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Vendor Pricing

Having worked for a web platform provider in the past, they want to feel you out (find out what they can get away with in charging = you could be big; you could be small) and cloak their pricing from their competition.
I can see that. I mean that is what we do. But then again, we at least show something online. Unless it is fixed-ops in which case dealers still do not put menu pricing online.
 
Rates fluctuate by market size.


A dealer in Shreveport may not pay the same as a dealer in LA. This is due to market size and available eyeballs in a market. Before working in Digital I worked in local and national TV sales. There are tiers so if you book a national super bowl ad that runs nationally your commercial would be seen in almost every market i.e. FOX Corp. (Very Expensive because of audience). If you booked on a local network in Dallas your rate would be according to how many people will see you ad in the Dallas Market. If you book the same spot in Waco then your rate would be considerably lower due to the audience that will see you ads.


With digital advertising it goes with how many active shoppers are in the Designated Market Area (i.e. Cars, Autotrader, Edmunds). Tier 1 Markets like LA, New York, San Fran, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, etc. may have a higher rate due to DMA # concentration of Audience than Tier 3 Markets Waco,Temple-Killeen or Des Moines. A dealer in Shreveport might pay significantly less than a dealer in New Orleans. Audience size in advertising produces rates. Our goal is to provide value by measuring the audience size and searches and then applying rates. Lets say there are an active 200,000 shoppers in Dallas for a Toyota and only 50 in Brownsville, TX. Who has the most opportunity to sell the most amount of cars?


In most markets--rates for an overnight or daytime ad would be cheaper than a spot in prime time. More audience in prime time and less in daytime and overnights spots. A typical spot in a B Market for an overnight may be $10 to $75 dollars where a prime spot (NFL) may be up to $10,000 depending on the reach of eyeballs and availability.

I hope this helps with transparency on pricing for vendors.
 
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Rates fluctuate by market size.


A dealer in Shreveport may not pay the same as a dealer in LA. This is due to market size and available eyeballs in a market. Before working in Digital I worked in local and national TV sales. There are tiers so if you book a national super bowl ad that runs nationally your commercial would be seen in almost every market i.e. FOX Corp. (Very Expensive because of audience). If you booked on a local network in Dallas your rate would be according to how many people will see you ad in the Dallas Market. If you book the same spot in Waco then your rate would be considerably lower due to the audience that will see you ads.


With digital advertising it goes with how many active shoppers are in the Designated Market Area (i.e. Cars, Autotrader, Edmunds). Tier 1 Markets like LA, New York, San Fran, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, etc. may have a higher rate due to DMA # concentration of Audience than Tier 3 Markets Waco,Temple-Killeen or Des Moines. A dealer in Shreveport might pay significantly less than a dealer in New Orleans. Audience size in advertising produces rates. Our goal is to provide value by measuring the audience size and searches and then applying rates. Lets say there are an active 200,000 shoppers in Dallas for a Toyota and only 50 in Brownsville, TX. Who has the most opportunity to sell the most amount of cars?


In most markets--rates for an overnight or daytime ad would be cheaper than a spot in prime time. More audience in prime time and less in daytime and overnights spots. A typical spot in a B Market for an overnight may be $10 to $75 dollars where a prime spot (NFL) may be up to $10,000 depending on the reach of eyeballs and availability.

I hope this helps with transparency on pricing for vendors.

I can see that. However, that is talking about TV ad spend, which absolutely has different pricing. What I was referring to was vendors with services such as chat, text, crm, marketing (recurring emails), DMS providers, Reporting Tools, etc. Where most of them do not show their pricing online for any of those services. It is really annoying to have to go through multiple presentations, phone calls, emails & texts just to get pricing. And then if you do not decide to move forward with them you still get inundated with calls, emails & texts.
 
True, I am sure it is annoying to not know pricing ahead of time and to receive numerous phone calls and emails. I can only speak to digital and broadcast but I've worked with email campaigns too and that would be included in the number of emails you are sending and reach of audience and how targeted the audience. For email we only have a certain number of in market auto shoppers, add brand, add geo-targeted that determines rate.

I apologize on behalf of all professional sales reps if they are persistent and become annoying. Hopefully it's a sincere belief that they can truly help your dealership.

Best of Luck!
 
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