Omnichannel Ads, Multicultural Majority To Take Stage At NADA

I have been traveling the country for the last year talking to car dealerships about two things — omnichannel advertising and the new multicultural majority. I have communicated with car dealers from Chula Vista, CA to White Plains, NY on how programmatic ad buying is the key to both successful omnichannel ad campaigns and cultural literate advertising. My message has been resonating with car dealership in every community I visit.

I was thrilled when, earlier this year, my message also resonated with my friends at the NADA. To say I am excited about speaking at NADA 2024 in Las Vegas in February would be the understatement of a lifetime. My talk at NADA will touch upon both omnichannel advertising and the Hispanic car buyer, and on how many of the car dealerships I work with are growing top line revenues, during difficult economic times, by embracing these two all-important ad initiatives. And how are they embracing these initiatives? Through programmatic ad buying.

The basis for every media campaign that runs programmatically is tied to proprietary audiences and identity solutions. Who are the people we have to reach for this campaign to be successful, according to deterministic and probabilistic inputs, and how do we want to go about reaching them? Then, we layer on frequency of impressions, against the audience, and engagement results associated with those impressions, across channels. We, then, connect the ‘proverbial’ dots cross screen; measuring outcomes from our TV campaigns, to our audio campaigns, to our display campaigns. Finally, we optimize our campaigns, cross screen, in real time.

There is a ‘silent hero’ to the programmatic process and that silent hero is the tracking pixel. The pixel allows us to understand what is happening so we can segment our audience, track conversions and fully envision the conversion lifecycle of our client’s prospects. Pixels are not only used to identify groups of users based on actions that they take, they are also used to track conversion events.

If, for instance, we have a Vehicle Details Page that we are looking to track for a car dealer, we place the pixel on the page and the pixel helps us understand the number of conversions to the page and the conversion paths that were followed. This information, these pathways, are critical to efficient and effective programmatic ad buying.

Programmatic ad buying is a most powerful tool when it comes to targeting demographically, targeting by community. With sophisticated advertising technology, car dealers have the ability to put the right ad, in front of the right person, at the right time, in the right language. And with the bourgeoning popularity of Connected TV and Streaming Audio, along with digital display, they can buy as much media as they care to against these audiences through programmatic ad opportunities.

The multicultural majority has arrived and is spreading rapidly throughout our society — from teens to the under-35 and the under-50 year old age segments. It is also spreading from city-to-city and town-to-town. Today, brands need to avoid mono-cultural marketing bubbles, as they are culturally dangerous. All advertisers need to be culturally literate nowadays and may in fact need to hire in-culture marketing experts to guide them. If you are not already focused on multicultural literacy you have to start playing catch up or you will risk your brand becoming disconnected and irrelevant.

Whether you're playing catch up or looking to take your ad approach to the next level, I look forward to seeing you at NADA in February.