What are some of the unique challenges and benefits to targeting within the auto vertical?
Kyriakoza: Automakers have long recognized that they have a more complicated sales cycle to deal with than most consumer brands. Research shows there is typically an eight- to 12-week period in which car buyers move from casually scoping out potential cars to amassing competitive information and details, to narrowing down their choices to contacting a dealer to finally making a purchase. The challenge, of course, has always been to find as many critical touch points as possible to communicate with buyers–and, if you can do that, to put the most relevant and timely message in front of them, depending on where they are in the process. BI: Specialty content targeting has been the most common targeting method used by auto advertisers thus far. Where do you see behavioral targeting fitting in? Kyriakoza: Certainly there is a rich arena of auto specialty sites with which to do targeting, related to the content consumers are checking out. But it’s limited. The problem auto advertisers increa
