’s offering to the dealer through an independent, trusted voice.

“Unless you are the first or last touch in the CRM, you probably aren’t getting credit from the dealer. Even if you do get credit, it’s only for leads you delivered and NOT for anonymous shoppers that result in sales. What if you could show performance according to the amount of sold vehicles that had, say, Cars.com or Autotrader in the buyer’s purchase journey, instead of just being reliant on leads? Now you can with our new product: Attribution API. It encourages the optimal product mix while simultaneously mitigating churn. This allows vendors to consult with their dealers and continually prove their value,” said White.

Clarivoy’s identity graph fuels the new API technology and is created using proprietary technology that can match a person to multiple devices across multiple channels.

The new software delivers monthly attributable sales to dealers’ dashboards and is very simple to set up. All that is required is the installation of Clarivoy’s tracking code on all relevant website properties. Clarivoy then works with dealers to obtain sales data and deterministically matches the sales file with leads and vendor website traffic to show the vendors’ true impact on vehicle sales

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com, or drop by booth #763N at the 2018 NADA Show in Las Vegas, NV, March 23-25. Or pre-schedule a meeting by clicking here:

# # # # #

About Clarivoy:

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns. Their measurement and identity solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline. Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com.

Columbus, OH, March 6, 2018-- Clarivoy, the auto industry’s most trusted source for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns, today announced that it has hired Jessica Ruth, formerly Digital Program Manager at Dominion Dealer Solutions, as VP of Product.

Commenting on the new hire, Steve White, Clarivoy CEO, stated, “Jessica is a vital addition to our leadership team where she will lead product creation and management for all current and new products. These responsibilities are critical to achieving Clarivoy's strategic goal: to provide dealers with a single complete view of how people buy cars and where to get their next sale. Her experience and background make her a perfect fit as VP of Product, where she will pioneer new product development, resulting in demonstrative revenue growth, increased market share and customer adoption.”

Jessica brings more than ten years of auto industry experience to Clarivoy, successfully managing, launching and leading large software development projects. Previously she served as Digital Program Manager at Dominion Dealer Solutions, where she created new processes, products and efficiencies that led to improved customer product delivery.

Prior to that she served as Brand Manager with DealerFire, a responsive website and Digital Marketing Company that was later acquired by DealerSocket. Jessica managed brand presence across all digital platforms and secured multiple company awards each year. Earlier in her career she served as Brand Manager for DealerRefresh, a leading online community for the auto industry.

Jessica graduated from the University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism - News/Editorial.

“As I considered my next opportunity, it was important for me to join an organization that is trustworthy, progressive and rooted in their industry objectives. Clarivoy’s mission of helping dealers as an unbiased third-party provider aligned with my personal beliefs and professional goals. They are truly a dealer partner whose only interest is helping dealers succeed. I’m extremely excited to join such a great team,” Jessica stated.

Clarivoy is the automotive industry’s recognized leader at helping auto dealers discover what is really driving sales. Clarivoy provides dealers with a single, complete view of how people buy cars and where to get their next sale. Their ability to identify more customer touchpoints through Anonymous Attribution and unbiased Multi-Touch Attribution measurement solutions gives their clients an unfair competitive advantage when making marketing decisions.

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com, drop by booth #763N at the 2018 NADA Show in Las Vegas, NV, March 23-25, or pre-schedule a meeting by clicking here:

About Clarivoy:

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns. Their measurement and identity solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline. Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com.

In the digital marketing world, only a couple of things are important – deliverability and tracking. Deliverability is simple: if the customer cannot see your display ad, it’s useless. Tracking, perhaps not quite so simple, is a cookie placed on the online shopper’s computer whenever they visit a website, enabling advertisers to retarget them with ads based on their browsing history.

We’ve all enjoyed this functionality -- but is it coming to an end?

Recent actions by a couple of companies that pretty much control the Internet have raised concerns that the all-important deliverability and tracking of consumers may be in peril. If an advertiser can no longer effectively deliver relevant ads to a targeted audience, income will be dramatically reduced. In fact, digital marketing will become the casualty of war. And believe me, there is a war going on.

On one side of the battlefield is Google.  Earlier this year it announced the upcoming native introduction of ad-blockers into the Chrome browser – the most popular browser in the world. Advertisers freaked out. However, as more details emerged, advertisers calmed down and began to support the initiative.

It turns out that Google wasn’t targeting advertisers as a whole, it was simply attempting to make the Internet less annoying to consumers by reducing the types of intrusive ads users were complaining about – namely pop-ups, auto-play videos with sound, and large sticky ads consumers couldn’t close.

