If your on a tight SEM budget, why does this seem like a good idea?????

[Rick Buffkin]

If the dealer is on a tight SEM budget, why would the SEM provider think it's a good idea to keep the freaking campaigns on an accelerated spend? Especially if your trying to actively and accurately measure your search impression share!!!! Curious minds want to know!! Can anyone give me a good answer??? Please don't pull a Forrest Gump and say "Because you told me to Drill Sergeant"!

 

[Alexander Lau]

The agency is probably attempting to spend the entire budget by doing such things. One of the oldest tricks in the books is to do what you showed and to expand radii, without reporting it. If the agency doesn't spend it, they are looked at as if they are unable to use the allotted amount and the dealer will make cuts, thereby making cuts to the % that the agency takes as well = profit lost.

 

[Alex Snyder]

This is quite common. Spend it all as early as possible and then tell the dealer he isn’t spending enough. If you manage a monstrous budget for thousands of dealers you can do this in small, hourly, increments to avoid being so obvious.

How would I know that

 

[Steve Stauning]

The greatest theft of dealer money today is SEM... often with the (unintended) help of the OEM (usually via Co-Op programs with "approved" providers).

My average discovery of waste and/or fraud from SEM is about $6,000/month per rooftop. This does not count what the dealer is losing from just plain bad keyword management.

It's disgusting and I have no idea why the OEMs continue to support this when it's so easy to uncover. (Imagine if every GM or Toyota dealer had an extra $6,000 each month to spend on effective advertising? What would that translate to in terms of share taken from Ford or Honda?)

 

[craigh]

One of the oldest tricks in the books is to do what you showed and to expand radii, without reporting it.

I've seen this so many times.
Have called vendors on it and, by their surprise, I can tell next to no dealers check their reports to realize they're purchasing clicks from customers 2-3 hours away in a market that makes no sense.

SEM vendors have, in my limited experience, always tried to consume an entire budget (if not suggest raising it) even if it's not necessary and the point of efficiency is long past.

 

[Alex Snyder]

The greatest theft of dealer money today is SEM... often with the (unintended) help of the OEM (usually via Co-Op programs with "approved" providers).

My average discovery of waste and/or fraud from SEM is about $6,000/month per rooftop. This does not count what the dealer is losing from just plain bad keyword management.

It's disgusting and I have no idea why the OEMs continue to support this when it's so easy to uncover. (Imagine if every GM or Toyota dealer had an extra $6,000 each month to spend on effective advertising? What would that translate to in terms of share taken from Ford or Honda?)

This. BOOM!

 

[Alexander Lau]

Right, the fact that there is OEM co-op money thrown into the fold makes it even dirtier. I'll not mention agencies or names, but there is some highway robbery going on out there. Transparency is golden.

Guys, how many times (on this website alone) have we seen a dealer say, "why are my ads showing up three towns away?"

UHMMMMMMMMMM.... no shit.

PAID SEARCH ATTRIBUTION IS COMING...

 

[Ryan Everson]

This is why we manage all of our paid search in-house

We're saving close to a half million dollars a year on management fees and who knows how much on wasted spend.

And I love when a manager insists on having a vendor pitch us because they can never find anything meaningful to bash us on.

 

[Alexander Lau]

This is why we manage all of our paid search in-house

We're saving close to a half million dollars a year on management fees and who knows how much on wasted spend.

And I love when a manager insists on having a vendor pitch us because they can never find anything meaningful to bash us on.

That's a great idea, if you have the resources and luxury of doing it. You're a large group, the small fries don't have that luxury or talent. They are being scammed.

 

[Ryan Everson]

That's a great idea, if you have the resources and luxury of doing it. You're a large group, the small fries don't have that luxury or talent. They are being scammed.

Yeah if you don't have the right person you can end up wasting even more money than if you used a vendor so it's not something I'd recommend to everyone.

We've found all of our metrics have went up by running them in-house though. We're driving much more relevant traffic and wasting less money through more highly targeted ad group segmentation and keyword targeting which is generating us more leads, calls, and showroom traffic.

I think it's pretty rare in the auto space for a new car dealer to have an average account CTR of 15-25%. The only thing that is ever that high is a vendor's 30-35% management fee.