Study Shows Where Car Marketers Can Rev Up Purchase Intent

If you’re looking to build an automotive brand, pretty much any Web site will do, but, to drive purchase intent, use an auto-specific site. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis of Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms database.

The data, which includes aggregated metrics from more than 2 million surveys and 1,700 online ad campaigns, shows that automotive ads generate aided brand awareness roughly equally well on sports, news/information, business/finance and automotive sites. Automotive and sports sites performed slightly better than the norm, while news/information and business/finance sites were a little worse than the norm.

“For advertisers that are looking to increase awareness and find that automotive sites are in a sold-out situation, they shouldn’t hesitate to buy media on a sports site,” said Ken Mallon, vice president of product development at Dynamic Logic.

When people are ready to buy, however, automotive sites appear to be much more effective than others at driving purchase intent, the research firm found. Automotive sites performed 232 percent better than business/finance sites, 254 percent better than news/information sites and 844 percent better than sports sites.

“This is really no surprise, it’s something that people have assumed for a long time, but it hasn’t really been quantified,” said Mallon. “The main reason is that people are in a mode, when they’re on automotive sites, to shop, and so they’re looking for things that involve purchase.”

Dynamic Logic concluded that in-market visitors to auto sites have a higher level of baseline awareness — leaving less room for improvement. The company also suggested that the types of ads placed on auto sites might simply be more effective in driving purchase intent.