Streaming TV Ad Strategies for Dealership Success

Okay, everyone, we've got another volley rally. I'm pinch hitting for Jacob today. I've got one of my good friends in the business, James Clouse. He is the founder and president of Loon Advertising. James, how are you?

I am wonderful, Scott. Thanks for having me on today. It means the world.

Yeah. James is truly an expert in streaming tv. We're going to talk about the best practices and pitfall. Pitfalls to avoid when you're, when you're doing streaming TV for your dealership group. I have James on so he can walk you through this. James, but first, tell us a little bit about your company, what, what you do, how you got to this spot.

Absolutely. So Loon Advertising, we're about to celebrate our first birthday. So we serve the automotive space specifically in the streaming TV environment. So Loon was born again approximately about a year ago. We got a great team and what we do is streaming. And we were born because I realized there was a massive gap in between the education, knowledge, knowledge and understanding of streaming TV at that Tier 3 dealer level where, Scott, everybody's telling dealers, you gotta go to streaming and you've gotta get involved in this space. But no one educated and really provided a transparent experience from start to finish. And that's where Loon was born. So that way we could be the people that educate, show the dealers and provide exceptional results.

Yeah, I mean, James is one of a kind, everyone. I had him on today because most of my dealer friends use streaming tv. I think there's a lot of misconceptions, definitely some money that could be spent better. James is here to help. So why don't. First of all, what is streaming tv? Just so everyone knows exactly what we're talking about.

So yeah, when we're talking about streaming tv, it's way more than what you think when you hear that phrase. So streaming TV is really called Programmatic media. And Programmatic media is a combination of ott, which is over the top.

Right.

Which is connected tv, which is just a TV with any connected device like a fire stick or a Roku stick or anything like that. But then also lumped into streaming TV or Programmatic is also online video. So think pre roll on every website or.

Right.

And then also streaming audio. So a lot of streaming audio. So think Spotify and platforms like that. So streaming TV is on the big screen, to your laptop, to your cell phone, to any device that can stream, and then also online video, pre roll and streaming audio.

Ah, well, that's. It's complicated. Right? Where, where, where, where, what's the where should dealers place their ads? What networks? I mean, where do they even start?

Absolutely. Well, you need to start by talking to a provider that actually builds out a streaming TV playbook with you or campaign with you. What do I mean by that? We at Lean go into every new relationship and every existing relationship with one thing in mind. What is the business objective that you're trying to solve as the dealer? Because every dealership is trying to solve a different business objective. So it might be a sales objective, it might be a service objective, it might be a parts objective, it might be an overall branding and knowledge. It could be we just purchased a new location or a new point. So first it starts with an understanding of the needs of your client. And then two, you need to create a strategy around that. So think is this the best case scenario for, you know, the big screen? And if so, then what placements and what channels, what DSPs or demand side platforms should we use to get our right message in front of our target audience? So it starts with a conversation of the business objective and then the team at Loon creates a package to help you fulfill that goal.

So let's just pretend I just bought a new Honda point. I've got a, I've got been given a good allocation. I need to sell new vehicles. Where, where do I go? Where do I even.

Great question. I love this one.

Right.

So the first thing that I would recommend any dealer does is one, get involved with a trusted provider. And then two, what we would do in that scenario is we would pull up the data around that dealership. So first we, we would find in this scenario every Honda shopper in that pma.

Right.

And every Honda owner inside of that pma. So we have a tech stack and we have access to data via Amazon's demand side platform, via relationships with Polk and Urban Science and others where we can actually see the exact ownerships in your different Geos and zips. So first it's a new point. We need to have a conversation with the entire PMA that this new point exists. Where do we start? We start by targeting the household of every Honda owner in there. Then we'll go one step further and we'll talk to the dealer and say, hey, are you an SUV store? Are you a truck store? Are you a car store? And then go after truck owners and SUV owners, et cetera, and then create targeted messaging with targeted creative around these people and why coming into your store is important. So this would fall under that, have a conversation with the entire PMA and then from there, once we create that campaign, we get the creative up and running. What happens after that consumer or that prospect goes to the website.

Right.

So they saw a streaming TV ad, they go to the website. Now they've engaged with the service page because maybe they're in the market for service. Well then we're going to drop them into a different bucket and a different audience because we want to think through the dealership's goals. And now they're going to get hit with creative around service, how easy it is to service. Do you pick up and delivery whatever those unique value props are and increase the frequency and then get them to a conversion.

Right.

And get them into the dealership. But it all starts with the proper audience targeting the proper media placements, the proper plan and the proper partner.

So you said in, you know, factor in the whole pma, but at the micro level you also factor in the dealer's own data as well. And you should look for a prior provider that do that. Does that.

