It's no secret that audio advertising has been a cornerstone of the automotive industry for years. Traditional radio spots have long been used to promote the latest car models, but the automotive advertising landscape is rapidly changing in its effort to reach car buyers. New partners like AudioGO are helping car dealerships reach these buyers using digital audio advertising.
Car dealerships grapple with the distinct challenge of getting potential buyers into their showrooms. They must reach people looking to make their next car purchase and, more importantly, entice them to physically visit the dealership. To enable this reach, dealers are leveraging digital advertising platforms with precise ad targeting capabilities that go beyond the conventional approaches.
Digital Audio Advertising
With the rise of digital devices and content, consumption of digital audio content has dramatically increased over the years. By the numbers, digital audio reaches an incredible swath of Americans each month — an estimated 75% of the population aged 12 and up, more than 209 million people, according to Edison Research. In addition, listeners consume digital audio media for an average of 4+ hours every day.
This is where digital audio advertising plays a powerful role. Audience targeting helps to reach the right people by demographics, location, and buying intent. Further, advertising campaigns can be tracked in real-time, allowing for instant feedback and optimization opportunities.
AudioGO takes the driver seat when it comes to digital audio advertising. As a self-serve advertising platform, AudioGO streamlines the process of crafting, scheduling, and launching audio advertisements. It has an expansive publisher network of over 100 million unique monthly listeners in the United States and Canada. Advertisers can finely target their audience based on age, gender, time, location, language, music or podcast genre, and over 200 different interests and listener statuses.
Shifting Gears: From Search Engines to Audio
Buying Google ads and paid search advertising have been effective marketing techniques in the automotive industry for years. But now the automotive search advertising market has become increasingly competitive and costly. Dealerships are facing higher marketing expenses, higher cost per leads, and less profitability at the end of the day.
A recent Statista study found that automotive ad spending will reach $20.8 billion in 2023 — an almost 8% increase from the $19.3 billion spent in 2022. Of course, dealerships want to spend those ad dollars wisely.
Auto dealers have found higher performance out of their campaigns by complementing it with audio advertising.
For example, audio advertising can help increase brand recognition as users hear ads on their favorite podcasts and then later search online for deals they heard about. This subsequently improves the performance of their paid search campaigns as users search online and paid ads are front and center. Additionally, advertisers can use display retargeting for those listeners to reach them again.
Audio advertising has proven to keep advertising costs down and be an effective way at generating leads, as this case study will show.
Case Study: Formatic Digital & Allen of Monroe
Formatic Digital, an automotive digital marketing agency, and Allen of Monroe, a Chevy dealership in Monroe, Michigan, partnered with AudioGO to tap into this burgeoning audio advertising channel.
Impressive Results
Allen of Monroe was able to reach more local car buyers.
Here’s how it worked:
Formatic Digital delivered over 180,000 audio ads for Allen of Monroe. These ads were strategically delivered to a highly engaged audience actively seeking new cars in their local market. With an average frequency of 12 ads per listener, the campaign not only penetrated the community but was also effective at amplifying its message.
Moreover, Allen of Monroe was able to identify listeners who had heard the audio ads and retarget them with display ads. This strategy alone resulted in over 260 clicks to their website from those banners and drove hundreds of unique listeners who heard the ad directly to their website — all of which can be meticulously tracked.
"The combination of audio and display is powerful. Reaching the same car buyers multiple times in a month with audio ads and display ads encourages buyers to learn more online and come buy a car in person. Add in all the tracking mechanisms, and it is clear that audio is having a noticeable impact on my business,” John Allen, President, Allen of Monroe.
AudioGO's ad tracking reporting provided helpful data as the campaign progressed, including the impressions, number of listeners and clicks, and demographic breakdown. They also received a real-time view of ad spend that showed how much funds have been used from the predetermined budget.
John Allen emphasized the significance of delivering the right message to the right audience:
"It has to be something they want to hear about. Knowing who my customers are and what my customers want, I know I can reach them with the right message by targeting them based on where they are, who they are, and the fact that they are in the market to buy when they hear my ad.” — John Allen
Audio Advertising is a Game Changer for Dealers
As demonstrated in the case study, the results show how car dealers can make advertising more effective and less costly by adding audio advertising to their campaign mix. The car sales market is competitive and audio advertising can be an effective way to stay ahead of the competition.
Allen of Monroe’s experience shows that the power of audio advertising is a solution worth exploring for your dealership's success.
Get in the Driver Seat and Take it for a Spin
Give AudioGO a try now. It only takes just a few minutes to put together an advertisement campaign:
- Set your budget.
- Choose the schedule for airing ads.
- Upload your own audio or have one created for you.
- Define your demographic audience. You’ll be able to determine specific locations by city or zip code, and target listeners by age, gender, listener device, and over 500 different personas like 'new car buyers' or 'used car buyers' to name a few.
