auto advertising

In the past two weeks, no fewer than 13 auto marques (including Honda, above) have launched new TV campaigns designed to move the last of the 2015 inventory off the lot. In fact, the only top spender that has yet to kick off a year-end sales push is Toyota; expect increasingly manic spokeswoman Jan to get into the spirit of Toyotathon by donning the Santa hat in early December.

Car sales hit a 14-year high, prompting automakers to hike ad spending to entice buyers into their showrooms. However, those ad dollars are increasingly going to online media.

Toyota Motor Corp.’s global sales for the first three quarters totaled 7.498 million vehicles, down 1.5% from the same period the previous year, according to numbers released Monday. Volkswagen AG of Germany sold 7.43 million vehicles, almost unchanged from the previous year, while GM sold 7.2 million vehicles, down 1%.

Since hitting record low sales in 2008, the auto industry has surged. That’s good news for local TV says Jason Stein of Automotive News. Local dealers are spending up to six times what they did in 2009 on TV advertising, he said. And with the market so “red hot,” car manufacturers, which usually spend on national ads, are also buying more local TV.

More and more stations and groups are taking the initiative in securing and growing the crucial auto category at a time when stations’ share of ad marketing dollars are not keeping pace with booming auto sales as they have in the past. One tack is an increasing interest in programmatic buying and selling, while another is to aggressively follow auto dollars into the digital realm. Publisher’s Note: Deep Dive is a new, branded feature of TVNewsCheck.com. It is offered free today as a sneak preview of the kind of in-depth content soon to be offered in the our Premium Member Center. To read the first part, click here.

Auto companies are driving digital spend this year, with Ford in the lead. The six leading auto companies by volume have increased their online advertising activities since January, according to MediaRadar, a New York-based advertising sales consultancy.

The old rule of thumb that TV station auto revenue will mirror the growth (or decline) of auto sales no longer seems to be holding true. Experts say it’s due to lower overall auto spending on advertising, an unmeasured shift of money to mobile and continuing hard-nosed competition from the scores of basic cable networks. In Part II, which will post Aug. 26, we’ll look at how some broadcasters are working to rev up their auto business. Publisher’s Note: Deep Dive is a new, branded feature of TVNewsCheck.com. It is offered free today as a sneak preview of the kind of in-depth content soon to be offered in the our Premium Member Center. Details? Stay tuned.

The annual March Madness college basketball tournament is giving advertisers multiple shots at their desired audience. Car companies advertising during the NCAA basketball tournament’s Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds, for instance, received an average “brand lift” of 59.7%, according to a survey from video ad firm Extreme Reach, which polled about 200,000 respondents on how likely they were to purchase a particular brand’s automobile.

GMC will roll out its broadest advertising campaign in 15 years today, as General Motors seeks to raise awareness of its low-profile truck brand by polishing its reputation for craftsmanship.

The car industry isn’t slowing down when it comes to employing more data for everything from vehicle malfunctions to marketing. In fact, in terms of digital advertising, the category looks like it’s putting the pedal to the metal, as tech vendors, publishers and other players increasingly roll out new offerings to attract automotive ad buyers who are demanding better results.

Rentrak today announced a TV ratings contract with Saatchi and Saatchi Los Angeles. Saatchi & Saatchi LA will adopt Rentrak’s national TV ratings currency, including its automotive segmentations. “We are […]

Nissan’s CMO Roel de Vries is bullish on digital, and for good reason — 80% to 90% of the car-buying experience now starts online. Car shoppers already know exactly what model they want before they step foot into a dealership, he says. That shift is pushing Nissan full throttle into digital advertising for brand-building and direct-response marketing.

Robust sales usually prompt bursts in ad spending by auto manufacturers and dealers, yet revenue is flat for first-half 2014. It could be digital is being undercounted.

Known for his casual, laid-back charm, Rowe was the face of Ford cars, trucks and service for seven years in TV spots created by WPP Group’s Team Detroit. “We decided after a great association with Mike Rowe for several years that it was time to move in a new direction,” said a Ford spokesman. “We are no longer working together.”

According to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report, advertisers spent less on automotive advertising in the first half of the year than they did in 2012. Auto ad spend decreased by 3.1% in the first six months of 2013, but maintained a 9.2% share of ad spend. And ad budgets in financial services and entertainment took hits of 1.7% and 1.2% for the year to date, now accounting for 6.3% and 13% of total ad spend for the period, respectively.

A new report from Kantar Media finds that from 2009, at the start of the recession, to 2012, TV’s share of auto ad spending rose by almost 10 percentage points, going from 53.9% in 2009 to 63.3% in 2012. At the same time, the percentage of auto budgets dedicated to newspapers, magazines and even new media fell.

Nielsen’s Ian Beavis says successful auto campaigns must be tailored to car buyers, who watch slightly less TV than other viewers and tune in most heavily during primetime and latenight. “We need to improve creative across platforms, place advertising where people watch it and cut through clutter.”

Land Rover is launching a considerable integrated campaign this week for its 2014 Range Rover Sport that entails inspiration-minded TV spots, an interactive game called “Race the Sun” and iAds, among other elements. All told, per the brand, the effort — dubbed “Driven To Another Level” — represents the automaker’s biggest global push ever.

As LinkedIn evolves from a job networking site into a professional publishing platform, it wants to expand its ad base as well beyond the B2B category. To that end, the company is touting research indicating the site’s audience is a natural fit for auto advertisers.

