People, not Pixels
A game-changer in an era of Google’s ever-changing algorithms.
My good friends Bob George, AVP Product, Dealer.com, and Kevin LeSage, Director of Digital Marketing, Autotrader, sat down with Brian Pasch to discuss what’s next with Dealer.com around leveraging the power of its parent company Cox Automotive. We have been waiting for a long time to see the power of Cox Automotive‘s breadth and reach to create unrivaled connected solutions. Finally, Dealer.com has done just that with this data lake, as Bob George calls it, to efficiently reach “people not pixels” in their ever-changing buying considerations with a 91% success rate, yes 91%.
I was a Senior Product Manager with AutoTraderGroup when we bought Kelley Blue Book and developed Trade-in Marketplace with the famous auction guru, Robert Hollenshead. I was part of the team that built go-to-market strategies for these new offerings around the Consumer Decision Journey. I spent the next four years in product development, leading field sales training, and participating in dealer engagements discussions. We had a lot of success showing dealers how these new solutions would change the industry, and they did. However, the missing piece that always came back to haunt us was that we were not an INTEGRATED solution, only siloed offerings. Brian speaks to that very thing in his opening. Cox Automotive has worked diligently on that over the last 6 or 7 years, and this is a big reveal of those efforts.
With behavioral targeting, first-party data, AI, and access to all the data points of Cox Automotive’s vertical and horizontal brands, Dealer.com is now aware of exactly what the shopper did in the past, what they are doing today, and what they are expected to do tomorrow. With those data sets, Dealer.com can now update a shopper’s consideration patterns every hour to ensure the content dealers serve is timely and relevant. For example, a customer shopping on Autotrader for a 4Runner at work goes to the coffee shop and browses the same cars on their cell phone, then returns home and values their trade on their home network. 2 days later, they go to a dealership’s 4Runner showroom page. DDC can now string all that first-party data together to paint a clear picture of a shopper with a trade that is interested in a 4Runner. They can also change targeting based on behavioral changes with the shopper during that same decision journey. So if they start on a 4Runner but then start searching consistently for an F150, they can shift to truck targeting with the consumer and stay relevant. Even better, DDC can use the timely “People not Pixels” data to understand when to pull back on advertising and let them digest what they have already seen without becoming intrusive. This makes Dealer.com Advertising powerful and efficient as it pertains to dealers’ ad spend and consumer preferences.
Finally, with the many Cox Automotive integrations, dealers can now identify when their target “person” purchased a vehicle and then turn those dollars into service retention marketing ads after a specific time. This is the “next level” when your ad dollars can intuitively switch to dealer loyalty marketing after purchase. I know, from my days leading a National Fixed Ops team for Toyota, CSR (Customer Service Retention) is vital for the OEMs. No one else can do that today. Speaking of OEMs, CAMP360 is another Cox Automotive differentiator that we will discuss in another article. If you know of it, you know. If not, I would highly suggest you take a look.
This integrated solution will be Dealer.com’s differentiator using Cox Automotive's proprietary data over the next 1-3 years. With all the privacy changes and cookies going away, it will be slow-moving, but “People, not Pixels” will undoubtedly increase Dealer and OEM ROAS (return on ad spend). As a result, it will give dealers what they have asked for the last two decades, more control of a more targeted ad spend.
Here is the full podcast below:
https://brianpasch.libsyn.com/bob-george-podcast?tdest_id=555790