Internet Research Pro

Auto Sales Plunge In June; GM Beats Toyota

Situation
• Automakers suffer huge losses in June sales report
• GM down 18.2% but Toyota fell even more: 21.4%
• Honda only automaker to post increase, a slight 1.1% jump
• Chrysler down 35.9%; Ford down 27.9%
• Sales reflect rapid loss of consumer interest in SUVs
2008 Chevy Malibu
Significance
• Toyota car sales down 9.4% but trucks crumbled at 38.8%
• GM stock traded slightly higher after reports released
• For Jan-Jan, GM sales down 16.3%; Toyota down 6.8%
• Chrysler trying to boost sales w/ $2.99 gas guarantee
• But Chrysler car sales off 48.5%, trucks off 30.1%
• Honda saw 19.3% jump in car sales while its trucks fell 24%
Read Quotes

Click Here for Full Digest and Source Article:
• http://www.automotivedigest.com/view_art.asp?articlesID=24749
Sourced From: MSNBC.msn.com, July 1, 2008

Can TV-Related Web Searches Prove Strong Advertising Avenue?

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — With the current sales dampening in the auto industry, it becomes paramount for automakers to find innovative ways to reach potential buyers. According to a recent study from J.D. Power and Associates, the industry may be best served by tapping into online television content.

The summer edition of the 2008 Power Auto Online Media Study examines how new-vehicle shoppers utilize the Internet and points out Web sites that effectively target strong advertising audiences.

One of the best audiences? People who go to the Web for TV-related purposes.

The data revealed that 68 percent claimed they use the Internet to find information on TV shows. Furthermore, 22 percent more new-vehicle shoppers access TV content online compared with 2007.

Additionally, the study showed that TV-related content is one of the top three types of information that consumers access on the Web. The others include travel-related info and news.

"As the automotive market struggles in the current economy, it becomes even more important for manufacturers and advertisers to effectively target the diminishing number of consumers who are seeking to purchase a new vehicle," explained Arianne Walker, director of marketing and media research at J.D. Power.

"J.D. Power and Associates forecasts that fewer than 15 million new vehicles will be sold in 2008, compared with the 16.1 million sold in 2007. As new-vehicle sales shrink, understanding which advertising mediums will provide the best balance of audience reach and composition is absolutely critical," Walker continued.

"As more new-vehicle buyers seek information regarding television shows on the Web, advertisers can benefit from increasing their focus on this medium," Walker added.

The top sites that new-vehicle shoppers visit when looking for TV content include CNN.com (30 percent reach), MSNBC (24 percent), ESPN.com (23 percent) and FoxNews.com (21 percent).

ABC was the most-visited TV network Web site as 16 percent of new-vehicle buyers accessed the site, while CBS and NBC were each at 13 percent.

"Television networks are expanding the types of content offerings available on their Web sites to increase their online audience," Walker illustrated. "In particular, television network sites are issuing online broadcasts of archived television shows, which exposes viewers to pre- and post-roll advertising placements."

Premium-vehicle shoppers are the most likely to search for TV content online and are 8 percent more apt to research data about TV shows online compared to the average new-vehicle buyer.

The report also broke it down by the segments most likely to access TV show info online. Almost four-fifths (79 percent) of midsize premium SUV buyers, 76 percent of compact premium crossover shoppers and 75 percent of midsize premiums were likely to view such content.

Meanwhile, midsize premium conventional vehicle shoppers had the most dramatic rise in online TV content consumption from 2007 at 41 percent.

"Premium-brand vehicle buyers tend to be frequent users of digital video recorders, and of the 49 percent of buyers who have DVRs, the vast majority of them — 97 percent — tend to skip commercials when they watch recorded TV programming," Walker explained. "Fortunately for advertisers, their propensity to view television content online provides an ideal alternative way to expose advertising messages to this audience."

And even though online TV content has typically been geared toward Generation Y audiences (born between 1977 and 2002), other generations are approaching the same level of interest the data showed.

"While 81 percent of Generation Y buyers visit Web sites regarding television shows, 80 percent of Generation X buyers and 73 percent of baby boomer buyers are also seeking this content, demonstrating that this medium is an effective way to reach new-vehicle buyers in various generational demographic groups," Walker concluded.

For more information, visit www.jdpower.com.

