• by Brad Piggott , Op-Ed Contributor, February 9, 2016

If you have ever looked longingly at a car that you designed with an online modeling tool or done research to narrow down what vehicle you might want to purchase in the future, you likely did this by visiting multiple sites, reading different blogs, reviewing various shopping guides, and more. Often, when you visit a different site, even a few days later, you’ll see ads for the brands you were considering earlier. You’re in the automotive funnel!

When it comes to online advertising, the auto industry often leads its brand storytelling with premium placements like home pages and branded content that help make a more emotional connection with consumers. That said, campaigns can benefit from a strategic mix of premium and programmatic. Premium placements help drive the collection of re-targetable data and other consumer insights that can in turn be applied to supportive programmatic strategies. Enter the omnichannel demand-side platform.

Programmatic is a strategy for automotive brands to consider holistically, not just a way to buy media. Below are some reasons why auto brands are—and should be—embracing a programmatic approach:

• Budgets are always precious and frequently influenced by auto dealers, so brands want to make sure their dollars are working for them in the most effective and transparent manners. Programmatic strategies, once vetted, allow for this.

• Data: By using programmatic ad technology to house first- and third-party data, brands can better use this with precision and allow for a coordinated effort to continue moving potential customers down the funnel. For example, reach potential customers who have viewed certain television spots, searched for a specific model of car, or use auto buying or auto comparison apps 10 times more than the average user.

• Measurement: Online behavior, offline sales, brand impact, attribution and viewability can be tracked, managed, verified, and acted on through a programmatic digital execution, especially compared to, say, television advertising. It makes moving vehicles, and proving it, much easier.

• Scalable: The cyclical nature of the automotive business, centered around car launches, refreshes and sales events, requires immediate executions of large scale, highly targeted, and efficiently priced media. A programmatic approach can drive efficiency in campaign planning and support the use of dynamic creative targeted to numerous markets.

The bottom line as we look ahead is that car buyers are becoming savvier and consuming more information in more fragmented ways. Auto brands and equipment manufacturers certainly need to be able to pace that in a way they understand at their core.