First, before I get the big hammer out and smack down some of the rumors, lies and innuendos that are pervasive, not only in the automobile E-advertising business, but throughout the entire advertising industry, let me say this about E-commerce: It’s here. It’s powerful. It’s growing. It’s important......And if you are not making a substantial effort in getting up to speed on the use of email and development of an interactive, closely monitored website you are missing business, and that percentage of lost business will continue to increase with each passing year.
That being said, anyone who tries to sell you on the idea of switching the lion’s share of your ad budget to E-commerce is smoking bananas. Or they think you are.
Mainstream advertising is still the most powerful force in bringing customers into the showroom. Television, cable, radio, direct mail, and to a lesser extent, newspaper ads, still drive the greatest traffic. As I said in last month’s column (Dealer Magazine, March, 2007) the projection of dealer ad expenditures for this year includes approximately 17% for E-commerce, that’s all related Internet including website, email, third-party web ads, paid search and search optimization programs. That number may increase as much as 3% a year in the next few years. But here are some of the issues facing the state-of-the-E current viability and future growth that the digi-folks just don’t like discussing in front of paying clients.
SPAM, BAM, THANK YOU MA'AM - It’s a bigger problem than anyone in the business will admit. Even blocking the ISP’s of entire countries doesn’t seem to reduce the amount of multi-flanked schemes the spammers dream up daily. Major ISP’s are filtering and blocking more and more domains to the anger and dismay of legitimate emailer’s and their intended recipients.
In the past month our agency’s I.T. department has been forced to re-establish permission for our domain’s use of several major service providers. That can be a painfully slow process, with something like AOL. AT&T was a lot more responsive, but still, the process is cumbersome.
How easy is it to get your entire domain blocked by one of these large ISP’s? A recipient of your email can accidentally send you to the ‘spam box’ instead of deleting or filing your message. If it happens a couple of times by coincidence (and some of the ‘MARK THIS AS SPAM’ buttons are easy to accidentally hit) your email to anyone hosted by that ISP is toast. If your email is hosted by one of the large ‘free’ service providers, it could take you months to get off a ‘blacklist’.
More and more email users are opting for very restrictive spam-blockers, and ‘permission only’ programs. A lot like an unlisted, unpublished phone number but worse. The email industry says they are making headway in slowing spam abuse but you couldn’t tell that by my inbox.
By the way, the CAN SPAM ACT is not having the same effect on unwanted email as the ‘Do Not Call’ registry had on phone calls. Much of the spam is being routed through foreign countries where it’s okay to steal copyrighted material and virtually impossible to prosecute offenders.
FREE ‘WITH A CATCH’ EMAIL - Some of the ‘free’ email providers restrict or make it difficult to view any kind of embedded image. So rendering of your email (other becomes extremely critical. Plus don’t forget the ‘ads’ on free emails. Could be your competitor’s product showing up with your email?
BANDWIDTH BOOGIE - Some of the top E-industry experts quietly tell me they are deeply concerned about the prospect of a massive video roll out effort by major players such as Google. “The Internet was not designed for full length programs and movies,” says one of the largest ISP honchos, “and it just may crash and burn if a new protocol is not in place for a video streaming avalanche.” I’m not one of the ‘global crash’ alarmists, but keep in mind one video is equivalent to about a years worth of emails, so there might be some legitimate concern here.
PRE-ROLLS, POPUPS and DANCING DOGGIES - Customers absolutely hate them. With a passion. So much so that they write to sponsoring companies, cancel subscriptions, abandon product use and put an ‘do not buy’ sign on the offenders.
One of the I.T. guys I spoke with said he was so angered by a ‘full screen ad flogging’ by Honda for one of their new products a few years ago, that he called the local Honda dealer and told him he would not buy another Honda because of it! It seems that the ad had cached (hidden itself) onto the hard disk, then it literally took over the web browser with a full screen ad for Honda. This fellow still harbors ill will toward Honda. That’s how powerful the effect of e-ad blunders can be on web aficionados.
