Vroom Vrooooom: Is GM Racing Ahead Online?

Source: http://adotas.com
ADOTAS – General Motors is clearly leading the charge in the automotive industry toward interactive advertising. Earlier this month GM announced that it will spend half of its $3 billion ad budget online. According to a recent report, GM was already heavily invested online, but with mixed success.

GM was the top online advertiser among auto manufacturers in January, delivering roughly 1.7 billion display ad views in the U.S. – Toyota came in second with 1.4 billion and Ford Motor Company rounded out the top three with 1.1 billion, according to a recent study by comScore.

GM also led in reach, with about 103 million unique individuals receiving their display ads during January, followed by Ford which reached 95 million and Toyota, which reached 62 million.

But Toyota won out in the sheer number of ads delivered per person reached – hitting a frequency of 22 ads per person compared to 16 for GM and 11 for Ford.

“GM has really led the auto industry in its use of online advertising,” said Alistair Sutcliffe, vice president of comScore Advertising Solutions. “And, their recent announcement that half of their $3 billion annual advertising budget would be spent online in the coming years is likely to be a bellwether for many industries. Many traditional advertisers are beginning to understand that the Internet enables them to efficiently build their brands by achieving their demographic reach and frequency goals while at the same time reaching the most attractive, behaviorally-defined target segments. This is a winning recipe for achieving an attractive return on one’s advertising investment.”

So where are car companies advertising? The top publisher sites they advertise on are portals and auto resource sites. Yahoo Sites and Microsoft Sites deliver the highest number of impressions – 936 million display advertising views and 585 million display advertising views, respectively.

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