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Research and Markets writes up eMarketer’s new report on the future of automotive marketing. They predict a $1.1 billion aggregate spend on search marketing (SEO and “paid ads”).
That’s a pretty big number—but I’m not impressed. Why not?
Number one, the press release touting their new study starts off by noting that the automotive industry spends $21 billion in advertising. Granted, the automotive industry does lend itself better to offline advertising in many ways, but to spend 5% of your marketing budget in SEM doesn’t seem like very much.
Number two, eMarketer, author of the study, also notes that the auto industry plans on spending more than twice that ($2.54 billion, to be exact) on non-search-related Internet marketing.
They probably should have stuck with the other prediction in the press release: the automotive sector will comprise nearly 13% of online advertising spending this year (estimated total spending: $19.5 billion).
Personally, as a search marketer, I think that the automotive industry would do well to divert more of their budget to search marketing and online reputation management to make sure that the rest of their $19.9 in offline and online advertising is being put to good use.
