Japanese carmakers hitting the American Consumer target with their Ads.

IMMI research shows the importance of gathering and interpreting data from multiple platforms to get an accurate read on advertising reach. Looking at radio or television in isolation does not give advertisers a true sense of their campaign’s performance. The IMMI cross-platform measurement strategy evaluates the effectiveness of campaigns on multiple platforms. In addition to providing a more accurate analysis, this also gives marketers insight into using their budgets more efficiently and exponentially increasing their reach by exploiting the synergy between media platforms.

Every time an IMMI panel member hears an ad, whether on TV, radio, or in the theater, the software tracks it. Most of the car ads the IMMI research panel members were hearing this Fall were selling Japanese cars.

On this chart 100 is set as the average of advertising reach, the number of individuals reached by the brand’s ads, for all cars tracked by the study. At 116, the Japanese brands reached 16% more IMMI panel members than the average. Domestic manufacturers managed 94% of the average…trailing the Japanese by 22%. European manufacturers reached the fewest individuals at 89% of the overall average.

The study was based on the number of times car ads were seen by IMMI panel members in New York, Houston, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami on both television and radio during August-October 2007.

Looking at the individual Japanese brands tracked in the study, Honda Toyota and Nissan were way above the average in the auto industry for number of individuals reached by their ads. Right behind them with the highest reach for a domestic manufacturer: Ford.

Many of the American nameplates are going the wrong way. Cadillac, Hummer, Buick and GMC are all well below average.

Each of the brands used a cross-platform strategy to achieve their reach. If we break down the numbers of the leaders in each category we see how these different strategies played out.

BMW achieved the greatest reach in radio by a huge margin: 339 points over the average radio reach for all brands tracked. They were 125 points ahead of second-place Ford.

Mazda has the biggest reach in TV over the three month period (and almost no presence on radio).

Ford did the best job of supporting their TV with radio. Ford increased their TV reach numbers with radio advertising more than any other brand tracked.

Honda combined similar radio and TV reach for the crown of biggest reach overall in the Fall.

To view charts CLICK above on ‘More Images’.

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