Quick answer: Automotive display advertising shows image and video ads to car shoppers across websites, apps and social platforms. It works best for retargeting people who viewed your inventory and for staying visible during a long buying journey. Judge it on assisted conversions and test drive bookings.
Car buyers do much of their research online, which makes it harder for dealerships to get seen. Automotive display advertising helps your dealership stay visible while shoppers compare vehicles.
Before we cover what your dealership needs to know about display advertising, let’s cover the basics. For help running campaigns, see our display advertising and PPC consulting services.
What Is Display Advertising?
Display advertising is a form of advertising on websites that show image or video advertisements. These ads are paid for by businesses who want their company and website to be seen online by their target customers.
Many display advertising platforms let you customize your ads. Image, ad copy and audience can all be tailored to the people you want to reach. Solid ad copy and optimized images are crucial for creating a strong impression on automotive display ads.
There’s a few things to keep in mind when working to get your automotive display ads online. Here are 5 things your dealership should know when it comes to automotive display advertising:
Target Your Traffic
Display ads help businesses reach their target market. Automotive display advertising allows you to target customers based on interests, age, gender, and geographic location. Targeting the right audience means your automotive display ads pop up on sites related to your business or related to a qualified user’s search.
Display advertising allows a business to leverage data-driven targeting and retargeting. Retargeting allows you to target the most qualified customers again. By doing this, you can continue to reach your desired audience and continue to make a strong impression.
Increase Sales
Display advertising can support sales when it is planned and measured well. Automotive display ads create an impression that encourages a potential customer to think of your dealership first when they are ready to buy.
Display advertising lets you measure results with reach, impressions and conversions. Reach is the number of unique people who saw your ad, impressions are the number of times it was shown, and conversions are the people who visited your website and took a desired action.
Optimize for Mobile
Most auto shoppers use a phone, so design automotive display ads for mobile first, then scale out for desktop. A user-friendly mobile experience is crucial for auto shopping.
You want to make sure when optimizing for mobile, that you also retarget those customers on their desktop or tablet devices. This way, potential customers are consistently seeing your automotive display ads wherever they’re making those online searches.
Showcase On Social Media
Places like Facebook and other social media or news sites are a great place to target potential or current auto shoppers. It’s beneficial to work with a digital marketing company to aid in getting your automotive display ads on these types of sites for you to see the most optimal results.
Social display ads are an evergreen advertising strategy when done right. In general, any form of advertising works best when your business can integrate itself into a person’s everyday life to make an impression in small ways.
Strengthen Brand Trust
Consistent branding across search and social platforms helps people recognize your dealership and strengthens brand trust, which matters for a large purchase like a car.
Take the time to analyze the data provided by your display ads. You can continue to refine your messaging so you can attract the most engaging and responsive customers and potential customers for your dealership.
greatinflux’s Display Advertising Expertise
GreatInflux is an online marketing agency that runs display advertising for small and medium-sized businesses, including automotive businesses. See our display advertising service. Read more: getting more showroom visits.
Display ads work best alongside search visibility. See our automotive SEO and automotive digital marketing guides, or our local SEO services.
Where we work
GreatInflux runs SEO, Google Ads, social media and web development for businesses in the United States, United Kingdomand United Arab Emirates. Campaigns are planned market by market: local search, currency, ad platforms and compliance differ, so a plan built for Dallas is not the plan we would run in Dubai.
- United States New York · Los Angeles · Chicago · Houston · Dallas · Miami · Atlanta · Phoenix
- United Kingdom London · Manchester · Birmingham · Leeds · Glasgow
- United Arab Emirates Dubai · Abu Dhabi · Sharjah
