The Goodway Group’s vice president examines if it might be time for the three automotive tiers to consider a more blended search- and interruption-based online strategy.

In today's Tier II digital world, most clients are familiar with search engine marketing and the retail upside it provides. Search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns are viewed as a near-perfect pay-for-performance model. Advertisers only pay when a consumer clicks on their ad, knowing they were searching for it in the first place.

The benefits of online pay performance online are numerous. Conventional wisdom suggests that when a medium performs well for an advertiser, that medium should be maxed out to drive the highest ROI. Certainly for an established brand or a pure online company, like Amazon.com, this makes a lot of sense. Of course the possibility of one medium performing so much better than any other that it’s worth maxing out is, well, too good to be true. And, that's exactly what SEM may be. 

Recently there's been major buzz in the digital world regarding the growing concern with rising SEM click fraud. Click fraud is now at 14 percent nationally and averages 25.6 percent on Google and Yahoo!. So, potentially a full one quarter (25 percent) of your SEM buy could be fraudulent, making each valid click's cost 33 percent higher. Are your budgets so large that you can afford to pay an extra 33 percent for your media?

For Tier II marketers, the problem doesn't end there. Rather, it compounds itself. Most search that is being bought on a Tier II basis is direct-response oriented, so consideration and awareness are left out of the mix. This is a dilemma because Tier II digital objectives -- awareness and consideration -- aren't being met, plus there's inherent waste because all three tiers needn't bid on the same search keywords. Manufacturers try to prevent this by creating guidelines, but realistically, how often do associations and dealers ever listen to guidelines?
 
An obvious solution would be for Tier II to let Tier I and Tier III handle search and focus their online marketing budget using display, which helps drive increased search anyway! Tier I buys and owns the brand words and Tier III owns the local words; display connects the two ends of the funnel. This could dramatically improve results, since from a Tier II perspective, prospects need to know about your product in the first place if they're going to initiate the brand or local search. The simple fact is that Tiers I and III won't, and can't, step aside, so it simply makes the most sense for Tier II to do so and focus on display/interrupt based online advertising instead.

Best-in-class agency practitioners are familiar with this trend, as are traditional media players. Ever since the days of Benjamin Franklin and the historic "Don't Tread on Me" ad, marketers have seen the benefits of interrupt advertising to build awareness and consideration. After all, isn't that what TV, radio, outdoor and print ads do? Tier II digital interrupt is no different than TV or radio, so why it should be treated as such as compared with direct response?
 
The research tells the full story. Recently, J.D. Power & Associates published a study with data about the criticality of being the first OEM automotive site visited and the correlation to direct sales as a result. The problem is that these results are unlikely to be achieved with search but correlate much more so with display advertising because online display advertising has a more robust solution set than search -- there are just more ways to target potential customers in comparison to search alone. With multiple methodologies, including behavioral targeting, behavioral learning, contextual targeting, retargeting and the advent of real-time optimization, today's online display advertising functions more like a 'smart' media buy, where all activity is measurable and transparent, while allowing a focus on specific online objectives, versus a focusing on clicks alone. 

This prompts the question of where does the combination of search and interrupt make the most sense? For Tier II marketers, this starts with matching your objective with your online solution set. If your goal is to engage customers to spend time on a website, then a cost-per-click display combined with search tactic may be the best route to success. Conversely, if your goal is customer engagement, perhaps an in-banner game communicating why to buy is the better option. Or if it's strictly sales related, a cost-per-action display tactic, inclusive of search, might generate the best ROI. 

To avoid these pitfalls, know what your online goal is to start with. Then, to accomplish this from a search perspective, know who's buying which words and don't trip on each other. Then, measure the correlation between your display activity and search activity -- what you find may surprise you. Most importantly, don't buy out of fear, but out of sound strategy. For example, billions of co-op dollars are made available to dealers for completely non-measurable media based on "letter of the law" rather than "spirit of the law" guidelines. Why not make search the most well-funded Tier III co-op medium?

Most importantly, once you set your objective, look at your online marketing solutions holistically. Because the objectives of each campaign and/or product may be different, the online tactics to accomplishing those goals must be considered if you expect positive results. Online marketing in this way is similar to Gestalt theory in that the fundamental "formula" for success is not always determined by the success of individual elements but rather in viewing your solution set as a whole, where the sum result is greater than its parts. Typically, this is where search and interrupt advertising intersect.

So, how do you know it's time for a change? The first clue would be to do searches with common terms for your brand. If you're seeing all three tiers appear in the sponsored results, somebody is wasting their money. Additionally, if you're seeing your consideration scores or sales decreasing and your Tier II search campaigns are only providing limited lift, it might be time to consider a more blended search and interrupt based online strategy.

Rowan Samuel is vice president of the Goodway Group. Read full bio.