Anyone advertising on car forums as a vendor?

R

ReflectionsADS

New member
I'm working with a company called InternetBrands and highly considering becoming a vendor for some of my favorite car forums. Does anyone have any experience with InternetBrands or similar forms of advertising? I'm familiar with how these forms of advertising work and how successful they can be, however I have never done this in the detailing world so this is essentially new to me. Much easier to make these decisions when you're spending someone else's money.



Currently, I'm using PPC Ad Campaigns as my only form of advertising. I know the typical expectations with print ads and will eventually move into that advertising as well, but I'm really interested to know if anyone is using this company and what their real life experience is with them.



Thanks in advance.
 
I have been advertising on internet brands for years. It has definitely been a good thing for my business, and we have gotten a lot of work from it, but it seems like most forums have died off a bit and are not as busy as they used to be. Facebook has gotten so strong that people are not on forums as much as they used to be. Autopia is still great though. ;)
 
JohnKleven said:
I have been advertising on internet brands for years. It has definitely been a good thing for my business, and we have gotten a lot of work from it, but it seems like most forums have died off a bit and are not as busy as they used to be. Facebook has gotten so strong that people are not on forums as much as they used to be. Autopia is still great though. ;)
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Remember us having this conversation John?



Make sure the forum you advertise on has a good local activity. John sponsored(still does?) on 6speedonline the same time I did. He had a great response from it, I did not. But if you take a moment to inspect the region he is in and the one I am in you'll see that the NW has a ton of activity and the SE was a ghost town. The same money on the same site netted a big difference. This is not an isolated incident. Mike with Mirror(also in GA) told me he blew money as a sponsor on 6speedonline just the same.
 
JohnKleven said:
I have been advertising on internet brands for years. It has definitely been a good thing for my business, and we have gotten a lot of work from it, but it seems like most forums have died off a bit and are not as busy as they used to be. Facebook has gotten so strong that people are not on forums as much as they used to be. Autopia is still great though. ;)
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That's great to hear! I didn't know if this was a service that a detailer would get much of a response from. In my area, Delaware has approximately 50k impressions and since I'm dead in the middle of the state, i'm no further than 45min. driving distance from furthers points of the state. John, you have a number of services that I'm sure your rotating through the banner ads, which are you seeing the biggest response from?



Jean-Claude said:
Remember us having this conversation John?



Make sure the forum you advertise on has a good local activity. John sponsored(still does?) on 6speedonline the same time I did. He had a great response from it, I did not. But if you take a moment to inspect the region he is in and the one I am in you'll see that the NW has a ton of activity and the SE was a ghost town. The same money on the same site netted a big difference. This is not an isolated incident. Mike with Mirror(also in GA) told me he blew money as a sponsor on 6speedonline just the same.
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Jean-Claude thanks for the advise. I made sure that they sent me detailed impressions form each site and some of them are a complete waste for me where others are spot on. My entire state (which is not very big to begin with- only 1.5 hours form end to end) gets 50k impressions a month from all the sites cumulatively- and within a 20 mile radius, we get 25k. I was told that they require 50k impressions per month in order to advertise. For me, if I had to pick the site there would only be a handful, maybe 10-15 that would be worth my time, so I would be putting through heavy impressions on those site. I don't want to waste $350 a month on this type of advertising and it be a complete waste.



Are/Did you guys constantly posting your current detail works on those sites and remaining an active member to ask questions and post to comments, or do/did you rely on the banners themselves, soley. Of course, that would be hard to do for 120+ sites if I did them all, whereas 5-10 sites might be manageable in my downtime.



Thanks again!
 
One idea would be to use google adwords banner ads. You can specify car related website and traffic for just your local area. You could even have your ads on Autopia that way.
 
toyotaguy said:
did you say you are doing all sites for $350?
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Toyotaguy:



Well, you pay per 1000 impressions. For all the sites, in my area, the number of impressions was only 50,000 cumulative impressions. That is also their minimum, 50k impressions. So.... $7/1000 impressions @ 50k impressions = $350/month.



It would certainly differ from area to area. I don't see value in doing them all, but it certainl would be a good thing to have the availability to advertise on all 123 sites that are available.



Ben@Autopia said:
One idea would be to use google adwords banner ads. You can specify car related website and traffic for just your local area. You could even have your ads on Autopia that way.
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Ben:



I'm already using Google Adwords PPC ads, could you explain how the banner ads are targeteable (word???)



thanks in advance!
 
It works pretty much the same way you create a text ad. Instead you upload banners. You have the same targeting abilities the text ads do. You can select location such as city or county in the campaign settings. In Display Network you can select topics such as 'autos & vehicles'.
 
Ben@Autopia said:
It works pretty much the same way you create a text ad. Instead you upload banners. You have the same targeting abilities the text ads do. You can select location such as city or county in the campaign settings. In Display Network you can select topics such as 'autos & vehicles'.
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Ben:



Pretty neat. I have used some of the other features, but had no idea I could target banners that way. Thanks for the information!
 
Just an update:



I haven't given up on this venture and will likely be signing a monthly contract with this company. They are definitely more realistic than I thought they would be regarding what makes sense for me. Not sure how this is going to work but I won't know unless I give it a shot.



JohnKlevin:

Are you selling products as a vendor or your detailing/other services? Are you posting there as you do here (i.e. providing information, feedback, posting recent work etc...)? Feel free to answer in PM if you think that's more appropriate. Just looking for some help to maximize my investment here.



Thanks in advance!
 
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