Automotive Digital Marketing Will Amp Up in 2015

Here are important things to expect in automotive digital marketing in 2015.

As more consumers adopted mobile-first lifestyles, auto brands became vigilant to keep up. Mobile gained about 35% ($2.15 billion) of total digital budgets from auto marketers in 2014. This year, look for greater focus on cross-channel, cross-device campaigns.

To have impact in digital, marketers need to reach consumers with a unified message across display, video, mobile, email and social. In 2014, media buyers looking to sell more cars were still educating themselves on cross-channel digital advertising.

More marketers are expected to act on a cross-channel strategy in 2015. They will develop greater focus on programs that target and then retarget users on alternative screens, connecting with users not just down a sales funnel but throughout what’s now a 24/7 sales cycle.

To thrive in 2015, auto brands will implement tactics to reach consumers on TV, then desktop, and then retarget across mobile and tablet.

With more cross-channel, cross-device campaigns on the horizon, we will see demand for enhanced analytics that showcase where the consumer converted, proving the “true” frequency that is required to convert.

For example, within a set of 10x frequency against a consumer, we must determine how much of the campaign should be video versus display to make informed decisions about media mix.

As the programmatic push continues, we will see greater collaboration between technology providers and agencies to create opportunities for big-media deals in automotive.

More marketers will test programmatic solutions to increase scale and optimization, especially for upper-funnel digital campaigns.

To activate and measure programmatic campaigns properly, auto marketers will make special considerations based on channel, such as display versus social, to generate the best results.

For programmatic to work well for social requires more upfront effort to develop a strategy that allows for flexible, yet timely activation and careful community management that ensures the social channel maintains its powerful aspect of personalization and one-to-one user appeal.

Auto marketers finally realized Big Data is a big deal. In 2015, making sense of consumer data across channels will become a priority for auto-campaign planning, and more marketers will leverage insights to drive consumers to action.

For instance, location data can be used to help lead smartphone users to their nearest dealership and away from competitors (also known as conquesting).

Or we can put into play the power of real-time and historical data by combining behavioral and location data to identify the intent of consumers before they are labeled as “in-market.”

Expect continued growth in content ads and video.

Auto brands will begin building teams and “content studios” internally and on the agency side to churn out relevant, branded video content for both paid and earned media opportunities.

The conversation may begin within the walls of the social or PR teams, but we can expect more auto marketers expanding that call to other departments, where creating online video advertising strategies will complement TV campaigns, extend audience reach and enhance performance.

This is a monumental shift for auto brands, and a sign the TV-online video gap is being bridged.

Distribution models will be a focus in 2015 for both long- and short-form content, going beyond YouTube placements. Video will play a bigger role within Facebook and Twitter.

This will be a landmark year for the advertising and automotive industries. We’ll see technology drive the conversation forward. Digital-marketing campaigns will continue to prove innovation is alive and well.

Raj Gill is vice president-automotive for digital marketing firm Amobee. Before that, he led the Ford group at Team Detroit, WPP Group. He has launched more than 20 marketing campaigns for new vehicles during his career.