NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Dataium released its Game Day Auto Ad Review, an analysis of online shopping activity on dealership websites before, during and after the Super Bowl. It showed that import luxury brands scored big during America’s biggest sporting event.
Popular brands from around the globe spent millions of dollars on commercial advertisements during the game, in hopes of driving consumers into their showrooms to buy their vehicles. Dataium's online shopping analysis took a look at how consumers responded.
"Everyone loves entertaining ads on game day, but the relationship between commercial views and online shopping activities is tenuous at best," said Joe Burns, director of business intelligence at Dataium. "Advertising spend doesn't necessarily equate to customer engagement at the dealer level, and engagement is one of the most important measurements of successful marketing to internet-savvy shoppers. While these ads attracted plenty of views during the single most-watched sporting event of the year, only a few brands were able to turn views into major increases in online shopping activity."
Import luxury brands had their sights set on winning over more shoppers, and ad buys from unexpected brands drove online shoppers to dealer sites. The Maserati Ghibli stole the show with an impressive ad in the beginning of the game, with visitor traffic to Maserati dealer websites up 122% on the Monday after game day compared to the previous week. Additionally, the number of visitors viewing the Ghibli online increased 193%.
Jaguar also experienced a major uptick in online traffic after their "British Villains" advertisement for the new F-Type coupe. Traffic to Jaguar dealer websites increased 16% from the previous week. Additionally, 44% more visitors viewed the F-Type online the Monday following game day vs. the week before.
Detroit invested heavily in game day advertisements: Chrysler, Ford and General Motors all ran multiple ads throughout the big game, with Jeep and Chrysler also acting as halftime and post-game sponsors for the event. Compared to the week before, traffic was up on Chrysler dealership websites by 9.7% on the Monday after their controversial ad spot featuring Bob Dylan.
Jeep closed out 2013 with impressive gains and new model releases, and although it reinforced this with their "Restless" ad campaign, online shopping to Jeep dealership websites was down 3.5% from the previous week.
Ford doubled-down with it "Nearly Double" ads touting their fuel-efficient product line, but online traffic to Ford dealership sites declined from the previous week by 4.5%.
