A new study from ValueClick Media and interactive agency Goodway 2.0 titled "Cost-Effectively Reaching the In-Market Auto Buyer" examines new online marketing strategies for automotive marketers.

The study indicated that solid results from online automotive campaigns was due to planning across a variety of lifestyle sites and using optimization to determine best placement, instead of assuming what sites were likely to perform well.

According to the study campaigns run on a larger number of sites and optimized on proven performance did better than those that were pre-targeted to individual sites widely believed to be in-market auto buyer strongholds. By leveraging the broad reach and optimization tools of an ad network, auto marketers had campaign success without the third party automotive information sites.

Third party research revealed that the majority of auto site visitors are not in- market to buy a vehicle and those that are spend less than one percent of their online time on those sites.

"As we thought, and what the research shows, is that every brand and model perform differently across different regions and local markets, and that using a broad-reach vehicle like a network and letting optimization technology predict what sites are most likely to perform, drove meaningful, cost-effective performance," says Jay Friedman, president of Goodway 2.0.

Automotive Marketers