You've come a long way Ryan! I remember when I taught you Jing. Good Job!

Jeff, rereading my post, it does look like I was "pimping" our product and post. I apologize. Please don't mistake my enthusiasm for Animoto as an attempt to sell a product.

We've found that many dealerships don't have video on their website due to a number of factors, one being cost. We all know the value that video brings to the table and we added support for Animoto as a supplement for dealerships.

To be completely honest and state it in one sentence:
Everyone loves the final product that Animoto delivers but nobody uses it.

Even after we integrated Animoto's Quick Start API in late November, not one single dealership has utilized this feature to create video of their vehicle. We've given them the vessel to create outstanding video and attach it to vehicles on their website and now it comes down to a timing issue (nobody has time to create videos).

So the research/best practices that I can provide at this time is:

1. Most of our dealerships prefer an automated solution as opposed to a toolset and process to create their own videos.

2. Dealers prefer a more personalized video than what Animoto delivers, including a video into helps brand the video and speak to your audience. Login to view embedded media View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4zQUE9zvg
(for example only, not "pimping")

3. Dealers have asked for cost information and a list of features to be added to the video automatically, which is something that Animoto does not support at this time. So be sure to add the cost/payment information to each of your videos.

4. Dealers have asked for incentive information to be added to each video automatically. While we have access to this information, passing it to Animoto is not supported (their API only accepts video, photos and audio and not text). Be sure to add incentive information to each video. We've removed similar shots and the length is around 2 min now. Which seems to be acceptable.

5. Length, we've had reports that the length of the video is too long (about 3 minutes) by automatically sending the assets to Animoto. Be sure to remove unwanted photos and photos that are similar to cut the length of the video.

6. Use the call to action button. Link it to something relevant. If this is a vehicle video, use the call to action button to link to a contact form, a search for similar/same vehicles in your inventory or available incentives. Linking to your home page doesn't really help the visitor.

Points 1 and 2 are fair enough but 3, 4, and 5 require the dealership to do additional work to increase the value of the Animoto videos. To bring us back to topic of this article, the call to action button is great, if it's used correctly (see point 6). As we receive data, I'll be happy to share. Just an observation… the link is a component of Animoto's player so search engines probably will not see any SEO value from this link. I doubt this will even be counted as a backlink from Animoto's hosting of the video.

To be fair, we are still in the process of marketing this to promote awareness of this technology and testing video assets so I will keep you posted on statistics with Animoto's usage as more dealers discover its value. I believe that Animoto's platform and see the value their product will deliver to the automotive marketplace. I'd be interested hearing other opinions, best practices and stats from dealers/vendors. Is anyone out there also starting to use Animoto in their sites?

If any dealers add these "call to action" videos on their website to push traffic to specials, aged inventory, service appt , Please be sure to post the site in the comments.

I know Joe was a big fan of that track.

Wow - Easy. Professional. And I love the idea of the call to action button at the end.

I can just picture Uncle Joe cranking the volume and dancing in his office!

I wrote a post talking about this a while back ( http://www.drivingsales.com/blogs/bruceetzcorn/20... ) and agree, Animoto is a fantastic, cheap alternative to some higher priced video options available for dealerships. We've ( Dealer HD) have even integrated Animoto into our admin tool. Dealers can send all vehicle photos right to Animoto with one click of a button.

Great Job by Mike McKenzie at Jim Tidwell Ford Cobb County Ga. He worked a GREAT deal for me on a new 2013 F150 Platinum right off the bat without all the back and forth negotiations normally associated with buying a vehicle. Great Buying experience . I have already referred several friends . Great job Mike and to the whole Jim Tidwell TEAM !!!!! It's my 3rd vehicle I've purchased from them since 2002.

Have to give a big thumbs up to Curtis Ryan Honda dealership in Shelton, CT. We had the pleasure of dealing with Scott as our sales person who made our leasing of a Honda CRV the most pleasurable experience we ever had. Yup you read that correctly. It does seem like an oxymoron but Scott was the most easy going person we have ever dealt with in a car showroom. No high pressure just an easy going exchange of information and arriving at a payment that benefited both of us. We also never had a salesperson who actually spent time with us going over all of the features and helping us to set up our blue tooth and radio stations. Come on who ever does this? Highly recommend Scott and this dealership to everyone. We will be back for a second car.

Have to give a big thumbs up to Curtis Ryan Honda dealership in Shelton, CT. We had the pleasure of dealing with Scott as our sales person who made our leasing of a Honda CRV the most pleasurable experience we ever had. Yup you read that correctly. It does seem like an oxymoron but Scott was the most easy going person we have ever dealt with in a car showroom. No high pressure just an easy going exchange of information and arriving at a payment that benefited both of us. We also never had a salesperson who actually spent time with us going over all of the features and helping us to set up our blue tooth and radio stations. Come on who ever does this? Highly recommend Scott and this dealership to everyone. We will be back for a second car.

