Marketing on Retail Media Networks with Julie Scott | NADA 2024

Kyle Mountsier: 0:06

We're sitting here at the cars commerce mass. It's like a land space actually, with Julie Scott, the VP of b2b marketing. Julie, thanks for joining us.

‍Julie Scott: 0:17

Glad to be here. I

Kyle Mountsier: 0:18

know we were hanging out a year ago, a year ago in Dallas, and we're talking hats and all the cool things right. I

Julie Scott: 0:24

still have my shelf of flat brim black hats. I love you guys sit proudly on the shelf. Next, everything else? Yes.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

Awesome. So back in October, when cars commerce was kind of announced as the new brand forward way of pulling all of this together, which is a massive amalgamation of a family of brands. The media network was one of the biggest announcements a part of that it was this new way of bringing media access to dealers. And you've been a big part of bringing that. Yeah, I

Julie Scott: 0:56

am thrilled about it. I mean, one of the things that is sort of happening in every industry, I'll talk about that versus these things called retail media networks are popping up. And really what's at the core of that no matter what industry you're in, is first party data. We have been talking about cookie deprecation for a very long time. It is inevitable, it's happening. And when we think about car shoppers, where are they shopping? A place like cars.com. Right. So that first party audience becomes the anchor for the cars commerce media network, it is, it is the way we are going to enable our dealer customers to be able to better target car shoppers by leveraging our first party data. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:36

And so as a part of what portions of the family of businesses is in the media network current

Julie Scott: 1:43

Yeah, that's a really good question. So you know, as the enterprise brand is cars, commerce, one of our sub brands is the media network under that sits quite a few products. But the thing that I'm most excited about today is something called Vin performance media. And what that is, is follow me on this journey, right, ready, ready to go. So if you're a dealer, you're spending money on Google, right? And you're probably doing sponsored search, SEM, you're trying to get, you know, your listing at the top of a search, right? You're looking at a cost per click, that's good. It's a lot of money, but you're gonna go you're wasting it in the end. And I think that's like kind of an uncool thing to say in certain company. But to me, you're wasting money, is

Kyle Mountsier: 2:25

it? I agree, there's a ton of media waste in our industry, for sure, totally.

Julie Scott: 2:29

And so when I think about what we can do with our first party data, right, we are a place where people are typing in a search. Why would we also have a search result that gives you that sponsored ad at the top of a search results page, which is essentially all Google is doing, except the difference is, if you're on cars.com, you're shopping for a car, right? And what we're able to do is deliver that same sem for 56%, lower cost per click than Google. So it's kind of a no brainer, in my opinion. So under Vin performance media, we're doing that across search, social and display. And just like kind of crushing it, we piloted it before the show,

Kyle Mountsier: 3:05

she's like, low key crush low key crushing

Julie Scott: 3:08

it. But you know, I think what I like even more so about it is now we've got this big brand, like you said, like a city that this big brand, and you're like alright, what, why? What is the media?

Kyle Mountsier: 3:21

What's the like? What is the value of partnering with the media when network brand like this? And that's, that's

Julie Scott: 3:27

exactly it. I think that we're still like kind of establishing that. But when our dealer customers realize, Oh, if I'm on the marketplace, now by a media product from you, the shopper that is looking at that exact Vin is now we're now going to follow that shopper everywhere they go on the internet, right? Yep. And we're going to keep targeting in that really creepy way keep targeting that shopper and driving them back to your website. And we are seeing an 88% increase in referral traffic when a dealer is using then performance media back to their website, and of that audience and 66% increase in conversion. Wow.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:05

credible. It's the right audience the right time, the right place, moving them to the right landing spot. And it just makes sense for them to convert.

Julie Scott: 4:13

And it sounds like oh, if you're in advertising or done this before, you're like, oh, right audience right time. It's like it's never been tighter. Right? We said I've been in advertising for a very long time. We've always said right audience right time. Now this is right audience right time, we know exactly who the shopper is, and we're just creepily following them everywhere they're going, that

Kyle Mountsier: 4:33

is awesome. Well, hey, look, I'll take the creepy following. I don't turn off cross App Tracking because I believe that that is what customers truly want. They want to be served the right thing when they need it most. And it's it sounds like with the 66% increase in conversion. You're getting that so congratulations. Thank you for sharing a little bit more about that with us. And yes, I can't wait to see what the media network doesn't it.

Julie Scott: 4:53

Yeah, we're excited about it. Thanks for having me. All right.

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