Study: Auto marketers should target lifestyle hubs

A new study from ValueClick Media and Goodway 2.0 suggests that consumers are not as greatly influenced by "traditional" online marketing efforts. The study suggests that rather than typical automotive hubs, marketers should target across a broader range of online categories.

by Kristina Knight

The study suggests that the greatest return on investment may be found from targeting different lifestyle-type online hubs. The study also indicates that targeting specific content within a website rather than the website as a whole is a better option.

To come to these results, researchers studied five campaigns from different car manufacturers; some were local campaigns, others were nationally-based in the US. Campaigns which were run on a larger number of websites and then optimized based on performance had better results than the campaigns which pre-targeted network channels or so-called "in-market" auto buying sites. Another interesting tidbit from the study is that researchers found very few consumers actually looked on in-market sites when interested in buying a new car.

"What the research shows, is that every brand and model perform differently across different regions and local markets, and that using a broad-reach vehicle like a [advertising] network and letting optimization technology predict what sites are most likely to perform, drove meaningful, cost-effective performance," says Jay Friedman, president of Goodway 2.0.