Our own site will do most of the heavy lifting. Automobile companies, the biggest ad spenders out there, ought to love Web advertising. After all, customers might not use the Internet to decide to buy soap or potato chips, but making a big, discretionary purchase like a car is perfect for the Web. You can research every option, compare every feature. And, in fact, a high percentage of car buyers start by looking on the Web.
Most car manufacturers are content to let their Web sites do their Internet marketing.
Often from their own ad agencies. When one senior marketer at a giant fast-food company recently wanted to determine if Internet advertising made sense for his wares, he asked his agency to put him in touch with a handful of interactive shops. Not one of them proposed that he buy any Internet advertising. The truth is that, like their clients, agencies themselves often are uncomfortable with the Web. According to Scott Schiller, senior VP of strategic partnership marketing at Walt Disney Internet Group and a founder of the Internet Advertising Bureau, the top creative minds in advertising find the Internet confining.