Presented by:
Hey everyone,
We use this weekly space to help dealers do business better.
Got an idea for a future Breakdown?
Send it to [email protected] for consideration.
— CDG
A competitor's billboard in your primary market area? One phone call usually fixes that.
Digital ads are harder to police, though, because they come down to who bid the most on the same keywords, the same zip codes, and the same Facebook feed.
Knowing that… We asked a few industry sources how they think dealers should fight back, especially since the fall sports season usually brings higher ad spend everywhere.
So: Here’s how to define your ad space, go after what isn’t already yours, and pick fights that a bigger budget doesn’t automatically win.
Dealers are losing ‘shelf’ space without realizing it.
After noticing a chunk of sales coming from a market far, far away for a client he covers, Nick Chivinski, VP of sales and strategy at SavvyDealer, wondered how an out-of-towner may grab face time with ads in markets already built up.
"A local dealer spent 40 years making that town want a Ram," Chivinski said.
Nick Chivinski
SavvyDealer
For those unfamiliar, high-intent searches such as "Ram 1500 for sale near me" trigger Google's vehicle listing ads (VLAs), a paid "shelf" of inventory any dealer can buy a spot on, priced by auction.
With that in mind: Chivinski pulled 30 days of Google search data across the automotive retail accounts that his firm manages in 22 states, measuring how many ad impressions came from shoppers searching for a model name + that competitor’s store name vs. just the model name alone.
In doing so, he found only about 1 in 3,100 of those impressions came from a search that included that specific company's name. The rest were searches for the vehicle itself.
"Nobody in that town woke up wanting to buy from a company in Arizona," Chivinski said. "They woke up wanting a Ram."
Know thy shelf:
To combat this, he advises checking your Auction Insights report inside Google Ads for VLA impression share. Two minutes shows how often a bigger competitor is buying a place on "your shelf."
He also says to keep your own VLA campaigns live and funded on your own inventory, even at home, since VLAs run off your inventory feed, not keyword bids.
And separately, he vouches for bidding on your own model keywords in regular search, even in your core market, given that your PMA doesn't guarantee the shelf.
That same audit instinct applies to geography.
Michael Schoen, chief product and technology officer at Simpli.fi, starts every client the same way: Aligning on their trade area first, using sales data to find which zip codes are already driving the vast majority of their business.
"The trade area is the core of the strategy," Schoen said. "We'll work with clients to understand where they're seeing what zip codes are driving the vast majority of their sales."
Michael Schoen
Simpli.fi
Neighboring zip codes that look winnable but underrepresented get their own campaign, not a blended budget.
He suggests:
Checking sales stats for which zip codes drive the bulk of traffic, and defending that core market first.
Confirm your ad partner is tracking your state's location-data regulations, since rules vary by state and are actively changing, something Schoen said his team spends a lot of time on.
A quick word from our partner
The best dealership ideas are easier to find when you're in the room.
Digital Dealer brings together dealer principals, GMs, sales leaders, marketing teams, and fixed ops professionals from across the industry.
Learn what's working, discover practical strategies, and build connections with peers who are solving the same challenges as your dealership.
September 22–23 | Huntington Place | Detroit
CDG readers save 25%. Use code CDG25OFF at checkout.
Bring your team for a generous discount.
Successful ad campaigns work because they’re built around hyper-specific market behaviors.
Schoen told CDG News his team builds targeting off real behavior, including who is physically showing up at a competitor's lot.
"We can help build audiences of consumers who may be visiting competitive locations... or folks visiting your brand in a neighboring area where you've got the opportunity to bring them back to your rooftop," Schoen said.
Of course, Simpli.fi builds those targeted ad campaigns for clients, but his overall point can be applied universally.
A frequent home-improvement-store shopper, for example, could reasonably be expected to favor trucks when buying.
Work it like this:
Build separate, intent-based audiences for your core market and for underrepresented neighboring zip codes, rather than one blanket radius campaign.
Ask your vendor to build audiences of consumers who may be visiting competitive locations, whether that's competitive brands in your trade area or your own brand's stores in a neighboring area.
Get foot-traffic attribution in your reporting to catch underperformance in days, not a month.
Winning ad spaces doesn't need to cost the bank.
A May report from The Trade Desk Intelligence and PA Consulting that we covered found the open internet outperformed "walled gardens" such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram by 22% in shaping brand consideration before a buyer starts actively shopping.
We checked in with Jason Goldberg, general manager of business development for automotive at The Trade Desk, who told us via email that reach is becoming less tied to budget size.
"One of the most exciting shifts happening in advertising is that reach is no longer reserved for the largest budgets," Goldberg said.
Jason Goldberg
The Trade Desk
In other words: Dealers can mix “the authenticity of a local business with the precision and measurement of modern advertising.”
A couple more notes:
Keep your site's inventory, pricing, and availability accurate.
Highlight service packages and after-sale support, since that's where loyalty grows more than at the point of sale.
Game on: An average of about 20.6 million viewers watched the New York Knicks take out the San Antonio Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals this June.
And, an average of 18.7 million viewers tuned in for regular-season NFL games last year.
We asked Goldberg if such busy sports seasons and the like should influence ad strategy.
He said that while seasonal moments matter, the main goal should stay building a consistent, authentic share of voice across the whole buyer journey.
Semi-related: Schoen said Netflix now offers local advertising, and his team matches ads by genre.
"When our clients work with us on Netflix, they're doing really targeted advertising... a Ford F-150 [buyer] might be more likely to watch sports or action content versus romantic comedies," Schoen said.
How to do that:
Prioritize open-internet/CTV placements over walled gardens where budget is tight.
Ask if local geo-targeting is available on Netflix or other CTV apps in your market.
If it is, run multiple tailored ad versions per vehicle type instead of one generic spot.
Worth noting: Goldberg said don’t worry about “outshouting” a bigger competitor.
"The opportunity is not to be the loudest voice in the market," Goldberg said. "It is to be the most relevant voice to the consumers who matter most to your business."
The bottom line: Like many of the guidelines regulating auto retail, advertising feels tricky to regulate and/or dominate, and the rules can easily be misunderstood.
But, as our sources shared, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Smaller teams, smaller markets, and smaller budgets can find success like any other big dog, so long as the campaigns are worked on with a crystal-clear understanding of the market, which usually isn’t stumbled upon by accident.
