Home > Industry > Automotive

Industry 01 · Top Vertical

AUTOMOTIVE · LOCAL

Automotive

For dealer groups, OEM tier campaigns, and aftermarket brands

Automotive is a long-consideration, local-inventory category. CTV should build model awareness and dealer preference across the trade area — then prove whether exposure drives vehicle-detail-page views, lead forms, and sold units.

WHERE IT USUALLY BREAKS

Why Automotive CTV Underperforms

Dealers buy CTV like they buy cable — a metro-wide reach buy sold on impressions, with no line drawn

between the households that could actually drive to the lot and the ones that never will. The result is a big

reach number and a sold-unit number nobody can tie back to it.

Two things we find almost every time. First, the OEM co-op creative rules are not wired in — the spot is

running lot footage or is missing the required trademark bug and financing disclaimer, which quietly

disqualifies the whole flight from co-op reimbursement even though it delivered. Second, the geo target is

set to the DMA while the store’s real sales radius is a handful of ZIPs, so a large share of impressions and

pixel-matched VDP views are credited to households outside any plausible trade area.

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CORE CONVICTIONS.

Brand Signals

  • Aided and unaided brand awareness lift

  • Model consideration lift

  • Ad recall lift

  • Brand favorability lift among in-market shoppers

Intent Signals

  • Brand and model-specific search lift

  • Dealer-locator or “find a dealer” activity lift

  • Vehicle detail page engagement lift

  • Test-drive or lead-form engagement lift

Business Outcomes

  • Incremental dealership visit lift

  • Sales or registration matchback

  • Incremental qualified leads

  • Test-drive booking lift

Acquisition Efficiency

  • Cost per incremental dealership visit

  • Cost per VDP view

  • Cost per qualified lead

  • Cost per test-drive booking

  • Cost per matched sale or registration

The pressure you're under:

Linear TV is collapsing under your feet. OEMs lost 20.5% of national linear spend in Q1 2025 alone. Your dealer network is demanding more co-op accountability. Your supply chain is unpredictable — vehicles you advertised in March may be eight weeks away from the lot in April. And your CFO wants to know why a $40 broadcast CPM is reaching the wrong 70% of viewers.

Where CTV solves it:

Streaming is where in-market vehicle intenders now live — and the data infrastructure for automotive on CTV is more mature than for any other category. We integrate Polk and Experian Automotive data to target verified in-market shoppers by make, model, and lease expiration window. We pivot creative based on dealer lot inventory in real time, so you're never paying premium CPMs to advertise a vehicle that's eight weeks out of stock. And we tie every impression back to dealership traffic, configurator activity, and where data partners allow — VIN-level attribution.

The KPIs we'll be accountable to:

Cost per dealership visit

Cost per configurator complete

Cost per VDP view

Branded search lift in target DMAs

Incremental lift over a geo-controlled holdout

Built for the OEM CMO whose dealer network is asking harder questions every quarter — and whose linear TV plan stopped answering them three years ago.

CORE CONVICTIONS.

Industry 01 · Top Vertical

THE MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORK

The Four Questions Your Board Will Ask

CTV’s job in automotive is to put your models in front of in-market shoppers inside your trade area; these four questions test whether it did, and whether those shoppers turned into VDP views, leads, and sold units.

Your KPIs get set together on the call, against your numbers--not this list.

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01

Did the right household notice?

Brand Signals - measured against a GEO CONTROL

Households reached in the trade area

Frequency per household

Completed views / view-through rate on the OEM-approved spot

Reached vs. Recalled

Recall by market (region / metro / ZIP)

02

Did it change what they did next?

Intent Signals - behavior after exposure

Vehicle-detail-page (VDP) views via the Vibe pixel

Inventory and search-page sessions

Build-and-price / “get ePrice” pixel event

Page views per session

Test-drive-scheduler start (custom pixel event)

03

Did it move the business?

BUSINESS OUTCOMES MEASURED AGAINST A HOLDOUT

Lead-form submissions

Service-appointment bookings

Sold units matched back through your CRM (VIN-level closed outcomes)

Aftermarket web purchases and revenue

Geo-holdout incremental VDP and lead lift

04

What did each outcome cost?

ACQUISITION EFFICIENCY-COST PER REAL RESULT

Cost per VDP view

Cost per lead

Cost per service booking

Cost per unique household reached

Cost per completed view