June 2005   

Automotive Ads on Auto Websites Dramatically Increase Purchase Intent

Recent analysis of Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms® (Q4/2004) shows that auto ads can build Brand Awareness very well on just about any type of website, but can dramatically increase Purchase Intent when running on auto sites.

The chart below shows an indexing of the average delta, or impact, on Brand Awareness and Purchase Intent/Consideration for four different types of websites. For awareness, there is little difference in advertising performance based on website type (they all hover around the index red line, which represents the average impact for all automotive advertising), confirming the ability of automakers to make consumers aware of their brand across auto, business/finance, news & info and sports sites.

However, when consumers are past the awareness stage and are more engaged in the buying process, auto advertising is most effective on auto-type sites. In fact, advertising on auto sites is considerably more effective at improving Purchase Intent/Consideration than the average impact on non-auto sites (see the higher blue bar on the left side of the graph). Since the message reaches consumers while they are further along the purchase funnel, it is not surprising that advertising on auto sites can have a greater persuasive impact. People who are in the market to buy a vehicle are more likely to be receptive to messaging about pricing deals and product differentiation.

Some reasons why:

Auto site visitors are likely to have a higher level of interest in cars or trucks and may already be more informed than other consumers about vehicles in the marketplace. Therefore, baseline awareness may be higher among auto site visitors than among visitors to other sites, leaving less room for improvement. In addition, aided awareness among all consumers for many vehicles is very high, reducing the potential for large differences in the impact of advertising on this metric across sites.

The messages delivered on auto sites may already be different from those delivered on business/finance, news & info or sports sites. Since auto site visitors may be closer to purchase, advertisers may tailor messaging on these sites to create persuasion rather than awareness.

Simply stated, lower-funnel messaging to drive favorability of a brand or intent to purchase has less impact on people who are not considering purchasing the product at that time. To be most effective, marketers should leverage a broad range of website types when the goal is to drive awareness, then focus persuasion-oriented auto advertising on auto-specific sites to increase intent to purchase.

NOTE: Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms® is a marketing effectiveness database. These findings are aggregate in nature, reflect past results and are not a guarantee of future results for individual campaigns.