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CarClicks Inventory Marketing Q1 2025 Results

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CarClicks Inventory Marketing Q1 2025 Results

In today’s competitive auto market, it’s not enough to rely solely on traditional digital marketing tactics. You need a targeted, data-driven approach to reach the right shoppers at the right time, and that’s exactly what CarClicks delivers.

Published: May 22, 2025

Automotive Internet Media | Digital Marketing Agency

Q1 2025 CarClicks Results

Q1 2025 CarClicks Results

CarClicks is our flagship inventory marketing product designed to help auto dealers reach serious, low-funnel car buyers. Using exclusive auto shopper data, CarClicks identifies highly engaged, in-market shoppers based on their shopping behavior and intent. Our technology platforms deliver personalized digital ads, placing your inventory directly in front of the right buyers, at the right time.

No matter who manages your advertising budget, it’s critical to consistently engage new potential customers. CarClicks Inventory Marketing allows you to allocate a specific portion of your budget to drive maximum inventory exposure, generate more VDPs, and reach the most auto shoppers in a highly cost-effective way.

Q1 2025 Performance Highlights


We’re proud to share that in the first quarter of 2025, CarClicks delivered 9,143,613 Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views for our dealer partners. Even better, we maintained strong cost efficiency, with the average cost per VDP around $0.75. Our campaigns reached shoppers across thousands of high-traffic domains, maximizing visibility and engagement. These results speak for themselves—CarClicks remains a powerful tool for dealers looking to boost exposure and drive more qualified traffic to their inventory.

Let’s Connect

Ready to Take Your Inventory Marketing Further? Discover how CarClicks can help you maximize your ad budget, increase inventory visibility, and connect with more serious car buyers. Visit us online to learn more or contact us to get started today.

Recent Posts

Google Ad CPC Inflation in 2025

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Google Ad CPC Inflation in 2025

Google ad CPCs are rising in 2025. Get the details on how much ad costs have increased and see how it could be impacting your ad strategy.

Published: April 23, 2025

Automotive Internet Media | Digital Marketing Agency

Google ads cpc

Digital marketing costs can fluctuate, especially as the global economy changes. One trend advertisers are seeing this year is Google ad CPC inflation. Understanding this trend is crucial for automotive dealers. As costs change, one must evaluate the impact on expected outcomes and performance benchmarks. This article will delve into why Google Ad CPC inflation is happening, Google ads pricing trends, and strategies to manage advertising costs.

Understanding Google Ad CPC Inflation

A Google Ad CPC, or Cost-Per-Click, is the amount advertisers pay when users click their ads. In 2025, advertisers have seen increases in this across industries, including automotive. This inflation means higher costs to reach potential customers, thus a lower amount of results for the same budget. However, have performance targets decreased to account for this? Probably not. So dealers must spend more to maintain outcomes or adjust their advertising strategy.

The Current State of Google Ad CPC Inflation

Search Engine Land reviewed both Alphabet’s prior year data as well as their own client account data. They found that the average annual CPC increase from Google’s reports from 2019-2024 was 2.33%. However, when they assessed their own data, across industries, compared to this year they found an average CPC increase of 11.75%.

Automotive Internet Media has also seen rising Google CPC costs for search campaigns in 2025.

Factors Driving Google Ad CPC Inflation

Several factors contribute to Google Ad CPC inflation. Increased competition for keywords and search volume is a major driver. Economic factors, such as general inflation, impact advertising budgets. Finally, changes in Google’s own algorithms and ad formats can affect bidding, further altering ad pricing. These dynamics influence how costs fluctuate, making it vital for automotive dealers to stay updated and agile in their strategies.

Impact on Automotive Dealers

Automotive dealers are already feeling the pressure of looming tariffs and rising advertising costs are just a further challenge for dealerships in 2025. If a dealer heavily relies on Google to drive advertising traffic then Google CPC inflation is definitely affecting results.