Absolutely. There is nothing more valuable in the marketing space, especially here in Programmatic, than the dealer's first party data. So I'll give you some examples of some of our favorite campaigns at Loon. I love ingesting in sales data of every person that's bought a car from a dealership in the last say 18 months to 2 years but doesn't have a subsequent service. And creating a service campaign around those, creating lookalike audiences as well and creating creative that speaks to them on doing service. Think of the same thing. Back to sales. Say you have two years of people that have been doing service with you. They've come into your store, they've spent money in your store, but they don't have a sales purchase. Well, let's create first party campaigns off of that data for people. And usually it's 20, 30,000 individual records, Scott, of people that have been in the store and haven't bought. Let's create an audience off of that as well. So we can ingest in any dealer first party data from CDP's, DMSS, et cetera. But that's where the best target marketing really is. So ingesting in that data and then later on we have time we could talk about how we use that for attribution as well.

Yeah, so I hate to be that guy. Then where are they wasting money?

Great question. Dealers waste money when they don't understand or get educated on the marketing that they're running. I use an analogy here a lot, which is think of the amount of times that a Marketing director at a dealership or managers at a dealership have sat through a Google presentation or have sat through a meta presentation and have gotten educated on those. Streaming TV seems to have missed out on this altogether. There is no education on streaming tv. I don't see the reps going into the dealers educating the same way and advocating the same way they did with Google.

Right.

So first is understanding where your dollars are going to. So a lot of times agencies are actually selling recycled inventory or leftover inventory from demand side platforms because they don't have direct access. So one of the pitfalls to avoid would be dealing with a provider that doesn't have direct access to inventory or direct access to the demand side platform or fancy word for the ad network that runs the ad campaigns because you need to be straight to the source to get the best results results and use that first party data. Second is not understanding the metrics because the metrics of success for streaming TV and all things programmatic are much different than the metrics that you would see in more traditional marketing like paid search or meta etc. So you need to understand what metrics work. And the cool thing with Programmatic is you can actually see in store metrics. So you can see how does this affect your leads, how does this affect your sales, how did this affect your ros and actually see reporting back on how many people did service at your store or bought a car at your store or submitted a lead at your store that had been exposed to one of your streaming TV campaigns. So a couple things to avoid. People that cannot provide advanced metrics and people that do not have direct access to premium inventory network tv.

Is that, is that dead? Is that a tough way to make money.

Network TV like the Fox Nines of the world and things like that, right? Depending on where you are, it's Fox 7 or Fox 9 or Fox 12 or whatever. No, that inventory actually still has some value, but we access that inventory much differently. So one misconception about streaming TV is you can't get access to charter or Spectrum inventory. You absolutely can. Kind of a fun fact. 15% of all linear TV is actually purchased via OTT. So it's purchased and ran through OTT. So like we at Loon, we have partnerships with, with Spectrum, we have partnerships with a lot of people and so we can actually target properly and through our demand side platform connections we can actually target somebody who's on charter or spectrum on local news, local sports, etc. So big misconception that you can't get access to that inventory Everything's turning into streaming. So if you have the opportunity to get local news and local sports.

Right.

With the targeting that you can do with Programmatic, you see some really, really great results there. So we actually do a lot with Spectrum. It's kind of, it's kind of fun to show the dealers because they go, we didn't want to miss out on that. And I say, don't worry, you're not going to.

Okay. I feel like. And I know your pricing model and I don't want to get into it today, but I feel like a lot of companies that work with dealers, they're incentivized just to pump up the volume a lot instead of. So what should you watch out when they, when they give you your proposal?

Well, first, if they give you a proposal and they don't put a range of CPMs in there or the cost per thousand. Right. That's pretty big red flag if they're not being transparent on where your placements will be. So in layman's terms, where will my ads actually show? One fun thing is us using the Amazon DSP as much as we do. The Amazon DSP runs a ton of. Of media across every application on your. On your big screen.

Right.

When I show dealers how much they actually spend on say Amazon prime, they're usually surprised because it's not one of the top spends because it's more limited inventory and plenty of ways to get in front of people. So I would say huge red flag if the reporting comes back as frequency and reach.

Right.

If you don't get advanced metrics of how many leads that touched were touched by one of your streaming TV ads, how many of your sales, how many of your ros. Right in store activities. Red flag. If they don't have a robust reporting platform to show you your different CPMs, whether display online video, streaming TV, streaming audio. Red flag. If you just see one CPM and it's a what we call a blended CPM, red flags got huge red flag. People are hiding something there. Transfer transparency. Transparency. Transparency sometimes gets us in trouble because nobody else treats it like this, but we want to provide a better experience and more information to our dealers.

Yeah, I mean, for sure, you guys also, your pricing methodology is not incentive. You're. You're incentivized to do a good job with how you price the dealers instead of just pumping up the volume so you get paid more to. You do a good job of that. Give me an idea of the average or how big is streaming TV in America? I guess.