To Shift Brand Dollars Online

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — The Internet is badly underdeveloped as a brand advertising medium, and it’s not just “a matter of time” before those premium dollars shift online in search of anything other than cheap fill. After over 10 years in the mainstream of American life, the Internet now accounts for over 25% of U.S. adult media attention, but less than 8% of brand spending. Blue-chip brand marketers recognize this as a dangerous gap, but the Internet has presented as too fragmented, too complicated, and, ironically, even too derivative of traditional media to attract a meaningful share of brand spending.
The Internet has developed as a direct-response medium for the simple reason that interactivity, the property that distinguishes the Internet from traditional media, makes direct-response marketing easy and powerful. Interactivity allows users to indicate their interests, either through search or some other telling online behavior, and allows marketers to present offers directly to those users. Not surprisingly, the biggest ad spenders on the Internet today are direct-response marketers. What is needed to shift brand dollars online is a unique ad proposition for the medium “upstream”—in the areas of awareness building and preference shaping that account for the bulk of media spending by large, sophisticated marketers.
The question for this medium is: how do you harness interactivity, and its output data, in a way that can be put to use for brand advertisers on a mass scale? Well, even the most sophisticated, deep-pocketed marketers are limited in their ability to reach their real targets in media. Marketers like P&G, Ford, and American Express define their target consumers richly, less on the basis of undifferentiating demographics, and more on the basis of the “soft” values, the mindsets and habits, that drive demand and choice. Auto manufacturers, for example, see huge differences in the values of “SUV people” and “minivan people,” though these two critical targets are demographically identical. Marketers can refine their pitches to their target segments by developing tailored creative messages, but they have had no way to accomplish the same level of strategic targeting in media, because the media define mass targets on the basis of demographics, and little else.
Brand marketers have traditionally navigated around this shortcoming in media by “triangulating” their way to softer audience attributes via context. However, that is difficult to do in an environment where the majority of ad impressions reside in a rapidly expanding “Long Tail” and have limited scale applications. According to JP Morgan, this problem will only intensify: the number of Web pages and ad impressions are expected to grow by 15% in 2008 alone. This fragmentation presents a real challenge for brand marketers: they need a way to assemble enough inventory to effectively fill their upper funnels with the right people to become buyers at some point in the future. Marketers quickly reach a point of diminishing returns on their energy invested in assembling that inventory contextually.
Ad technology has the potential to deliver on the fundamental brand targeting need and resolve brand marketers’ issues with the fragmentation and complexity of the Internet. It can identify mass audiences that have a common set of characteristics, including psychographics - and reach them, no matter where they are on the Internet.
Ad technology is creating new and relevant handles for buying and selling Internet media. This creates a unique set of opportunities for both buyers and sellers of online media. Yet, the open question remains, one which will define the future of the online landscape: what side of the house will ad technology end up with, the buyer or the seller?

Borrell: Local Online Revenue to Jump 50% in '08

Local online revenue is expected to skyrocket this year, up 50 percent to $13.1 billion, according to a study released Thursday (May 29) by Borrell Associates.

Most of the growth is driven by pure-play companies and to a lesser extent, traditional local media companies ramping up ad sales on their own sites. More than half of the $13.1 billion revenue will go to pure-play local Web sites. Of the traditional media, newspapers are projected to bring in the most at $3.7 million, followed by TV stations at $1.2 billion, local yellow pages at $1.2 billion, and radio stations at $255 million.

According to Borrell, a transformation is taking place in local Web sites, which are taking on new identities rather than cloning the identity of the radio or TV station that is publishing them. "They are creating unique identities and breaking away from their print and broadcast roots," the report said.

Local Web sites are also posing new threats to the Yellow Pages, with directories popping up everywhere.

For the next 18 months, Borrell expects local online advertising to continuing growing in the strong double-digits, and the moderating to single-digit "market norm" levels by 2012.

"By then we expect the 'winners' in local online advertising to have grown to the size of the second-or-third largest media outlets in their markets in terms of total revenues," Borrell said. "Newspaper sites, with a formidable lead on everyone else, have the biggest head start."

Mobile Web Pumps Net Traffic 13%: Study

Written on

May 2nd 2008

Author

by Kathleen |

Feed

XML Feed



ADOTAS – The mobile Internet is driving traffic and extending the reach of many top Web sites by 13% over home PC traffic alone, the Nielsen Company reports. Predictably, topics that be can quickly grasped on small screens – like weather and entertainment – are seeing the highest boosts (roughly 22%).