How should a dealer navigate these challenges?

One way is to diversify their advertising strategy. Advertising on additional channels can help with efficiency. Specifically adding in a product like CarClicks that sends quality in-market shoppers to dealer inventory at a lower cost than most Google clicks is a successful approach. CarClicks is a great addition to a dealer’s marketing strategy, especially in times they need to further maximize ROI.

Conclusion: Staying Competitive in the Digital Economy

Understanding Google ad CPC inflation is crucial for dealerships to maximize their digital marketing budgets. By adopting strategic approaches, dealers can optimize costs effectively as the market changes and drive better results – even as costs increase.

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Automotive Internet Media Partners with the 2025 Chicago Auto Show

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Automotive Internet Media Partners with the 2025 Chicago Auto Show

by automotiveinternetmedia | February 7, 2025 | Digital Marketing, Chicago Auto Show

Automotive Internet Media and Chocago Auto Show Partnership

Automotive Internet Media (AIM) is pleased to continue our valued partnership with the renowned Chicago Auto Show, taking place from February 8-17, 2025. As one of the premier automotive events in the United States, the Chicago Auto Show provides an exceptional platform for showcasing the latest vehicles, innovations, and industry trends. We are proud to support their digital initiatives for the 2025 show and help power their local vehicle shopping portal, DriveChicago.com.

Driving Results with Digital Marketing

AIM plays a key role in amplifying the Chicago Auto Show’s reach by supporting its digital marketing initiatives and ensuring the event’s presence extends far beyond the convention center. By leveraging our industry expertise and digital platforms, AIM ensures that the Chicago Auto Show’s messaging reaches its target audience, driving excitement and attendance.

CarClicks and DriveChicago.com

In addition to our continued partnership with the Chicago Auto Show, AIM is proud to support the Chicago Automobile Trade Association (CATA) in powering DriveChicago.com. CATA, the organization responsible for producing the Chicago Auto Show, also oversees DriveChicago.com, a key digital platform designed to connect car shoppers with local inventory and dealerships across Chicagoland. AIM plays a key role behind the scenes, contributing to the development of the website. AIM’s CarClicks inventory marketing product also helps DriveChicago.com reach in-market auto shoppers with strategically placed and personalized digital ads.  

Automotive Partnership Supporting Chicagoland

Automotive Internet Media is honored to be associated with the Chicago Auto Show, DriveChicago.com and the automotive industry in Chicago. We greatly value our local partnerships and are happy to support the impactful initiatives the CATA provides to both automotive dealers and the broader community.

Recent Posts

Connected TV Advertising in Automotive

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In early March, when Covid-19 restrictions began locking people in their homes, many dealerships began to either cut or halt all marketing budgets.

Was that the right thing to do?

If you look, used car prices hit a record recently, in what can be described as a surprising development amid a global pandemic and falling new car sales. In June, the Manheim used vehicle price index hit a record, rising about 4% year over year, 7% compared with the May reading, and surging more than 16% compared with the April pandemic-induced low. There are a few reasons for the rise, which were a positive for all retail automotive stocks.

PAG Penske Automotive Group Inc.

GPI Group 1 Automotive Inc.

SAH Sonic Automotive Inc.

LAD Lithia Motors Inc.

AN AutoNation Inc.

 

There are numerous data points that suggest the U.S. auto industry is in the midst of a V-shaped recovery – sales snapping back rapidly after a sharp decline.

New car sales are coming back strongly as well. After dropping from an annualized rate of about 16.8 million units in February to 8.6 million in April, sales hit 12.2 million units in May. Analysis believe annualized sales could top 14 million units in June. That would be a 67% jump from April lows.

So why are some dealerships and dealer groups excelling during the pandemic?

