Inventory-Based Advertising Accelerates and Streamlines the Car Shopping Process
Last Friday night, my wife and I were mulling over a momentous decision that millions of others around the country were also contemplating. What should we do for dinner? But unlike times past, our decision wasn’t where we should go out. It was “where should we DoorDash food from?”
Today’s world of online shopping gratification-–where we can compare product specs, view pictures or videos, find the exact product we want to buy, and then order it and have it show up on our doorstep within minutes—speaks to just how much the consumer mindset and experiential expectations have shifted in the past few years.
One might say that the world of automotive is different, and to some extent that is true. By and large, consumers are still not ready to make a long-term $50,000 decision based solely on online research and have someone drop off their new purchase on their driveway a few hours later. But accelerating and streamlining the process to shop for a car in the same way that consumers can do when selecting dinner deliveries or books or just about anything else is exactly what consumers want.
The days of generically dropping consumers into a third-party or OEM website and hoping they stumble their way to find a vehicle that they might be interested in are numbered. And ask a consumer how they feel about the experience of being required to submit personal information through a lead form process, then only to be relentlessly chased by an unknown salesperson...not optimal.
The good news is that there are solutions that do offer a much more satisfying consumer experience by cutting out multiple steps and effectively and efficiently matching buyers directly with the vehicles that most interest them. Cloud Theory’s digital activation solution draws upon its real-time and comprehensive VIN-level vehicle supply and consumer demand information to prioritize specific vehicles that are currently available for consumers to purchase and that can benefit the most from being promoted in-market.
Cloud Theory partners with world-class partners such as Meta/Facebook, Google, and Amazon to create campaigns that match in-market shoppers to the actual vehicles they would be most interested in buying. The platform creates the ad units and links them directly to those vehicle detail pages on dealer websites.
But here’s the thing. The vehicles that are available for consumers to purchase changes every single day as cars are sold and new ones arrive on dealer lots. So, the activation solution must keep up with these changes to put the most relevant choices in front of consumers at the very time that they are shopping. And that’s the beauty of the Cloud Theory solution. Because we update and prioritize our inventory data multiple times a day, our technology and partnerships keep up with the dynamic changes of the marketplace and ensure that consumers see vehicles that they would be most interested in and can actually buy.
As a result, in-market consumers are treated to a streamlined decision journey that shows them relevant choices of actual vehicles, thus accelerating the new car purchase process...and enabling them to focus on the vexing question of whether to DoorDash the satay chicken or the moo goo gai pan.
