Tag: AUN

Advertisers look to expand into online video advertising for 2014

Posted on by Andrew

Video advertising is poised to explode in 2014. The medium is gaining momentum across the board, and advertisers are jumping in head first.

Interested in video? Here are ten facts you should know.

  1. Video was the fastest-growing ad format in 2012.
  2. 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process.
  3. 80% of users recall a video ad they’ve seen within the last 30 days.
  4. Video viewers retain 95% of a message, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
  5. Americans watched a total of almost 50 billion video ads in October 2013
  6. eMarketer found that businesses are pulling money from traditional budgets in order to allocate more to online video.
  7. You can target online audiences the same ways you target with your normal display advertising.
  8. One-third of all time spent online is watching video.
  9. More online video has been uploaded in the last 30 days than all three major T.V. networks combined have created in the last 30 years.
  10. According to NPD, mobile and tablet shoppers are three times as likely to view a video as laptop or desktop visitors.

Video advertising is the ability to repurpose your T.V. commercials for the Internet. Imagine being able to show your T.V. ad only to people who were in market for a car? With online video advertising that’s a reality.

We can take your video and put it in front of people who’ve been researching for a car online, and even to those who’ve visited your website.

Take it to the next level for 2014. Get started with some video pre-roll advertising for your business.

Now Announcing: Million Dollar Test Drive

Posted on by Andrew

We’ve been working on this for a while, but we’re happy to announce a new product we’re starting called Million Dollar Test Drive. Million Dollar Test Drive is a promotional program for car dealers that drives floor traffic to your store, and creates new leads for your dealership.

Plus, every person who comes to a participating dealer gets their name entered into a drawing to win one million dollars!

Check out our site to learn more.

Digital Media and TV: The two pillars of any advertising budget

Posted on by Andrew

It seems that advertising is slowly turning into a two-horse race. In the days before digital media, there was a three-way split between print, radio, and TV. Now, TV and digital advertising are the only growing media channels. In a new report from Nielson, display advertising grew 26.6% during the first half of 2013. TV advertising grew at 4.2% during the same period.

While TV is admittedly a more mature market, the increase in display advertising is hard to ignore. It’s apparent the industry is turning to the two largest mediums to deliver the bulk of their advertising. The Internet and TV are far and away the biggest marketing channels available according to audience size and time spent on each medium.

We see a further consolidation of other media types when we look at some of the declines in advertising spend. Newspaper advertising is down 2% year-over-year, magazine advertising is down by 1.9%.  Even radio suffered from decreased spending during the same time period.

So how does this affect your advertising budget looking into 2014? One benefit is decreased complexity for you advertising plan. Instead of throwing dollars at newspapers and radio, you can shift your budget to TV and online display.

In 2014 it will be important to expand your digital strategy to find new customers online. More people buying digital media means more competition, so developing correct targeting techniques will be crucial.

If you’re curious about the different types of display available such as retargeting or pixel targeting, contact us and we can give you an overview of the types of targeting available for your business.

Beware the Automotive SEO Snake Oil

Posted on by Dave Pavlu

How to measure your Automotive SEO on a CPC level

Is your Automotive SEO company really moving the needle for you, or are they selling you snake oil? I have watched a lot of dealers spend a lot of money on microsites, premium content, videos, blogs and more, all in the name of “SEO.”  I think it is time to discuss some ways to measure your SEO to make sure you aren’t the guy buying a muffler bearing warranty from your web company.

A couple of caveats before we move on: I am NOT calling all Automotive SEOs snake oil salesmen.  I DO realize that every situation is different in regards to dealer placement on the SERP. The purpose of this article is simply to discuss some methods of measurement to make sure you are getting the most from your SEO budget.

Remember that search engines make money by delivering the best, most relevant search results possible.  Therefore, your dealership should automatically show up in the results for queries like: “your dealership name,” and “your make your city.” SEO’s true value comes in on trickier searches like; “make, model, your city” or  “your make your metro” or “your make your state.” You should benchmark your search results on these types of queries on a regular basis.