After a slight hesitation by almost all dealerships, which is normal because know one knew what we were facing, some operators made a decision to take advantage of whatever buyers were in the market. As Robin Williams would say, Carpe Diem – Seize the day. That’s right, some dealerships made a conscious decision to win at all costs. Not to cut all their advertising expenses and wait it out, but to realize there would be consumers sitting all day, either on their phone or computer.

They assumed their audience would not be consuming content the same way they always have, and they were right. The standard media patterns were changing dramatically. With extensive work from home policies, this required little driving, which meant less people listening to the radio. All sports were canceled. Movie theaters and box offices closed.

Good operators assessed these shifts and looked to other ways to reach their audience.

One approach to get in front car buyers was to leverage the promise of Connected TV (CTV). It appears COVID-19 has pushed Connected TV to the forefront for many dealerships. CTV advertising spend increased by 35% in Q2 2020.

Dealers learned that advanced targeting tactics can support reinvestment across both linear and CTV to take advantage of increased at-home viewing.

The case for CTV advertising in automotive is compelling, especially when considering 1.8 million subscribers “cut the cord” from traditional pay television services to embrace subscription-based streaming services in Q1 2020, and the pandemic prompted a boost in streaming hours. Audience reach is not the only opportunity that is drawing direct response marketers towards CTV.  The great appeal for dealers is the ability to bring all the beloved aspects of digital marketing to the television channel — especially granular targeting, retargeting, and better measurement. There can be little doubt that CTV is here to stay and will become the norm in households across the United States if it isn’t already.

Yet, while CTV advertising has accelerated in recent months, there are considerable complications for dealerships to overcome.

There are over 200 OTT (over-the-top) streaming providers, and CTV devices range from smart TVs and HDMI sticks to gaming consoles and Blu-ray players. All these platforms complicate creative development, tracking ads, gathering performance metrics, and attributing conversions.

At Automotive Internet Media we realize the marketing environment has become vast and complex. We offer a dynamic video media service.

AIM’s Dynamic Video Media including CTV, OTT, Instream, Outstream and YouTube!

Benefits of AIM’s Dynamic Video Management:

  • Comprehensive platform with CTV, Digital Audio and Programmatic Buying capabilities
  • AIM Strategic Insights (Audience, Competitive trends, Vertical information)
  • We are living in a multi-screen, cross-platform world, AIM Video allows dealerships to follow the viewer regardless of device
  • There is no one-size-fits-all approach to AIM’s Video Management, so we continue to test and learn
  • Placement can be pre, mid or post roll in addition to in-banner, in-feed and interstitial
  • We provide the ability to track view and completion rates giving dealers insight into the level of engagement your content is receiving

There is no doubt that CTV should be tested and will undoubtedly become a permanent fixture of the marketing mix for most dealerships. However, for dealerships that are still lacking getting serious, highly-engaged shoppers to their website, there is an overlooked digital channel that delivers high quality traffic to your website. That channel is CarClicks Inventory Marketing. Click here to learn more about CarClicks products.

Can CarClicks Be the Future of Dealership Advertising?

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AIM’s Tony French argues for a new approach to allocating your marketing budget that ensures getting more visibility on your inventory and more auto shoppers on your website. 

The CarClicks Inventory Marketing platform had a smooth ride in 2019, its best year yet. 

For dealership owners and managers, getting the best marketing platforms and vendors has always been a challenge. Many elect to work with the big players; but find themselves dealing with tighter and tighter guidelines and restrictions. These companies often struggle to achieve results equal to smaller marketing companies with more at stake. 

Competing with the major companies historically meant it was us or them, but now dealers see that diversifying their monthly ad budget can produce better results. With the right visibility, they can determine the best performing campaigns themselves. 

Here’s why CarClicks should be included in every dealership marketing strategy:

Paid traffic should (always) drive auto shoppers to vehicles: Before you launch any digital campaigns, you need to determine what goals you are trying to achieve. If you are paying for advertising to help you sell cars, when the shopper gets to your website, they need to shop your inventory. 

