Dealerfire Blog

Update on Internet Radio Advertising

Spoke with a sales rep from Radioio.com yesterday about their advertising. They emailed me some audience stats which looked pretty good. Here's a snippet...

• 63% of listeners owns residence
• Average Time Spent Listening per listener is 240 minutes(4 hrs)

While they have a national audience, the largest blocks of listeners are in California and New York. While this would rule out most dealers, a large franchise dealer in California could certainly benefit. The 240 minutes of TSL would have them saying your auto group name in their sleep. Radioio.com is also in the process updating their geo-targeting system to provide more detailed stats on listener locations.

Internet Radio Advertising

Any dealers using internet radio advertising? One of guys in the office here listens to Radioio.com and by proxy I listen to it. So today I thought about the possibility of auto dealers using internet radio advertising and started checking it out. When it comes to internet advertising we get so caught up in the search engine frenzy but what about dealers using other forms of internet advertising? I checked Radioio.com and Live365.com's website for information to gather some details. Radioio's advertising page consisted of a contact form, I filled it out and hope to get some details soon. Live365's website had considerably more information. Scion actually has they're own "station" listed on the site, but a quick search did not turn up any other manufacturer stains. Live365 does offer geo-targeting for its advertisers, so a dealership could target listeners in its area. There is also genre targeting as in "regular" radio advertising. I filled out sales contact form and as soon as we at Dealerfire here from various sales teams we'll post some more information. Meanwhile leave us a comment with your thoughts on this....

New Link in Useful Websites TypeList

Added a link in Useful Websites TypeList to the Energy Star for Automotive Dealers program run by the U.S. governments EnergyStar Program. NADA members can participate in the Energy Stewardship Initiative (pdf) and NADA has also put together a guidebook here.

End of an Era in Auto Dealerships?

Ward's Dealer magazine has an interesting article on the future of independent dealers. With overall number of vehicles sold down, can mega dealers take over? Read the full article here.

Google and Automobile Dealers

I found some Google supplied marketing material which is auto dealer specific in the Dealerfire archives. While it is a little old, it is still relevant. I've posted an excerpt of the material below...

• 3 out of 4 online consumers looking for an automobile dealer use a search engine to find that dealer (Insight Express Study for Google, 2003).
• More than 50% of all automotive searches on the web are now conducted on the Google ad network (StatMarket 2004).
• The Google network reaches over 80% of all Internet users every month (Media Metrix, December 2004).
• Google attracts more 2-year intenders than any auto site and ranks second in reach to 6-month intenders (Source: Allison Fisher Research, 2003)