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That was just one example on how we use the links, we handle over 500 dealers in CL so we have ugly banners too :)

 

We do a lot of work on getting the right key words, areas, and we play with multiple banenrs on each account. Our system takes 60 banners per dealer and they are selected on the fly at the time of posting. For example that banner may be used close to the Seattle Metro area where that dealer is trying to push late year models but on a different area further away like Tacoma we may put a "$250 gas card" instead.

 

Traditional sites like autotrader only allow you to run "one way", your inventory goes up with your logo and that pretty much it.

 

We see CL as a dynamic board where we run multiple campaigns at the same time. As a quick and simple example we run Sound Ford in one area, we run tem as Renton ford in another, and then we run them as Sound National Lending (spifi departmet) all over the place.

 

It is hard to show things properly in a forum, some things I dont want to show period :)

 

To keep things in perspective about your comment "If ever there was an banner add made that is the opposite of the CraigsList culture, you've made it". In the car biz what counts is the sales, and this dealer got pretty close to (I dont want to write the numbers but I will disclose over the phone if you are inetersted) double the calls they get from Autotrader for half the cost. The next player in my market would be Cars.com but they didnt do very well for this dealer either. Traffic to the site, only organic and buyatoyota.com where on top of CL as a referrer. Autotrader provided 1/3 the click thrus CL did.