Track your results: When it comes to judging campaign performance, data and KPI’s beat your gut feeling every time. Regardless of the paid campaign, measuring the amount of inventory views, bounce rate, time on site and goal conversion is critical for all paid campaigns. 

Budget allocation & optimization based on results: On a monthly basis you should review the results of every campaign and decide how you want to move forward. If you discover one campaign is performing better than others, you should re-allocate budgets appropriately. Determine the cost per session for each campaign. If one campaign is driving higher quality traffic for less per session, you should increase that campaign’s budget taken from the poorer performing campaigns. 

Eliminate waste: The key to selecting the right media is to choose the sources that drive the highest quality traffic to your website. Paying to reach people that may not be in the market for a vehicle isn’t an effective spend. 

Allocate: A CarClicks campaign creates an integrated and cohesive approach to inventory marketing. We seamlessly promote your inventory to auto shoppers across multiple channels, while factoring in the different devices that auto shoppers are using to shop for your inventory. CarClicks Inventory Marketing Products will drive serious, highly engaged auto shoppers to your website while lowering your overall advertising costs.  

Changing landscape: With budgets under increasing pressure, dealerships must allocate every dollar with precision and purpose. 

Often, however, dealers and managers feel obligated to their OEM or by relationships with vendors. What dealerships need is an analytical, forward-looking approach that allocates marketing dollars to campaigns and products that have the highest performing results rather than those that are being pushed by the manufacturer. 

Differentiate your brand, dealership and most importantly, your inventory by allocating part of your budget to CarClicks Inventory Marketing. 

 

To learn more about how CarClicks can help your dealership, contact us at sales@aimyes.com. 

How to Increase your Dealership’s Online Presence

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Absolutely every dealership has some kind of Internet presence -they can be part of a large automotive group, single point location or independent used car lot – they all want the same thing: to reach the largest number of people while investing the smallest amount of money and getting the largest amount of sales possible.

There’s a very efficient method for achieving all of this while getting all your potential customers to know your dealership and inventory: CarClicks Inventory Marketing.

Unlike traditional advertising, CarClicks advertising is increasingly more accessible for every dealership and enables you to quickly, easily, efficiently and affordably reach serious, highly-engaged auto shoppers. That’s why CarClicks is gaining more ground among those dealerships that want to increase their online presence.

Having a website is fundamental, having a presence on social networks is indispensable and having a marketing strategy is necessary. The reality is that CarClicks Inventory Marketing is also essential and is becoming a more habitual and necessary practice by some of the best automotive operators in the industry.

What’s the biggest benefit to CarClicks Inventory Marketing?

Imagine that you have an attractive dealership on one of the best streets in town, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is what happens when you invest in CarClicks: you automatically become visible to thousands of people who have been in the market for a vehicle but didn’t even know you existed!

A CarClicks strategy creates an integrated and cohesive approach to inventory marketing. We seamlessly promote your inventory to auto shoppers across multiple channels, while factoring in the different devices that auto shoppers are using to shop for your inventory. It’s all about driving the auto shopper to your website!

CarClicks is very important marketing tactic for both large and small dealerships alike, since with just a few bucks you’ll be able to get better visibility, which will certainly translate into an increase in website traffic and a boost in vehicle sales.

CarClicks Inventory Marketing campaigns are designed and well executed. Our campaigns will dramatically increase brand awareness and drive more auto shoppers to your dealership website.  

Increase your dealership’s online presence by contacting us at Automotive Internet Media at: sales@aimyes.com

The Smartest Ad Spend in Automotive

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Data Driven Targeting has revolutionized the way automotive digital advertising can be delivered. It has enabled dealerships to be precise in how and whom they target, and improve how effectively they manage their ad budget.

