Facts For Auto Advertisers — And Radio

What follows, can easily be compiled for any market with access to Scarborough and is likely projectable to any market that does not have it. It plays off last week’s blog that focused on radio’s ability to reach the more attractive consumer. The following information was pulled to make this point to a Detroit auto dealership who has been TV focused.

Using Tapscan’s Target Profile program. The goal was to establish:
– Who is more likely to purchase/lease a new vehicle — all gross impressions are not equal.
– Who is more likely to be the heavy TV viewer?
– Why radio is a better choice or at least a good complement to television.

Any target demographic, at best, is a rough proxy for purchasing or product consumption. Simply targeting “A25-54s” and buying off that demographic not only assumes that anyone outside this demo is of little or no value, which is never the case, but that all A25-54 gross impressions are of equal value. This too is never the case. This seems obvious but it is always best to support what is obvious with facts.

So is there a difference between the Professional/Managerial and Blue Collar worker in terms of their intent to purchase a new vehicle? Let’s see:

Per the chart above, the Professional/Managerial consumer is 3.5x (132/38) more likely to purchase or lease a new vehicle over the next 12 months. A stark difference to say the least.

Now that we established that the Professional/Managerial is considerably more likely to purchase/lease a new vehicle, the next question is how likely the Professional/Managerial is to be among the heaviest of all TV viewers, those that view a disproportionately large percentage of this dealership’s paid gross impressions.

The chart below compares the viewing habits of the high-income Professional/Managerial executive with the lower-income Blue Collar worker:

The takeaway is that the Blue Collar worker in Detroit is almost twice as likely (130 vs 74) to be among the heaviest viewers of Detroit television, then the 25-54 Professional/Managerial exec.

This should be a “red flag” for any automotive dealership who is a heavy TV advertiser, as piling up a bunch of paid gross impressions against consumers who might not be the best prospects is probably not the most effective use of precious advertising dollars.

Thus far, we have shown that the Professional/Managerial worker is 3.5x more likely to purchase/lease a new vehicle in the next year than the Blue Collar worker, but is only half as likely as the Blue Collar worker to rank among the heaviest of TV viewers — not an encouraging statistic for a heavy TV advertiser.

Next, let’s compare the heavy and heaviest television viewers versus the heavy and heaviest radio listeners and their likelihood of purchasing/leasing a new vehicle. These two listening and viewing segments typically gobble up 70%+ of each medium’s gross impressions:

Not only is the heavy/heaviest radio listener +15% more likely to purchase/lease a vehicle in the next year, there are almost twice as many of them — 134,760 for radio versus 79,064 for television. Miss the opportunity of closing these “heavy” radio listening auto purchase/lease intenders, and they could be gone for five, six years or longer.

To summarize, in Detroit, the Blue Collar worker with a HHI income of less than $35,000 is twice as likely to rank amongst television’s heaviest viewers, viewing an inordinately large number of this dealerships paid TV impressions, while only being only one-fourth (38/132) as likely to purchase a vehicle in the next 12 months as the Professional/Managerial executive.

Stated another way, the Professional/Managerial executive is 3.5x more likely to purchase a new vehicle in the next year than the low-income Blue Collar worker and there are almost twice as many heavy or heaviest radio listeners intending to purchase/lease as there are heaviest or heavy TV viewers intending to buy/lease.

A story worth telling.