• by Karl Greenberg , August 1, 2007

With around 88% of new-vehicle buyers using the Internet for an average of 11 hours per week, the vehicle that automotive marketers advertise on a Web site should match the kind of traffic that Web site gets.

That might seem obvious, but J.D. Power & Associates, which parsed data from a random sample of 11,240 new-vehicle buyers, says there are subtleties that make targeting online car ads more complicated.

The consultancy found some interesting nuggets: compact basic car buyers are 44% more likely to visit YouTube at least once per month than the average new-vehicle buyer. Also, 14% of large pickup truck buyers visit Nascar.com at least once per month, versus 10% of buyers overall. Mid-size buyers are more than 20% more likely to visit MSNBC at least once a month than the average new-vehicle buyer.

The study from shoppers who bought a new vehicle between August and October last year suggests that while auto marketers tend to use the Internet to pitch promotions and purchase incentives, the Web is also effective for branding efforts if marketers exploit differences between daily and monthly Web site visitation patterns.

The study found, for example, that retail-focused messages of brief duration are more effective on Web sites with a high average daily audience reach--ones that also garner their monthly unique-visitor numbers early in the month. By contrast, per the consultancy, branding campaigns can benefit from longer-term buys on sites that take more time to reach their monthly unique-visit numbers.

The consultancy measured web sites like ESPN and Travelocity over a month's time. They had a reach of 32% and 33%, respectively, among consumers who will buy a mid-size premium crossover utility vehicle in the near future. But according to the firm, ESPN's site reached those numbers more quickly, delivering one-third of its total monthly audience in just one day, on average, while the Travelocity site has a daily reach averaging 4%.

"If you have an ad that you want quick turnover on, ESPN is going to be better than Travelocity," says Arianne Walker, director of automotive media and marketing. "If you want to get a message out there quickly, in a few days, ESPN would be the right of Web buy. If you are trying to get a message out about a new vehicle, you want to get it out there quickly, and if folks you are targeting are going to ESPN, at a high rate, that might be a great buy. But if you are doing broad branding messages, for instance, Travelocity would be better."

She says automakers are less apt to execute branding work online, especially on auto vertical Web sites. On auto Web sites, marketing tends to focus lower on the purchase funnel, she says, but new-vehicle buyers are going to auto Web sites even when they haven't narrowed the consideration set.

"If someone doesn't have a particular make or model in mind, they are adding vehicles [to their consideration set], so marketers need to figure out ways of getting that message out early before prospects narrow that set. There's ample opportunity to get the message out early with branded content on auto sites."