Borrell Associates on Tuesday will release its annual outlook on automotive advertising. As a “sneak peek” of the latest research from the firm led by Gordon Borrell, the local media industry’s leading analyst provided a snapshot of how car dealers allocate their advertising dollars.
What does the portrait look like? It’s not so great for TV, and it’s downright lousy for radio.
In fact, as Borrell notes, auto dealers aren’t fazed in any way by stories and tales of fraud in digital advertising, and have not followed the lead of Procter & Gamble Co. in pulling back their ad dollar allocation to digital media.
Dealerships through the first half of 2017 invested some 58% of their advertising budgets on digital media.
That’s up 11% from 2016, Borrell notes.
What’s more eye-popping is that the amount of the digital increase — $1.4 billion — nearly equals the total amount invested in local TV advertising, which is $1.6 billion.
As seen below, that’s troubling for the radio industry C-Suite, as local TV is the No. 2 media choice, but at a paltry 9%. Meanwhile, radio — at just 5% of ad dollar allocation — lags both newspapers and direct mail, respectively.
