What Little I Know…

A few weeks ago, I posted an article that focused on the ways traditional print advertisers were investing and using new media, some would say, better than most classified and news publishers. Since that time, I have seen a plethora of releases and updates speaking specifically about the auto industry and their great adoption to reaching all generation streams, through much targeted marketing and brand awareness campaigns. In the vein of changing advertiser habits, I now share with you that Volkswagen is in talks with Apple about creating the iCar.

We have all seen the reports that show the emerging buying power of generation Y and I am sure we have all thought about how we can tap into that market for our own product awareness initiatives. In worrying about self-promotion however, we sometimes forget about our advertiser campaigns. Bad move. The lack of full market penetration attention for our classified customers, forces advertisers, as seen here with VW, to look outside of our customer reach source (newspaper and magazine sites) to fulfill their business imperatives. If you haven’t already, you need to find ways that planning these two very important items occur concurrently.

The list of activity, especially with Automotive OEM’s, does not start and end with VW and its potential iCar. Just over the past week in the news, we have heard of Google and BMW collaborating on map sharing, Toyota in Second Life, Ford hosting events for specific area bloggers to take advantage of the blogosphere hype and the list continues.

At this rate of high valued traditional print advertisers adopting new media elsewhere, would it not make sense to incorporate some new media solutions and campaigns in your classified site?