Oh, it's, it's absolutely massive. So I'll give you some examples right now when we think about streaming tv, right? We want to think about the fact that a lot of these streaming TV platforms have what we call addressable audiences. So I'll start with like Amazon Prime. Amazon prime has over 200 million people that use it. But of those, over 180 million are what we call addressable, which means we can target market to through their data. Which means I can serve the man, right? Misconception. YouTube TV is huge. We sit directly on DV360 which runs YouTube TV, right? But YouTube TV only has about 11 million consumers in the United States of America. However, YouTube has a massive audience. So we see better results on YouTube than we do on DV360 through YouTube TV. So we got to make sure we're putting the proper placements in there as well to make sure we get the highest roi. We just need to provide incredible results to our dealers, prove and show that we help move the needle and influence other traffic like your paid search, like your social media. And we'll sit directly on those DSPs, give you the best inventory possible at the lowest cost with the most transparent reporting. And once you deal with loon, you become kind of like a ninja in the programmatic space because we over educate and then it's just off to the races. And the space is huge. I mean the average American has four streaming services, right? But that's growing and growing. Everybody's got Hulu and Netflix and Max and all those things. Which brings me to one other point. When you're thinking about how do I reach Scott Davis, how do I reach my target, right? I don't care what they're watching. I'll give you an example because I just named Hulu, right? I just named YouTube TV. I just named, you know, Amazon Prime. We'll do some other ones, Comcast, Charter, whatever. If traditionally if someone's going to say, hey, I need to get in front of James Clouse and try to sell him a Ford, right? You would say, okay, Midwestern father, huge sports fan, massive golfer, etc. I need to be on ESPN Monday Night Football, right? I need to be on whatever. Well, Scott, I got a 10 year old daughter and 12 year old daughter, they watch this show. Is it cake all the time. It's a terrible show about is this chair cake or is it not cake? You want to get in front of me with your explorer ad right at 8 o' clock on a Tuesday night? Chances are in my living Room isn't. Cake is on, not espn. So I don't specifically care what exactly they're watching as long as I'm targeting the household and the device that they're watching it on.

Okay, just a couple more questions and we'll wrap it up. Typical budget. How does a dealer set a budget?

Well, first we need to do a market analysis, right? So what we do is because every dealer is different. You could be a rural market, you could be an urban market, you could have a very specific business goal, or you could want to have a conversation with your pm. So we can fit any budget that a dealer has and we'll make sure that they get the reach they're looking for out of this. I would say our typical dealer budgets, the low ends are 3 to 5,000. And on the high end it's dot, dot, dot, right? Like you can go 40, 50, $60,000. You don't need to go that high in every scenario. But if you're doing nationwide campaign for a massive dealer group, that's a different type of budget. So what we do is we talk to our clients, we see how much budget they have usually comes from an old linear TV budget, etc, and then we customize a plan with them off of that. If you got three grand, we'll customize a great plan for you. But it's not going to be as OTT heavy as it would be if you have a $20,000 campaign. Because we need to be a good steward of our clients money, right? So it's my responsibility to take whatever money you have and make it go as far as possible, reach as many people as possible, and get you the business objective that you were looking for as a dealer. So three grand is about the lowest you would want to go, but then it's dot, dot, dot on the way up.

What are good results?

Good results? Good results are matching back a good percentage of your sales, your ROs, your leads, et cetera, to streaming TV impressions. So it all goes back to what are you really looking for? So a good CPM is awesome, right? But that good CPM needs to result in in store activities that resulted in an increase in sales and increase in service, et cetera. One of the things that separates us is the fact we do focus on in store activities, not just digital metrics. So proofs in the pudding. You cannot hide from in store metrics.

Okay, last question. Onboarding. I, I feel like one of the pitfalls would, because, I mean, if I was your customer, I'd need you to do everything a lot of these guys, what should you look for in a partner when you're onboarding someone or when, when they're looking to get onboarded with, with an ad agency or someone who does this?

Yeah. First, are they going to fulfill all of your needs? And so one thing I learned early on was you can create the greatest streaming campaign on the planet. If you don't have creative, it will never run. So first we got to talk about what is the business objective then two first party audiences, we need to onboard those. So that is direct integrations with DMSs, CRMs, et cetera. Or we have other, other ways to get that first party data. We don't have that. We have other data to use. So what we like to say is we take your first party data, then we enrich it with our data. So think Amazon, dsp, Polk, all the other data providers, we enhance it. Then we make sure that the campaign is going to reach the target audience. Then we create your creative for the campaigns. And this is where most agencies fail is they don't have the ability to create good streaming TV content, online video content, because think you need it for the big screen. I need it for my phone, I need it for the laptop. I need it for however they're consuming that. So that's six second videos, 15 second videos, 30 second videos, horizontal, diagonal, et cetera.

Right.

We need to have all that. So next audience creative.

Right.

And onboarding, we get through all that, we got our placements, we got our targeting, we've got our creative and now it's time to actually run. And then we meet with our clients weekly to start and then every other week after they've been on for a few months to make sure it's reaching the business objectives. If your provider does not have a good onboarding experience and ask a lot of questions and enrich your data, you're probably not going to get the same level of results that you were looking for coming into the this business relationship.

Wow. This was incredible information, guys. I had James on because I totally trust him and I know he's going to spend your money like it's his own. James, let people know how they can reach you.

Absolutely. You can call myself. It's 4065-9548-1840-6595-4818. You can go to Loon advertising.com that's L O O N like the bird. It's got a red eye. It's really cool. If you don't know about it, look him up. Google it. Chat GPT it etc you go to our website or you can email me james advertising.com this is great stuff.

Thanks James.

Thanks Scott.

Goodbye.