• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 12, 2005

Jumpstart Automotive Media on Monday said its dealer sales division launched a search engine marketing program to drive traffic to the Web sites of local auto dealers. The media agency, which specializes in marketing programs for auto dealers, has named the program Jumpstart trafficBUILDER and has enlisted the help of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and America Online, to develop keyword-ranking programs.

"Our main priority is to help our dealers sell cars. There are customers searching online for specific makes and models in every city across America. We want to make sure our dealers get recognized online and help sell their inventory," Rob Bollinger, senior vice president of Jumpstart's dealer sales division, said in a statement.

Local dealers can outsource their search campaign management to Jumpstart for a flat fee, which will buy pay-per-click ads on Google, Yahoo!, and other paid search networks.

Jumpstart also manages an ad network for automotive site publishers, where it has exclusive relationships to market ad inventory on sites in its auto channel. It offers both national and local targeting of rich media ad units