J.D. Power and Associates announced the release of a study that found niche groups of car consumers can be reached by monitoring website visitation.

The study, "2006 Online Media Study," found that recent buyers of midsize premium sporty vehicle showed a 9 percent-point increase in visits to the AOL Sports Site in August-October 2006.

Buyers of compact utility vehicles such as the Jeep Liberty increased their visits to mySpace by 13 percentage points over the same time period, according to the study.

"This suggests that online automotive advertisers need to be more precise in selecting sites for advertising," says Steve Witten, executive director of automotive research at J.D. Power and Associates. "Buyers of specific vehicle model segments demonstrate visitation patterns very different from the mass of all new-vehicle buyers."

"As media becomes a more pervasive part of our lives, users are becoming more and more defined by the interests that they choose to spend their time on. Marketers who focus on key learnings about media consumption habits will have a natural advantage when seeking to meet users on their terms and deliver information that's intuitive-- not intrusive," says Jodi Harris, editor of iMedia's Driving Interactive.