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Slide 1: In-House Digital Advertising http://www.automotivedealersnetwork.com/Articles/RPaglia/InHouseDig... SUPERIOR DEALER SOLUTIONSsm In-House Digital Advertising (continued) part 2 of 3 In this second installment of our 3 part series on Automotive Digital Advertising we will take a look at the ads themselves. What the ads look like, the animation or video they incorporate, combined with what the dealer’s offer is to prospective car buyers are among the most important characteristics that determine whether or not the online portion of a dealer’s ad campaign produces the desired results. Display Advertising - For most dealers, the objective of online advertising is to generate traffic into dealership showrooms and websites. However, if a dealer wants to “brand” the dealership while increasing the levels of consideration and top-of-mind awareness amongst automotive consumers within the store’s local market, then display advertising is one of today’s most cost effective ways of getting it done. Driving traffic into a dealer’s website can also be achieved with online advertising, but both branding an d traffic focused campaigns are highly dependant on the look and feel generated by the artwork and messaging contained within the advertisements themselves. Search Engine Advertising - Over 70% of automotive consumers searching for information on vehicles and dealers use a Google supplied search engine. So the Google Adwords format dominates the Search Advertising considerations for content. Google limits sponsored links (ads) to a 25 c haracter headline, two lines of ad copy limited to 35 characters each, and a URL displayed to consumers that is limited to 25 characters. Keep in mind that the actual targeted URL that the ad points to can be as much as a thousand characters, but the root domain of that URL which is shown in the sponsored link is limited to 25 characte rs. Here’s what a Google Search Engine Ad looks like: Your Power Tempe Dealer Get One Month of Gas with Purchase. Get Our Low Price Quote Today! PowerToyotaOffers.com Phoenix, AZ Although Search Engine Advertising can achieve some relatively minor levels of dealership brand awareness and consideration when viewed, their context of being viewed as the result of a consumer searching for a link to a website means that the primary objective for the ad is to get selected and clicked on. Dealers get to choose consumers who see these sponsored links (ads) based on the words searched (keywords) and where the people searching for websites relevant to those keywords are physically located (Geotargeted). Keywords that the dealers bids upon are selected based on what the dealer believes will indi cate that the searcher is in the market to buy a car, order parts or schedule service. Buying Search Advertising - With both Google and Yahoo!, the bidding that determines the cost of a Search Advertising Campaign is based on how much a dealer is willing to pay to get a customer to the landing page and website of the dealer’s choice. This is called Cost-Per-Click or CPC and is also known as Pay-Per-Click or PPC search engine advertising. In our third installment, we will take a close look at the various ways a dealer can buy Digital Advertising, how they each work and examples of dealer invoices based on those billing descriptions. Importance of Creative and Message Content - In this segment of our 3 part series we are focused on the following question: How will you create the text and artwork that is needed for your online advertisements? Let’s face it; very few dealerships have the staff or skills available to create Banner Ads, Animated GIF’s, Video Ads, Expanding Display Ads, Multimedia and Interactive Flash-based Ads. And there are the issues around using online display ad hosting services that companies like DoubleClick provide . There are many requirements and other creative materials that your dealership will need to have truly effective online display ads. OK, I can hear what you are thinking… “I’ll get me some cheap software and build ads myself…” Well, before you start believing it is that easy (I did), consider this; if you spend a bunch of money to run online ads for your dealership and they suck, then you just wasted a pile of cash. Worse than that, you may have hurt the entire dealership’s reputation by displaying amateurish or even offensive looking ads on websites used by your local customer base. Online Ad Campaign Points of Failure - When I look at the difference between online advertising campaigns 7/1/2008 10:02 AM 1 of 1