Searches like these are easy to measure in your analytics.  Here’s how you can calculate exactly what your CPC is on your SEO keywords:

  • Log into your Google Analytics.
  • On the left hand side of the dashboard click Traffic Sources, click Sources, then All Traffic.
  • Adjust your dates to the last 30 days.
  • Navigate to the Source/Medium column and select Search Engine/ Organic.
  • You’ve now isolated your organic traffic. Find the dropdown menu called Secondary Dimension and toggle that to Keyword. Now you can see nearly all of the keywords that were searched in order to drive traffic to your site.
  • Go up to the search bar for these results.  Click on Advanced and set the search to Include, Keyword, and Containing. Type in your word and hit apply.
  • Now you can see exactly how many times these words have delivered a prospect to your website.

Add up these clicks and divide the number into what you’re spending for SEO. This gives you an approximate cost per click on your SEO keywords.  You can also measure the value of each click by analyzing the time on site and bounce rate for these words. Plus, you can measure any goals you have set up in your analytics by hitting the Goal tab at the top of the page.

I’ve seen dealers spending thousands of dollars per month on elaborate microsite SEO programs that were yielding very few actual visitors. Plus, when we looked at cost per click we found they were paying 10 to 15 times what they were paying for similar paid search clicks.

The point here is that if you are paying monthly for SEO you should measure the results to make sure that you aren’t paying for snake oil, or overpaying for clicks you could have gotten cheaper through a paid search campaign.

Dave Pavlu is a twenty-year veteran of the retail automotive industry and the founder and CEO of AdsUpNow.com. AdsUpNow is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Seattle, WA that specializes in online marketing strategies that drive and capture first-party leads for car dealerships.

Google Leads in Display Advertising, Facebook is Gaining Ground

Posted on by Andrew

The latest numbers for total digital display advertising revenue are in, and it looks like Google remains on top.

In eMarketer’s latest report, they reported that Google remains the digital advertising king, capturing 40% of the overall market in 2012. Yahoo remains in second place with 8.6%, but the real up-and-comer is Facebook.

Facebook captured just 5.9% of the overall market in 2012, but they are set to reach 7.1% of the market in 2013. Plus, they are expected to overtake Yahoo in total revenue by 2014.

So what does this mean? It means you should start looking at doing some Facebook advertising. Facebook is set to be a major player in the digital advertising arena, and you should get on board.

Plus, with the Facebook Exchange, you have the ability to retarget your website visitors on Facebook, as well as target them with third-party data.

Go to AdsUpNow and learn more about how you can get started with a Facebook retargeting campaign.

Reaching Generation C – More Than Just Millenials

Posted on by Andrew

Google calls today’s modern digital consumer Generation C. This generation is not bound by an age demographic – instead they are bound by their use of digital media, social media, and online video (heavily Youtube of course).

Generation C mindset is characterized by its devotion to creation, curation, connection and community. They drive popular culture with photos, videos, memes and mash-ups.

Before you dismiss Generation C as an undesirable demographic to target, listen to this: they are responsible for influencing over half a trillion dollars in spending per year.

While 80% percent of millennials belong to generation C, this mindset is truly cross-generational, and includes members from Generation X and the Boomer Generation. In fact, because of this generation’s digital tendencies, they open up new advertising opportunities.

Google identifies 8 characteristics of Gen C:

Gen C is not a demographic – it’s a state of mind.

They’re the people who live digital. They spend more time online than they do watching TV.

Gen C strives for expression.

They are heavy users of social media and share photos and other content online.

Gen C is a taste-maker.
Made up of early-adopters, they set the trends that the rest of the population will soon follow. They also rely heavily on peer approval before making buying decisions.

Gen C defines the social network.

Almost 90% of Gen C has a social profile, and 65% of them update it every day.

YouTube is Gen C’s habitat for entertainment.

Gen C is twice as likely to be a YouTube viewer as the general population, and more likely to be a light TV viewer.

Gen C is constantly connected.

They eat, sleep and breathe the Internet and their smartphone. 91% of them sleep next to their smartphone.

Gen C connects on YouTube on all screens.
They watch mobile video on desktops, tablets and their smartphones

Gen C values relevance and originality.
They value conversation that aligns with their interests, and they aren’t opposed to ads that are relevant to them.

When you remove Google’s sales pitch for YouTube you’re still left with a compelling description of today’s modern digital consumers. These are the same consumers we connect with on behalf of dealerships across the country.

These consumers spend huge amounts of time on screens other than TV. They are mobile masters, using tools from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and YouTube. They may not know where their television remote is, but they definitely know where they can get online.

Their “water-cooler moment” is a link, a tweet or a tag. Instead of reaching them with a TV buy, you’re better off with pre-roll video and display advertising like retargeting or data-driven advertising like pixel targeting.

