Category: Video Advertising

3 Reasons to Make Digital Video Advertising a Priority Now

Posted on

For some automotive marketers, the decision to embark on a video advertising campaign may still be undecided. If you’re in this camp, you may be losing valuable time and impressions to your competitors. Here are three reasons why you should be including video in your dealership advertising mix. 

1. Your customers are spending more time online. 

Over the course of 2020, consumers in most markets across the country were required to adapt their daily routines and shopping behaviors in order to comply with safety guidelines. This included spending more time at home and less time browsing or researching inventory in person.  

For consumers in the market for a new or pre-owned vehicle, this shift resulted in more people going online for the information needed to reach a purchase decision. As a result, there are two trends occurring: 

  • The number of people consuming content online is increasing. 
  • The average number of hours per day people are online is increasing. 

The numbers speak for themselves. In a recent study by Facebook, at a platform level, 53% of people are browsing Facebook more often and 32% are using Instagram more often. And Akamai, the world’s largest content distribution network, reports running 67% more web traffic than normal. Lastly, daily mobile traffic has jumped from an average of 2.5 hours per day to almost 4 hours.* As this traffic continues to increase, so too does the consumption of digital video content. 

2. How your customers consume video content is changing.  

Traditional TV programming, including cable and satellite subscriptions, is seeing a decrease in viewers year over year. This trend is commonly referred to as “cord-cutting.” Industry experts foresee an acceleration in cord-cutting and an increase in the consumption of streaming video.  

Cord-cutting and other measured changes in behavior are driving marketers to rethink how and where they target shoppers with new inventory and automotive service marketing. 

  • In 2020, 20% of U.S. households have cut the cord on traditional TV 
  • Of those still watching traditional TV, 73% are using their smartphones 
  • Each day, 4 billion videos are viewed on Facebook and 5 billion on YouTube 

While more people are going online, they’re consuming data and video in multiple ways. Consumers are spoiled for choice when it comes to how they access streaming video. The range of connected devices includes smartphones, smart TVs, gaming platforms, and other instruments (ex. Apple TV and Roku). 

3. Views and overall video consumption are increasing.  

We know more people are watching more videos. To underscore this fact, here is a figure that may surprise you: YouTube has 1.9B monthly users. It’s important for digital marketers to be aware of how enormous this platform is, and the opportunity for getting in front of their target audience and influencing these users. 

It’s worth considering why YouTube has so many users. YouTube is the #2 search engine after Google, and automotive content is a major contributor to this usage case. 

  • Nearly 4 million automotive videos are viewed on YouTube every day. 
  • Test-drive videos outnumber in-store test drives 2:1 – an increase of 105% since 2015. 

From videos of virtual test drives to reviews of the latest model, YouTube offers an abundance of information for consumers interested in purchasing a vehicle. This creates a virtual pool of in-market shoppers. To tap into this market, dealers need a partner that can turn data into effective video advertising and create conversations relevant to your customer’s place in the car shopping journey.  

Here is one more reason to make video advertising a priority now: your competition is distributing videos and capturing the attention of your potential customers. Video is the #2 format for discovering new vehicles in the consideration set. If you are not meeting consumers everywhere they want to shop, you are at increased risk of losing the sale to the dealership down the street. 

 
Dealer.com acts as your very own automotive advertising agency, powering consumer experiences from anywhere. Deliver the right message from your Digital Storefront to every customer, wherever they are, with video advertising from the industry’s only complete digital marketing solution. 

*Source: Think With Google 

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Investing in Digital Video Advertising

Posted on

By Jon Torrey, Dealer.com Senior Product Manager 

Digital video advertising has proven to be an effective channel for reaching audiences and converting new customers. Given its track record for success, there is a surprising shortage of companies taking advantage of the medium.  The reason why is simple—they do not have the video assets or production capabilities to do so. This hurdle means video advertising is a historically underpriced advertising channel, but is it right for your dealership?  

Of course, no advertising channel is right for everyone. Every dealership has unique qualities, markets, tactics, challenges, and goals. But the current opportunity is too good not to explore, and your dealership should at least consider leveraging these channels. The following list of questions can help determine whether it’s an investment worth pursuing.  

  1. Where are you currently using video advertising? Traditional television, connected TV, YouTube, or other(s)? 
  2. For the channels that you are using, why have you chosen to invest in it? Why have you chosen not to invest in others? 
  3. How do your current advertising channels perform? What KPIs are you using to evaluate their performance, and are the metrics different across the various channels?  
  4. Based on your evaluation of performance, how are you making decisions regarding where to lower budgets, where to increase budgets, and where keep them the same?  
  5. Have you considered testing a new channel to compare performance using the same KPIs? Why or why not?  
  6. Is there an element of “we’ve always done it this way” influencing your investment decision? Does this take into account recent changes in market and consumer behavior? 
  7. Are you showing ads in the places where your shoppers can be found? How do you know? 
  8. What are the core and unique value propositions of your OEM brand, and are these value propositions the same for your dealership? Are they being effectively communicated by your current marketing assets? 

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, and every dealership will answer them differently. The idea is to think deeply about your current advertising investments and draw your own conclusions.  

If your answers to these questions present digital video advertising as a promising opportunity for your dealership, then you may face the same challenge that many others have encountered—an overcommitment to TV advertising. Digital advertising is often seen as competing with traditional TV advertising for share of the budget. For some dealerships, TV has been a mainstay and there’s hesitation to let it go or reduce that budget.  

A simple experiment can help dealerships work through this challenge: run a limited placement of digital video. It’s important to take a step back and recognize attachment or bias toward certain advertising channels, including TV, before reflecting on its performance. Oftentimes, as dealerships take an objective view of advertising channel performance, they end up moving more and more budget over to that channel. 

Now is the time to evaluate your current advertising strategy and test new channels. Because the number of advertisers is limited, digital video is affordable and, in most cases, can compete with television at a much lower price point. Act quickly. Start asking questions and running tests to help you decide if you’re ready to jump on this unique opportunity.