Of course, these annoying ads led to high-bounce rates but, at the same time, provided websites with incredible income. With over 59 percent of market-share for browser use, advertisers had a right to be nervous.

The other side of the battlefield is manned by Google’s sworn enemy, Apple. Apple and Google don’t play well. They never have. But how is Apple even a threat when Google has almost 60 percent market share? The answer is simple, the iPhone. In fact, it is so popular, that over 50 percent of cell-phone users own an iPhone. When you consider the fact that over 52 percent of web pages are visited via a mobile device, the threat becomes clear: what web browser does the iPhone use? Apple’s own Safari!

But why is that important?

Google tracks everything everyone does online. Period. They may not share it with everyone, but that doesn’t erase the fact that it happens. Apple decided to throw a wrench in their operations by implementing what it has named, “Intelligent Tracking Prevention.” In a nutshell, it prevents advertisers from using third-party cookies to track clients past the 24-hour mark. This effectively handicaps effective digital marketing retargeting and measurement strategies. All in the name of consumer privacy.

With all this going on, how can you, as a digital marketer, avoid becoming a casualty of war?

First, it is important to understand the difference between first-party cookies, which are those from your own website, and third-party cookies, those from a marketing partner’s site.

When it comes to Apple, it doesn’t limit first-party cookies – those embedded on your own website – to the 24-hour time limit (they limit to 30 days). This allows you to continue your successful retargeting and attribution strategies.

However, in dealing with Google, be sure to abide by its advice on what types of ads are intrusive and which are not, for example, pop-ups, auto-play videos with sound, and large sticky ads. According to Google, these detract from the consumer’s web browsing experience.

Check that your digital marketing partners aren’t using third-party cookies, ensure that your site follows these new rules, and you shouldn’t have a problem. If you don’t, Google will warn you and, after a period of non-compliance, will simply block all your ads. Bad thing.

My advice? Have conversations with your digital marketing vendors and analyze your own website for ads that could raise red flags with Google. In addition, ask your vendors if they use first or third-party cookies.

Bottom line: Because the vast majority of the retargeting display advertising ecosystem utilizes third-party cookies, your results will be inaccurate unless you augment tracking with a first-party cookie tracking solution.

As I have mentioned in past blogs, few customers complete lead forms, making it very difficult for dealers to track the source of their sales. Without this information, it’s virtually impossible to make educated decisions about how to spend your marketing dollars. It’s time to build a better mousetrap so that dealers get insight into the behavior of online shoppers, even those who never fill out a lead form, ultimately increasing conversions.

The first thing we need to know to build a better solution is why consumers aren’t filling out lead forms. I think some of the reasons include:

1.   Information Availability – There is more information available online than ever before. Consumers can gather this information 24 hours a day and obtain instant results. They don’t need to fill out a form and wait for a response to get what they need when most of it is at their fingertips.

2.   Trust factor - This information is not only convenient, but they also trust that it’s accurate.

Frequently, consumers report that a dealer they contacted online is unresponsive, doesn’t answer their questions, or simply invites them for a test drive without helping them first.

3.   Time investment – In general, consumers don’t like the traditional car buying process. The perception is that buying a car is an all-day task and they simply don’t have the time to invest. Filling out a lead form, in their mind, is the first step of a time-consuming process they may not be ready to start.

Obviously, if you can increase the number of lead-form submissions, you would have access to more accurate information about your consumer’s behavior. Today it’s crucial to know which sites influence the consumers’ decisions and which ones don’t. Knowing the answer to that question can easily give your dealership a competitive digital advantage.

But while there are lots of tools on the market today that give you access to some of this data, not many can help you fill in the activity of those anonymous buyers. If you’re only relying on the straight line between a click and a conversion for someone that filled out a lead form, there’s no way to know what’s really influencing consumers and producing ROI. You need to know all the influencers for all your customers.

You can’t build a better mousetrap if you don’t know how that mouse will react to different stimuli -- a little cheese here and a little cheese there can easily motivate the mouse to follow the path that you want it to.

Without taking all the mouse’s behavior into account, however, you’ll never know which things are moving it closer to the desired destination and which are moving it farther away. Remove cheese at this place and perhaps the mouse takes a different path… put some cheese in this spot and perhaps they make a beeline to the destination.

Don’t make your marketing decisions solely based on where the mouse was when he ate the cheese. Rather, figure out what led the mouse from the entrance to that point.

A massive amount of data is now available on every potential car buyer, with a multitude of ways to use it. And, when it comes to targeting your audience, most ad platforms try to make it easier for you. The thought process is usually something along the lines of, the more detailed you are in your targeting, the more likely that your ads, messages, video, etc., will be shown to the right people – or at least for the most part.