Learning to connect with Generation C will become more and more important throughout the next year and in the future. Remember, Generation C is a group of early adopters. As they go, goes the rest of the population. You want to make sure your advertising is primed to keep up.

Digital Media is Overtaking TV

Posted on by Andrew

Digital media has been growing like crazy for the past few years. And, as more people are spending time online, businesses have been shifting their advertising dollars online.

Up until now, increases in time spent on digital media have come at the expense of traditional media like radio and print advertising. However, TV has always remained in the top spot for advertisers, due to the huge amount of time people spend watching TV.

Now, it seems, TV’s reign is coming to an end. For the first time ever, time spent on digital media will surpass time spent watching TV. In a new report from eMarketer, the average adult will spend 5 hours a day online – including time spent on mobile. Daily time spent on TV will be an average of 4:31, which is nothing to sneeze at, but overall growth is down slightly, whereas time on digital is up 15.8%.

So what does this mean for you and your business? It means you need to start doing online advertising – especially on mobile. You used to buy TV because that’s where all the eyeballs were. Now, there are more online.

Dip your toe in the water and start a retargeting campaign for your business. It’s an easy way to get started with digital.

Win $500 in Free Mobile Marketing

Posted on by Andrew

Are you trying to find a cheap, easy way to get a mobile marketing campaign started for your business? Well look no further, because there’s a contest going on over at Fit Small Business where you can win $500 in free mobile advertising from NearWoo.

Head on over to Fit Small Business to enter the contest. Businesses must sign up by August 15, so go sign up!

5 Tips For Building a Better Mobile Site

Posted on by Andrew

One of the most basic things you can do to grow your business is get a solid mobile plan. Thankfully, this doesn’t require any major investments like developing a mobile app – it can be as simple as getting a basic mobile website.

In one of Google’s studies, they found 57% of mobile users won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site. Additionally, 40% of mobile users turn to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.

So what should you do? It’s time to get a mobile site. A mobile site is the easiest way to bring more customers into your business. For example: 95% of smartphone users have searched for local info, 61% called a business after searching, 59% visited in person, and 90% of these users acted within 24 hours.

Here are our top five tips for you to get started with your mobile website:

1. Make it Fast

Mobile users are usually searching for your website while on the go, trying to get things done while they go about their day. In order to serve them, remove clutter and give them the basics they need to contact you such as your phone number, address and hours of operation.

2. Make Conversion Easy

Mobile users have higher purchase intent than desktop users, but they still need additional prodding to make a purchase. Focus on information that will help the mobile user convert: product details, photo galleries and simplified data entry.

3. Make it Touch-Friendly

Clear navigation is key with mobile users, as they don’t have as much screen real estate as their desktop counterparts. Minimize scrolling and make buttons large enough to press with a thumb. If a user “fat-fingers” a link one too many times, they might leave and never come back.

4. Make it Seamless

Users might check your website out at home, and then be reminded to check it while they are on the go. If they navigate to your mobile website and it is a vastly different experience from your desktop version, they might be unnerved. Keep logos and colors uniform across both sites, so it’s obvious that they are visiting your mobile site, not one of their competitors.

5. Make it Accessible

Your mobile site needs to work on more than one platform. Android and iOS make up the lion’s share of smartphone users, but you still need to cater to the millions of people that use other operating systems. Also, use HTML as flash doesn’t show up on mobile devices.

It’s time to get started with a mobile advertising campaign. Your business should be reaching as many people as possible, and mobile is the best course of action.

If you follow these tips in creating your mobile website then you should have no problem in converting and cashing in on the growing crop of mobile users.

Dealers Across The Country Are Investing In Digital – Are You?

Posted on by Andrew

Everyone knows that most people do the majority of the research for their next car online. Now, it looks like dealers are chasing online customers with an increased focus into online advertising. In a new report from eMarketer, the auto industry will spend more than $5 billion in 2013 on digital advertising, up 18.9% from 2012.

The majority of this increased spend will go into search and display advertising, but mobile, video, social and local are growing as well. This increased investment into digital will make the US auto industry the second-largest spender on digital media.

If you haven’t done much digital advertising for you dealership, you’d better jump on board quick. We recommend a paid search campaign, retargeting campaign and pixel targeting campaign for most dealerships.

Digital marketing is a great way to increase traffic for your website, and can provide real, measureable results that you can track in real-time on your Analytics.