Nielsen gathered its data from TotalWeb, a new report that integrates data from Nielsen Mobile and Nielsen Online to analyze unique viewership at more than 200 Web sites.

According to the data, the average online lift from mobile Web by category is: Weather, 22%; entertainment, 22%, games, 15%; music, 15%; e-mail, 11%; sports, 10%; business/finance, 4%; social networking, 3%; search, 2% and shopping/auctions, 1%.

About 87 million U.S. mobile users subscribe to mobile Internet services of which 13.7% actively uses the mobile Internet each month.

Google Losing its Mojo?

ADOTAS — The seemingly impervious and cool Web swinger may have lost its step. comScore recently reported that Google Inc.’s U.S. paid click performance in January was flat. Strangely, its performance overall for Q4 registered a 25% increase.

The Silicon Alley Insider jumped on the story and got a flash note from Bob Peck at Bear Stearns that said in part, “While this is one data point for domestic google.com only and from one source, which may or may not be accurate, it is a concerning data point and somewhat reflects what we have heard from SEMs — that they were not seeing a high volume of clicks from consumers possibly due to the economic slowdown. Note that Google reported a 30% YoY growth rate in overall (global) paid leads in 4Q07 and comScore reported growth of 25% YoY for domestic google.com paid leads for 4Q. While not an apples-to-apples comparison, we will continue to monitor the comScore numbers for Feb and Mar before definitive conclusions can be drawn.”

Others registered concern too.

Shares of Google slid by 3% in premarket trading today after UBS lowered its price target to $590 from $650 and also lowered its revenue and earnings estimate for this year and 2009, Thomson Financial reports.

UBS released the new target numbers after examining comScore’s data and noting that Google’s sponsored clicks were down 7% month-over-month, flat year-over-year and down 12% quarter-over-quarter, Thomson says.

It: Online Ad Spending Predictions Dip

ADOTAS — Spending forecasters are getting less bullish by the second and interactive advertising hasn’t escaped the cycle of bad news. eMarketer revised its happy-go-lucky October online ad forecast to reflect the more somber economic times we’re grinning and bearing.

Last fall, eMarketer said U.S. advertisers would spend about $27.5 billion online in 2008, but now they’re predicting about $25.8 billion will be shelled out on the Web. There’s a silver lining: interactive advertising will still grow by about 23% from 2007 – and will survive much better than other forms of traditional advertising.

“Several elements unique to the Internet will support continued U.S. ad spending growth even if other media falter,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. “The greater ability to measure ads online will likely encourage marketers with reduced budgets. Those same marketers are finding that the audiences they need to target are spending more of their media time on the Web.”

The healthiest sector of interactive advertising? Search – it should account for the about 40% of online spending this year. The rate will decrease slightly through 2012, when it will account for about 37.3% of interactive ad spending.

The opposite is true for rich media and video advertising – which will grow from 10.2% in 2008 to 18.5% in 2012.

Overall, spending growth will slow down in 2009 to 16%, but will spurt up again in 2012 with a growth rate of about 20%. Stay tuned for further tweaks.

Display Soars as Ad Spending Overall Tanks

ADOTAS — Uh-oh, spaghetti-o.

The advertising slowdown everyone’s been sweating over? It’s here. And it’s been here – for some time. According to TNS media intelligence, the advertising market fizzled in 2007, and closed out the year with measured spending of $148.99 billion, up only 0.2% from 2006.

Total expenditures during the fourth quarter of last year fell by 0.1% compared to a year ago.

“As a whole, the ad market remains stalled and is being engulfed by the spreading pessimism about general economic conditions,” said Jon Swallen, SVP Research at TNS media intelligence. “Fourth quarter performance was indicative of this malaise and early figures from 2008 suggest the growth rate for measured ad spending has not appreciably changed. A cyclical boost from the elections and Olympics still waits on the horizon. However, marketers are being cautious with their core ad budgets faced with concerns about consumer spending and corporate profits.”

As a whole the ad market’s hitting the skids … but display advertisements grew by 15.9% to $11.31 billion in expenditures last year.