But what about what you don’t know?

I recently read an interesting article on Business2Community which had me thinking about this very point. According to the article, there are four types of data: Facts we know, information we don’t have but know how to find, gut feeling, and things we don’t know we don’t know.

I love the last one because it makes sense and made me start to wonder how exactly DO we get information that we aren’t even looking for? Maybe we simply don’t know to look for it because nobody ever has. Perhaps we don’t look for it because, on the surface, it appears irrelevant. The trick, however, is this: all your competitors are attempting to target people utilizing the first two types of data – things we know (demographics, location, etc.) and information we don’t have but know how to find (such as targeting through AdWords, Facebook, etc.)

If everyone else is doing the same thing, targeting in similar ways and then sitting back in their chairs high-fiving themselves, what does that mean for the customer? It means that, while everyone is congratulating themselves about how great their marketing is, the customer is bombarded with noise from all these sources. While the intent of these sources may be to be relevant, when bombarded and over-saturated with messages, the customer reacts to everyone’s message as if it is irrelevant and just more noise.

Think about it, what would happen if you visited a website and each ad was for the same product or service, the only difference being that each ad was from different companies? You’d quickly ignore them all. Even if they’re relevant.

Perhaps then, a better strategy would be to stop focusing on the data that everyone else has and try to find insights using the two other types of data: gut feeling and things we don’t know we don’t know. According to the article, this can help you discover things about your audience that your competitor doesn’t know. Then you gain an advantage both in ad delivery and marketing spend. Why? Because if you use your gut or dig deep through your data to find trends and commonalities that you aren’t used to looking for, you’d be able to bid less for display and paid search, simply because there will be less people bidding against you.

So how do you find these insights? Using data, you probably aren’t tracking right now. For example, let’s simplify it to data gathered from a website. The article suggests utilizing tools such as heat-mapping and text tracking widgets to really understand that the customer visited this or that page on your website and what they actually looked at, read or engaged with. Having this information can provide valuable insight and the opportunity to learn things about your customers that you never did before.

Start thinking outside-the-box and analyze data you may never have deemed important before. You could find yourself with a competitive marketing advantage and, at the end of the day, have more money left in the bank.

If you backtrack through the history of advertising and marketing, you’ll find it’s always been about pushing the message to the consumer. In the old days radio and television were the dominant media and consumers had little choice but to watch and listen.

Then, as increasing numbers commuted to work, marketers took their messages to the roads in the form of billboards. Fast forward, and, as consumers ventured online, banner ads and popups vied for their attention; and as video game popularity increased, advertisers started putting ads inside the games themselves.

But then consumers rebelled.

Along came the DVR which has invaded just about every household, allowing consumers to skip commercials altogether. At first there was massive pushback against this by television stations and advertisers. In fact, the first DVRs didn’t allow you to skip commercials.

As technology continues its forward march, consumers can now stream music or listen to ad-free satellite radio. They have their iPods in the car, or Apple CarPlay playing their music, avoiding radio ads.

In addition, ad blockers prevent websites from serving ads. And, due to new technology, those same ads have largely become invisible for many consumers. The question is, where will consumer’s eyeballs be next, and how can advertisers take advantage of it?

Well, automaker Renault seems to think the future of marketing is with the captive audience in autonomous vehicles. According to an article on Bloomberg.com, Renault just purchased 40 percent of the Challenges magazine group, publisher of a weekly economic magazine and four monthly science and history journals.

It looks like Renault believes future revenue will come from this deal because, as stated by Renault in the article, “users will have more time to spend on other activities while in the car.” And that means there will be more opportunities for marketers to once again push messages to consumers who, in a very real sense, will be a captive audience. When the vehicle is driving, it’s not like the consumer can jump out. And, since they don’t control the vehicle, who’s to say what functionality will be available.

It’s not inconceivable that consumers could watch movies, television, or play video games while traveling. Some vehicles already have this technology, although the driver isn’t participating -- or at least shouldn’t be.

What future possibilities will exist for manufacturers, advertisers and marketers to find even more creative ways to deliver marketing messages to consumers?

By current estimates, a society with 100% autonomous vehicles is decades away. While many challenges exist in implementing this transformation, the one thing that’s certain is that people sitting in a vehicle that does everything for them are going to get bored and will search for ways to entertain themselves. This, in turn, provides new opportunities for marketers.

It’s hard to believe that people will be able to turn the car off to avoid marketing -- and almost a certainty that autonomous vehicles won’t even belong to the passenger.

Could Renault be onto something here? Will they show the automotive world exactly where the future monetization of the automotive industry lies -- in a world of autonomous vehicles?