As a sales manager, do you know what steps you need to incorporate now to make sure that your sales pros are properly positioned to take advantage of the advertising shift to digital products? The answer lies in four categories: people, knowledge, products and return on investment.

Online and mobile outlets are expected to see a nearly 19% rise in automotive advertising, while the category continues to drain away from legacy media, according to a new report from Borrell Associates. Newspapers are expected to be hit hardest, with auto ad levels falling almost 30%.

Following report after report of robust auto sales to start the year, the first-quarter ad spending numbers were a bit of a surprise. Automotive spending, the biggest single advertising category, was down slightly to start the year. It declined 0.5% according to data from Kantar Media, from $3.369 billion in January to March 2012 to $3.352 billion during the same period this year. The reason? The lack of new car launches during the first three months.

This year, both Univision and its main competitor Telemundo (which control roughly 90% of the market between them, with Univision the larger network by quite a bit) have seen upticks in categories that are declining in the general market, notably automotive. Fragmentation has pulled tens of millions of viewers away from live broadcast television and into the worlds of cable, streaming and on-demand content, but one sector of broadcast that seems to be weathering the storm better than most is Spanish-language and otherwise Hispanic-focused broadcast television.

Mitsubishi’s campaign for its redesigned 2014 Outlander crossover will have to help the brand find a route back to relevance in the U.S.

Ford, GM and Chrysler sold a total of 144,042 full-size pickups, up 29% from last April, driven by strength in the U.S. housing industry. Overall sales grew 8.5% to nearly 1.3 million. While that’s the industry’s best April total since 2007, the pace slowed from the first three months of this year.

Auto advertising has revived right along with auto sales over the past two years, with 2012 spending up more than any other top-10 ad category. But with a slight slowdown in the pace of car sales this year, advertising may slow along with it. Analysts say that the auto advertising boom is reaching its final stages. Though the category will continue to gain modestly in the coming year, it won’t keep the same pace as it did in 2010 through 2012.

Carmakers’ Super Bowl commercials like the Mercedes Benz spot starring Kate Upton so far are dominating viewership among the big game’s ads on YouTube. Car company Super Bowl teases or commercials scheduled to run during the big game held the top five spots as of 10 a.m. ET Thursday, YouTube owner Google said Thursday.

Citi researcher Itay Michaeli warns that a number of factors are holding back a total rebound in automotive sales. “The recovery should not be taken for granted. It’s not a matter of when. It’s a matter of if.”

Automotive advertising has been on the rise the couple few months, with foreign manufacturers and dealers helping to drive up spending in the category despite the economic woes that continue to plague the country. Through May total auto spending is up 3%, according to Kantar Media, with gains during May and April helping to balance out slight losses earlier in the year.

The automaker’s lackluster ads and loss of marketing head Joel Ewanick raise doubts about GM’s ability to improve sales longer term. Experts say that even though it’s making better cars and trucks, advertising has failed to get the message across. Despite spending upwards of $4 billion a year on marketing, GM hasn’t been able to dent the perception that other brands are better.

Vince Sadusky tells analysts that with automotive back to accounting for a pre-recession level of 26% of its revenue, “from where we sit, we view the auto industry as being healthier than it’s been in a long, long time” and sees it continuing. In addition, the company says to expect 3Q revenues to be up 26% to 33% from the year-ago mark of $97.8 million.

Nissan North America is launching the campaign for its 2013 Altima. It will be the company’s largest ever. The effort, via TBWAChiatDay, begins with four TV spots and a lot of digital advertising, plus print and out-of-home.

As the U.S. auto industry motors toward a broad recovery, Borrell Associates forecasts that national and local advertising spending will rise nearly 14% in 2012, to $30.8 billion, and that about 40 cents of every media dollar will be channeled toward digital.

Debt ratings service Moody’s Investors Service projects an “advertising windfall” for virtually all traditional media in a report this morning that says auto makers will sell 14 milion vehicles this year, up 9.3% vs 2011.

Automotive advertisers have hit the brakes on ads that lure customers with no-money-down offers. On the plus side: U.S. auto sales rose slightly in August. But according to J.D. Power & Associates, the average year-to-date incentive on car purchases is $2,600 per unit compared to over $3,000 in 2008.

With an expected fourth-quarter upsurge in spending by Japanese automakers, stations are urged to demonstrate to dealers the reach of television, as well as options such as time-targeted ads and multi-platform plans.

While the forecasters may quibble about the speed of the auto (and auto advertising) recovery, they all agree there is one and that the growth should continue at some level for the next several years. BIA/Kelsey projects that ad spending by the automotive industry on local television by 2015 will total $4.2 billion annually, equal to 2007 levels, the culmination of a steady turnaround of ad dollars from the low point of 2009. It also projects that spot TV will maintain its 26% share of total local ad spend through 2015.

Automakers and dealerships have hit the brakes on auto spending this year, after roaring back in 2010 following a dismal 2009. But the category will still see healthy gains in 2011. Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, talks about where auto advertising is growing, why newspapers are included in that lot, and what’s driving the shift to online spending.

Belo CFO Carey Hendrickson said the station group has experienced cancellations by auto advertisers related to the trouble in Japan, but not at an unanticipated level. That has “remained within our initial expectations” for the second quarter,” he told investors.

Media companies have been touting the resurgence of the auto category and a Wall Street analyst has put an estimate on it: Spending was up 20% in 2010. That accounted for 32% of overall ad growth. Total category spending was $14.8 billion. In 2011 Michael Nathanson of Nomura projects total auto ad spending to be up 6.4% to $15.7 billion, and rise 7% in 2012 to $16.8 billion.