Digital Media Eyeing Connected Car Market for Targeted Ads

As proof of digital advertising’s migration to the vehicle, Palmer cited the Monday announcement (see 1604140061) that Panasonic’s Aupeo subsidiary teamed with Triton to insert targeted ads into personalized audio messages delivered through the Panasonic OneConnect infotainment platform. What was once conceptual is now happening, Palmer said, and there’s "a lot of potential there.”

The connected vehicle market brings scale to digital advertisers, said Cary Tilds, group innovation officer of advertising media company GroupM. “The first thing we think about when we think about messaging is, do we have a scalable marketplace?” GroupM has had to learn how to develop messages for new smartphones, which added complexities of geography, unique functionality and interesting technology, she said. “Consumers are well beyond the advertisers,” in their embrace of mobile devices, which should create a natural path to vehicle advertising, Tilds said. The car brings the advantage of a captive audience to advertisers, she said.

The vehicle is a “personalized” space, which also makes it attractive for targeted ads, Tilds said. She cited the challenges of grabbing consumers’ attention in a meaningful way, pointing to Microsoft research indicating a consumer’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to nine seconds -- “actually less than a goldfish.” Getting into consumers’ mindset and attracting attention is “more and more difficult with the explosion in screens,” she said, but the car brings a unique situation for focused attention and purpose-driven activity. “They’re going places with their vehicle,” she said, “and we can understand and connect messages to them in more meaningful ways.”

Tilds touched on the ability to benefit from data -- including geo-location data, content utilization and driver methodology data that could be useful to the insurance industry -- but said the top priority is consumer privacy. Safety will come into the spotlight as technologies roll out, she said. When ad companies begin to develop messaging for the vehicle, “safety is our biggest concern,” she said.

Drivers typically have a second or less to make a driving decision, so “what we don’t want to do is create breakthrough creative that distracts the driver from the primary reason they’re in the vehicle,” Tilds said. She promoted accepted methods such as touching a button or “talking back to the ad” as ways for drivers to engage without taking their eyes off the road. She supports development of standards for triggers to remind drivers to take action when out of the car. Trigger words on GroupM’s list include Call, Remind, Details and Replay. She suggested three to five words standardized “out of the gate" to avoid confusion and driver distraction.

Tilds said a “Remind” command that drivers could engage for an ad they heard while driving was an example of a safety-inspired feature. “We can imagine a day” when a consumer hears an ad on the radio about school supplies and says, “Remind,” so that later, when safe, the consumer can “transact with the brand in a more rigorous and robust way.” If the phone is synched to the car or to the individual’s ID, “we'll remind that person later” to buy the school supplies, she said.

The car will increasingly become -- especially as the age of driverless cars approaches -- a place for working, entertainment and communications -- "for all of the passengers,” said Jens Weitzel, senior vice president-business development at ParkWhiz, an app that hooks up drivers with parking spots. The car provides targeted outreach capability for the passengers given the data available to them, the car and the reason for the journey, Weitzel said. How the information will come into the car hasn’t been decided, whether it’s from the car’s connected system or from the consumer’s mobile device, he said. Weitzel envisioned a hybrid wherein a car’s navigation screen is also used for advertising messaging that can also take advantage of the vehicle’s sound system.

Some carmakers are looking at embedding payment capability into vehicles, Weitzel said. “The car doesn’t only enable advertisers to reach drivers, but it also makes impulse purchases and service bookings instantly possible,” he said. There is a "great future" for adding value to services for drivers and passengers in vehicles "and to let them consume those.”

Addressing the need for standards in bringing digital advertising to vehicles, Joe Laszlo, Interactive Advertising Bureau senior director- mobile marketing center of excellence, said the IAB has shaped how digital ads are measured. Industry is moving from measuring impressions served to viewable impressions and whether the viewer had an opportunity to see an ad. Work IAB is doing around audible impressions will have relevance to digital ads for the car market, Laszlo said. It's also working on “programmatic” ad buying -- automation of the ad transaction to make buying and selling ads more efficient -- which will have a place in the in-car digital media space as well, he said.

Jonathan Tarlton, Spotify senior manager, automotive business development, noted the company launched programmatic ads in November, enabling it to target genres and playlists with messaging. Spotify has more than 2 million playlists that subscribers listen to every day related to commuting -- either curated by Spotify or subscribers. That’s a “fascinating opportunity” for Spotify to reach commuters based on data including genre, type of song, tempo and artist, Tarleton said. Spotify users listen more than 148 minutes per day to Spotify content, he said. “There’s a lot of power in what can be done with playlists” on a targeted advertising level, he said. Nike, for instance, sponsors a workout-related playlist and has its own branded channel and profile that enable the company to engage with customers on a deeper level, he said.