Also in the red (though less so):

Spanish Language magazines 10.4% growth
Sunday magazines 7.2% growth
Consumer magazines 7% growth
Cable TV 6.5% growth
Outdoor ads 4.9% growth
FSIs 1.8% growth
Spanish Language TV 1.3% growth
The hardest-hit:

Spot TV 10.2% shrinkage
National spot radio 7.1% shrinkage
Newspapers (local) 5.6% shrinkage
Newspapers (national) 5.5% shrinkage
B-to-B magazines 4.2% shrinkage
Also of interest from TNS:

Share of Measured Advertising Spending by Media: 2004 Through 2007
MEDIA TYPE 2007 2006 2005 2004
NATIONAL TV 32.0 % 31.5 % 31.6 % 31.0 %
MAGAZINES 20.4 % 19.3 % 19.8 % 19.0 %
NEWSPAPERS 17.7 % 18.8 % 20.2 % 20.4 %
LOCAL TV 11.3 % 12.5 % 11.5 % 13.1 %
INTERNET 7.6 % 6.6 % 5.8 % 5.3 %
RADIO 7.2 % 7.5 % 7.7 % 7.8 %
ALL OTHER 3.9 % 3.8 % 3.5 % 3.3 %
TOTAL 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 %

It looks like Internet advertising, which even now only comprises 7.6% of the market (up from 5.3% in 2004) and is going gangbusters may grow by leaps and bounds in 2008 as the other categories continue their downward descent.

TNS media intelligence is part of TNS, a global marketing insight and information group.

Black Book: Traditional Media Ads, Marketing Could See Decline

October 15, 2007

Email this story Printer Friendly Version


GAINESVILLE, Ga. - As dealers increase spending on their own store Web sites during the coming year, traditional advertising and marketing promotions are expected to take a hit, according to a new research project sponsored by Black Book.

The research revealed that 72 percent of all franchise dealerships plan to increase spending on their Web sites over the next 12 months.

To help accomplish that move, dealers reported that they plan to reduce spending in sales events, traditional direct mail and customer loyalty reward programs in the next year. On the other hand, 75 percent of dealers said they will remain constant or increase their investment in Internet leads generated by third-party providers during the same time frame, the research showed.

Traditional advertising spending of all types is also expected to decrease, officials said. Study results revealed that 20 percent of dealers will reduce spending on radio advertising, while 44 percent of dealers said they will decrease display and classified newspaper advertising.

Additionally, 49 percent of dealers plan to invest in search-engine optimization to drive more traffic to their Web sites, and 58 percent plan increases in direct e-mail promotions of online inventory to prospective customers in 2008, according to the research project.

As a part of the study, dealers also rated leads from their own Web sites as having the highest quality compared with other sources such as manufacturers or third parties. According to the research, 40 percent of dealers perceive their own Web site to generate the highest quality sales leads, compared with 30 percent from OEM sites and 23 percent from third-party lead providers.

At the same time, the study reported that dealers will also invest heavily in tools that will give them more control of the entire online transaction, including finance, trade-appraisal, service scheduling and price negotiation tools.

"The number of high quality leads from their own sites combined with significant investment in the new tools will make 2008 a watershed year for dealer Web sites," noted Black Book representative Mike McFall. "Dealers will continue to invest in their own brands and will continue to refine their online business practices, making their Web sites a more important part of dealership operations than ever before.

According to officials, the research was conducted by Detroit-based Intellitrends, using online surveys and personal interviews.

Online Ad Revenue Is Up

Written on

October 8th 2007

Author

by Editor |

Feed

XML Feed



The IAB reported last week that the U.S. online advertising revenues came to $10 billion in the first half of 2007. This is a 26.4% increase over the same time last year. The report also found second-quarter revenues to be up 4% to $5.1 billion from $4.9 billion in the first quarter for U.S. online advertising.

Conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the IAB report concluded that all consumer advertising is up; taking in 54% of the second quarter revenues in 2007, up from last year’s 49%.

Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB stated, “The torrid growth of interactive advertising revenue persists and these results are really no surprise, but very welcome news. More and more marketers have embraced the reality that interactive is the fulcrum on which their brand strategies need to be based and we expect robust growth to continue.”

Search revenue took 40% of online ad spending, the bulk of which went to Google. Display ads accounted for 33%, up 2% from last year. Classifieds garnered 17% of revenues, down from last year’s 20%. Lead generation increased 1% to an 8% total.