R3 Motorcars @ 1011 S. Pendleton St. in Easley - Both Rusty Smith (owner) & Jeremy Goeringer (finance) were great to deal with.  My defenses were up when I first walked into their showroom but there was NO high pressure shenanaigans.
Bought a beautiful used Mercedes from them at a fair price.  I would not hesitate to refer any of my co-workers or clients (I am a Keller Williams real estate agent) to them. They carry only gently used "luxury" vehicles i.e. Mercedes, BMWs, Cadillacs, etc.
Their showroom # is: 864.631.1999
Email: [email protected]

I will surely be going back to them for my next vehicle as well.
Gary Bannon - Keller Williams Realty
700 Airport Road, Greenville, SC 29607 (864).323.8989

R3 Motorcars @ 1011 S. Pendleton St. in Easley - Both Rusty Smith (owner) & Jeremy Goeringer (finance) were great to deal with.  My defenses were up when I first walked into their showroom but there was NO high pressure shenanaigans.
Bought a beautiful used Mercedes from them at a fair price.  I would not hesitate to refer any of my co-workers or clients (I am a Keller Williams real estate agent) to them. They carry only gently used "luxury" vehicles i.e. Mercedes, BMWs, Cadillacs, etc.
Their showroom # is: 864.631.1999
Email: [email protected]

I will surely be going back to them for my next vehicle as well.
Gary Bannon - Keller Williams Realty
700 Airport Road, Greenville, SC 29607 (864).323.8989

Just wanted to let you all know that my salesperson gene king does a wonderful jof before the sale and after. Always thinking of us. Thanks gene for all your help
Conrad slorp

Conrad slorp

Dealership ratings are SO not like product ratings. Whereas many people will review products whether they like them or not, 95% of unprompted dealership reviews (maybe higher) are of the negative variety. Almost nobody goes out of their way to rave about a great car buying experience, but many are willing to vent about a bad experience to anyone who will listen. It's generally only those customers who are encouraged to post positive reviews that will do so (and most of those who are encouraged to do so, will not).

Thank you, cars.com, for further dilluting the review pool and for giving us yet another site on which to police fake negative reviews. Unscrupulous competitors will do this and it's VERY hard to police, especially if all cars.com requires in order to post a damaging anonymous review is a valid email address (which can be created in about 2 minutes).

Dealers can opt out of the ATC reviews if they don't want them posted. This way some dealers who are really into concerned about their reputation can have them displayed. Other dealers who don't care about their online reputation can turn them off.

It should be "When Shoppers Speak (Nicely) You Win". What about the negative reviews? Cars.com and AutoTrader are jumping in way too early on this band wagon. And to whose benefit? Surely not the dealer, who is paying to advertise their vehicles on what now could contain detrimental content for their business.

Good luck Cars and Trader. I'd hate to be the one taking the phone calls from your dealers when the negative reviews start piling up.

Time will only tell. My bet is that Cars.com is heading for disaster with this one. If you have honest reviews, you must publish all of the negative ones as well as the good ones. How fast will a dealer threaten to cancel Cars.com if a negative review is posted? How fast will consumers see right through it if every review they see is a good one? This appears to be a no win situation for Cars.com.

Wouldn't you want to keep your customers on a site that offers the Dealer Review research right there? Content that is monitored by the site owner by giving the dealers the heads up before it is posted to the site? Or would you rather the consumer Google your dealership name only to find one of the 140 possible review sites where consumers write "unmonitored" reviews?

By the way, for ATC to post these external reviews seems to give too much validation to these random external sites. They should do what Cars.com is doing instead.

So Cars.com reviews will not be genuine for the consumer?

Jeff, thanks for starting this thread. Lots of comments and debatewill surely follow. Is Cars.com attempting to bite the hand that feeds them? They will say no... but what will the dealers say?

I would be interested to know how far will Cars.com go to protect the integrity of the reviews. It is extremely easy to create positive reviews for yourself (and negative ones for your competitors) - and without an method for checking the validity of the reviews, Cars.com might find itself play "cop" on a full time basis. If a review can simply be posted based on a phone call or email (or lack of either) it looks like it would be very easy for those inclined to do so, to manipulate the system.

Robert,

ATC is not increasing rates. You are obviously not paying attention and if you do work for ATC, it's time you find another job.

Dangerous as most 3rd party reviews out there are negative reviews. Where Cars.com will be consulting the dealer through this process and allowing dealers to have the last say in the review.

This is not a main focal point for ATC we are discussing our new 2011 dealer solutions not dealer reviews. This is a great way to truly help our Dealer Partners and show that the company Cars.com truly cares about things like CSI and Co Op dollars all of that impact our dealer partners. Here at ATC we are discussing our new solutions and the pricing of it. I guess to cover our purchases of VAuto, KBB and HomeNet. I hate when I have to increase rates!!!!!!!