Google met with top automotive dealers and manufacturers at the 2011 NADA Convention in San Francisco this week to introduce their new lead generation model for search, which one insider called “Dealer Preference”. This is a new strategy for their popular Google Adwords software.
The new paid automotive advertising model by Google would create special automotive ads which are designed to generate calls or leads, which will be sold to the highest bidder. This is a game changer in my mind but people at the meeting said that dealer response was very mild.
Google Automotive Leads
This model is new to the automotive industry but not new to other verticals like Mortgages. You can see from the screen shot above, Google has created a special new pink bar for ads that it creates for lead capture and places them ABOVE normal Adwords ads. When you click on that link, this is what you will see:
The position of this page is sold to the highest bidder, I assume. Details on the Dealer Preference advertising is forthcoming in a second post.
This is a game changer for the automotive advertising industry. If Google starts to become a middle-man in automotive price advertising and comparisons, a whole new strategy will need to be considered. It still will have to be seen if this increases clicks on paid ads.
Google Changes Automotive Advertising Again
This new features does a few things:
- It pushes other paid ads lower on on the right sidebar.
- It pushes organic search results down so positions 1-3 become even more valuable
- Dealers that have been ignoring Adwords will need to get in the game and test things.
The idea that Google has in mind is that if a consumer types in “Used Honda Miami” it will display its OWN lead collection ad and show cars or sales based on participating dealers.
What is your reaction? Do you have some additional information from NADA to share?
