SUVs Drive Auto Advertising in First Quarter
By David Martin, Data Analyst

Just when you thought it was prudent to flee the diminutive confines of your Geo Metro and instead cruise the information superhighway, the sport utility vehicle has lumbered over to the Internet. Now the grocery store parking lot isn’t the only place you’ll find yourself surrounded by SUVs, as the automotive powerhouses tackle the vast terrain of the World Wide Web. Despite the much larger selection of car models than SUVs in production today, auto marketers are purchasing more than double the number of car impressions for SUVs.

SUV ads posted 1.2 billion impressions in the first quarter of 2003, dominating the auto manufacturers market with a 48 percent share and outnumbering car ads by more than 700 million impressions (see Figure 1). Cars and vans ran a close race, each claiming about 19 percent of the automotive manufacturers market. Pickup trucks fell off from a late 2002 impressions surge to only own 11 percent of the market. Specialty autos, including hybrids, motorcycles and recreational vehicles, posted the smallest number of impressions and accounted for about three percent of the market. When added together, large vehicles clearly outweigh cars, 78 percent to 19 percent, perhaps reflecting America’s current love affair with big, big, vehicles.

Over the past year and a quarter, SUVs and cars have jockeyed for position on the utomotive advertising road. Cars began 2002 in the lead, but were soon passed by SUVs in the second quarter (see Figure 3). The two enjoyed an equal market share in the third quarter, but cars pulled ahead by Q4. After accounting for more than 50 percent of the market in the fourth quarter, cars were cut off by SUVs, and whittled down further by a surge in van advertising.

The current position of SUV advertising doesn’t mean that all auto manufacturers are solely focused on them, as companies such as Toyota, General Motors, Ford, and Nissan devote online impressions to several vehicle classes. Toyota’s online impressions were mostly for SUVs in the first quarter, but Ford devoted most of their ads to pickups (see Figure 4). Nissan posted nearly 70 percent of their impressions for SUVs but Honda backed cars and SUVs equally.

When it came time for SUV advertisers to park their creatives, they chose portals and Internet service provider sites; sixty-eight percent of all SUV ads ended up on those genres combined (see Figure 5). When indexed against the placement of all vehicle ads in the market during the first quarter, those genres indexed nine and two points higher, respectively. Sports and recreation sites hosted the next highest amount of SUV ads, followed by home and garden and finally automotive in the number five spot. With automotive sites so far down the list, it is apparent that SUV advertisers are willing to venture across the Internet in order find their target audience.

The battle between cars and SUVs is nowhere near over on the streets, in politics, and definitely not on the Internet. As new products roll off the assembly line and consumer attitudes ebb and flow, new online campaigns will help shape consumer perceptions. For the moment, bigger appears to be better online. So whether you’re climbing Mount Everest, doing some extreme helicopter snowboarding in the Alaskan wilderness, or just picking up some frozen vegetables from the supermarket, you’re sure to find plenty of action-packed vehicle suggestions online.