 

To reach auto shoppers with marketing in today’s digital climate, dealerships need highly accurate and relevant advertising campaigns. Multiple touch points from different channels usually precede the purchase of a new or used vehicle. In the digital environment, the consumer-purchasing funnel might involve touch points from channels such as paid search (i.e., Google Ads, CarClicks Inventory Marketing, etc.), social media (e.g., Facebook ads) and email campaigns. This makes it important to understand the complex customer journey across marketing channels prior to a vehicle purchase.

 

Consumers are multitasking with different devices which lowers the attention towards each channel and thus complicates the dealership’s abilitiy to get the attention of the shopper to their ad promotion. For example, a shopper may be watching TV and shift attention back and forth between their smartphone and TV. Today, consumers are getting bombarded with ads from different channels on different devices, which can be overwhelming causing them to block their attention to the ads.

 

We at Automotive Internet Media, Inc. saw an opportunity in the automotive industry to build an advertising product that moves from mass advertising to individual-level personalized vehicle ads that breaks through the clutter and grabs the auto shopper’s attention.

 

We have built a product that leverages proprietary algorithms to determine which auto shoppers are most likely ready to buy. We place the code on your website that allows us to create an individual user profile for each shopper that visits the dealership website. Our algorithms are enhanced with machine learning and big data; note that I didn’t say artificial intelligence!

 

Once we determine the individuals to target, we begin delivering ads. Data Driven Targeting drives new sales by serving dynamic personalized inventory ads to attract and inspire each auto shopper. We target those auto shoppers at the right moment in their purchasing process.

 

It is also very important to recognize the auto shoppers across different devices. Over 72% of buyers use at least 2 devices and switch at least 3 times before they purchase. Our cross-device matching technology and a shopper identify graph ensure we deliver an integrated ad experience which helps gain efficiency in ad delivery, costs and results.

 

Media buy is critical for success. Our ads are served on the largest network of premium publishers in the automotive industry. Other networks may have more publishers, but Data Driven Targeting has better ad placement on higher quality websites.

 

Data Driven Targeting will increase auto shopper engagement, efficiency and consumer purchase behavior. Data Driven Targeting is one of the most effective products in automotive marketing by enabling a personalized vehicle offering to every visiting auto shopper.

 

Convert auto shoppers and maximize sales with Data Driven Targeting.

Did Your Dealership Pause Your Ad Campaigns?

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Dealership Must Seize the Marketplace Opportunity

Dealership Must Seize the Marketplace Opportunity

As many dealerships scale back, it’s time for aggressive dealerships to seize the opportunity.

For those of you in retail automotive marketing, you have likely seen ad budgets paused or dramatically reduced. Having been on every side of the automotive industry, these moves don’t surprise me.

For savvy dealerships it’s time to quickly act in order to take advantage of dealers in your market that may not be as visible online in the current state of affairs. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings in advertising.

“A man who stops advertising to save money, is like a man who stops the clock to save time.”  Henry Ford

I’m painfully aware that when things get tight for dealerships, one of the first things the management is tempted to cut is the advertising. It’s like a survival tactic that kicks in and all they want to do is shore up resources to make it to the other side. I understand, but it’s important not make the mistake of sabotaging your short- and long-term success.

When dealerships advertise, in addition to generating immediate sales, they bolster consumer confidence in the future of their business. Consumer confidence builds market share. Market share leads to profit. Those that continue to advertise in tougher or slower times will actually gain a bigger piece of the pie when business starts back on the upswing…leaving their competitors (who cut way back on their advertising efforts) cleaning up the crumbs at the bottom of the pie tin.

Adjust Your Marketing Strategy

Perhaps the most powerful way to keep generating sales is to rethink your marketing strategy. Maybe it’s time to stop spending on expensive ads and rethink where you’re putting your marketing efforts.

It’s time to move to CarClicks Inventory Marketing to drive high quality traffic to your website while lowering your overall advertising costs. The CarClicks platform is easy to use and an excellent way to promote your inventory to shoppers that are most likely to purchase them. It’s time to reboot and restart the momentum to seize the sales opportunity in your market.