Research after research after research project shows customers dislike pre-rolls and post-rolls and ad autoplays and full screen slide-overs. So what’s an advertiser to do? You better know exactly what you’re doing if you want positive benefit from your web ads and and email messages. The key words are relevant and unobtrusive. And play it straight. The sneaker you get, the greater the risk for angering the viewing e-mobs.
For some reason E-users think everything on the web and in emails should be totally free..kinda like PBS. Maybe because that’s how the things were in the beginning. The consumer is in total control and you will be clicked off in a nano-second if you offend. Even worse, you may get burned into the X-file of the offendeds brain. Ouch.
WEB AD CPM DIRTY BIG SECRET - Okay, let’s talk for a moment about how the digi-folks have conveniently stolen the impression measurement/ad cost basis tool from traditional media. Is there anyone reading these words right now that thinks there are great similarities between traditional advertising venues and the world of E? Hello? Then why would anyone think you can measure the impact/impressions in similar fashion? Is there any sense at all to a cost-per-thousand basis for page views or views of a little tiny flashing ad on a page?
If I’m searching for a product or service on the web, I put a few keywords in a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, click search and voila...4,234,567 pages are available. I usually flip thru two or three, and I’ve got the fastest mouse in town. First listing..click. Nope, click. Out of there in 2.3 microseconds..but you paid for that impression. Sorry. Second listing..click. Hmmm? Click thru to another page on your site. (0.5 seconds). Click thru to another. (0.3 seconds). Nope, not here either. You paid for all three. Thanks.
If you really want to measure R.O.I. of your E-dollars, you better be buying more than CPM. I like CPA (cost per action) or even better CPS (cost per sale) better. Sort of like back in the good ole (early) days of direct response when you could get all the ads you wanted on TV and only pay for the leads. The only reason you don’t get that on the web right now is because the demand for space is much larger than the availability of content on popular websites. Of course that is going to happen when you have the big bucks and small brains of major corporate marketing gurus making dramatic shifts to E-commerce because they don’t want to be left out off the E-train.
SEARCH ENGINE MADNESS - Okay, I just admitted I used a search engine for just about everything I look for on the Internet, but the ‘pay for play’ folks are really grabbing people in my estimation. One dealer recently told me he had been spending upwards of $10,000 a month for positioning. When he took that money and spent it on third-party sites and promoting his own web site, he got a much better bang for the buck.
In my humble opinion, pay for play is the biggest grab ever. Let’s see...you buy a keywords, but if someone pays more for the same words, they push you down the ladder. Can you imagine paying a premium for fixed prime TV spot and it runs at 2:00am because you got bumped by someone who paid more? But the station won’t tell who bumped you, and how much more they paid? The alternative is search engine optimitization companies that have figured out how to keep you bubbling up near the top for a relatively reasonable fixed fee. Much better deal.
There are really some brilliant people out there trying to make sense of the E-market with behavioral tracking models and creative strategies that appeal to the E-consumer, but most of their resources are structured toward the larger advertiser. Many traditional advertising agencies, both large and small, still don’t understand the potential of E-commerce and never will until they can figure out how to make money with it. Often, the advertiser is left to fend for himself/herself on the digi-side, or hire a separate E-expert.
Regardless of what your strategy is, take the time to think things through rationally before moving major traditional ad resources into foreign territory. I do believe you can get absolutely smoked if you don’t know what you’re doing in terms of creative direction, placement strategy and contact development for digital communications.
If you’d like a whitepaper on ‘Ten Important E-Advertising Strategies’, email me at jboldebook@dealermagazine.com.
Do you have questions or comments about this or past AdTalk articles? Feel free to email them to CBC.
This issue of AdTalk is brought to you by Research Partners. Serving dealers for nearly 20 years to help reduce advertising cost: Research Partners
