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Automotive Advertising in 2026: The Evolving Role of Broadcast and CTV · Leading Local Insights

• 0:34
  Mike Boland: Hello everyone and welcome back to BIA's Leading Local Insights Podcast.
• 0:37
  Mike Boland: I'm your guest host, Mike Boland, and our guests today are BIA's Mark Dugan and executive chairman of Cox Media Group, Steve Pruitt.
• 0:45
  Mike Boland: So, gentlemen, welcome to the program.
• 0:47
  Steve Pruett: Thank you.
• 0:48
  Steve Pruett: Good to be here.
• 0:49
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 0:50
  Mark Dugan: Thanks.
• 0:52
  Mike Boland: Yeah, uh it's great to have you guys here.
• 0:54
  Mike Boland: It's an honor.
• 0:54
  Mike Boland: I think we're gonna have fun with this.
• 0:55
  Mike Boland: There's a lot of great stuff we have to get into.
• 0:57
  Mike Boland: We're here today to basically talk about the automotive vertical, especially as it relates to local markets and some recent BIA data on that topic.
• 1:06
  Mike Boland: But first, for context, um let's find a bit more about you guys, for those unfamiliar.
• 1:11
  Mike Boland: Um so, Mark, why don't you start just a bit about yourself and your role at BIA?
• 1:16
  Mark Dugan: Sure.
• 1:16
  Mark Dugan: Um I'm a senior director of BIA of forecast operations and client relations.
• 1:21
  Mark Dugan: I've been in the media industry for about 20 years, um, including the past four with BIA.
• 1:28
  Mark Dugan: In my current role, I help to oversee our forecasting process, analyzing data, and uh writing reports to support our clients.
• 1:37
  Mark Dugan: Um we develop local market forecasts for every television and radio market uh in the U.S., covering 96 business verticals across 16 different media channels.
• 1:49
  Mike Boland: Yeah, that's all valuable stuff as we're going to get into.
• 1:52
  Mike Boland: And Steve.
• 1:54
  Steve Pruett: I am, as you said, executive chairman of Cox Media Group.
• 1:57
  Steve Pruett: We own radio stations and TV stations in major markets across the country, total of about 20 markets when you add TV and radio together.
• 2:07
  Steve Pruett: Um, I have a long history in local broadcast, uh, starting in radio on air, uh, then in sales, TV sales, then I built television stations in the 80s, um, built a number of other kinds of media companies in the 80s, then became an investment banker, then in around the 2000s, uh, went into being a corporate executive.
• 2:32
  Steve Pruett: I was at Sinclair uh as EVP of television and COO there for uh six or seven years, and then I've spent the last seven years here at CMG.
• 2:44
  Mike Boland: Nice, a lot of great historical perspective there too, that I think we'll get into.
• 2:48
  Mike Boland: A lot of markets, a lot of people.
• 2:50
  Mike Boland: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:51
  Mike Boland: So uh let's let's jump into it.
• 2:53
  Mike Boland: So, as I said, our sort of word of the day is autos and and all the the drivers and dynamics, um, excuse the pun, drivers of of these local markets.
• 3:02
  Mike Boland: Um, so um, why don't we start by sort of framing the discussion around uh the study that I alluded to earlier that was just released by BIA.
• 3:13
  Mike Boland: So, Mark, let's start with you.
• 3:14
  Mike Boland: You played a big role, obviously, in that report.
• 3:17
  Mike Boland: Um, so tell us sort of uh you know top findings or your your biggest takeaways at a high level before we uh go deeper.
• 3:25
  Mark Dugan: Sure.
• 3:26
  Mark Dugan: Um autos are still one of the really anchored categories in local advertising.
• 3:32
  Mark Dugan: Uh, we're projecting about $10.7 billion in local ad spend across tiers one through three uh in 2026, which is actually up a couple of points year over year, not down.
• 3:45
  Mark Dugan: So despite all the noise around affordability and interest rates, uh the category is still growing and still investing.
• 3:55
  Mark Dugan: Uh the bigger story, really, though, is the mix.
• 3:58
  Mark Dugan: Uh, roughly two-thirds of that spend has now shifted into digital, and that's really where the incremental dollars are coming from.
• 4:06
  Mark Dugan: Uh, traditional is under some pressure, but local video is still critical to the auto industry.
• 4:13
  Mark Dugan: Uh, broadcast TV remains one of the largest single line items, while CTV and other digital video channels um are where the fastest growth and the new dollars are uh showing up.
• 4:28
  Mark Dugan: Um, and just a note on that report our uh clients can find our complete automotive report uh in the BIA advantage platform.
• 4:38
  Mike Boland: Nice.
• 4:38
  Mike Boland: So a few sort of clarifying questions for context on those figures.
• 4:42
  Mike Boland: You mentioned 10 billion um and auto is sort of an anchor vertical anchor category.
• 4:47
  Mike Boland: To put that into perspective, what does sort of the whole pie look like in terms of local media spend?
• 4:52
  Mike Boland: If I'm if I'm not mistaken, if I remember correctly, it's somewhere in the order of 150 billion-ish, or or is that um in the right ballpark?
• 5:00
  Mark Dugan: Uh for 2026 uh with political, we're projecting 180 billion dollars.
• 5:06
  Mike Boland: Oh nice.
• 5:07
  Mark Dugan: Um 182, actually.
• 5:09
  Mark Dugan: Um but about 10 million of that, which is political.
• 5:12
  Mark Dugan: So uh still about 172 uh billion without political.
• 5:17
  Mike Boland: That's right.
• 5:18
  Mike Boland: And we get those sort of bumps in the in the forecast that aligns with the the um the political cycle.
• 5:23
  Mike Boland: So another just quick clarifying question.
• 5:25
  Mike Boland: I know we're gonna be talking about this a lot, just for those unfamiliar out there, we're gonna be talking about the sort of tiers.
• 5:30
  Mike Boland: We're gonna segment a lot of this discussion around the tiers that exist within the auto vertical.
• 5:35
  Mike Boland: Uh, you mentioned tiers one through three.
• 5:37
  Mike Boland: You want to define those uh briefly before we go?
• 5:39
  Mike Boland: Go on.
• 5:40
  Mark Dugan: Sure.
• 5:40
  Mark Dugan: Uh tier one um are the OEMs, uh, the they're the people that build the cars and trucks um and really fund those big brand campaigns.
• 5:51
  Mark Dugan: Um tier two are the dealer associations.
• 5:54
  Mark Dugan: Um think of things like Toyota dealers of the tri-state region promoting specific models, offers, or incentives where the local dealers um pool their money to uh help fund those campaigns.
• 6:09
  Mark Dugan: And then tier three um does include both new and used car dealers, and we do break out uh each each of those verticals um separately within our platform.
• 6:22
  Mike Boland: Nice.
• 6:23
  Mike Boland: So, yeah, thanks for that that additional sort of front-end context.
• 6:26
  Mike Boland: So, Steve, you are the right person to talk about this because you're sort of walking the walk out there with the sort of you know embodiment, the physical world embodiment of all the things that BIA is coming up with um in these sort of spending trends.
• 6:40
  Mike Boland: So, can you paint for us a picture of the sort of the auto-advertising market or auto advertising, at least with respect to local markets?
• 6:49
  Mike Boland: So that probably means mostly tier two and three, um, and what you're seeing in terms of just that macro view and bringing your historical perspective, what are all the moving parts?
• 6:58
  Mike Boland: What are the things happening now in in the market that are just really sort of impacting um a lot of that spend and the spending share shifts that that BI is finding in its figures?
• 7:11
  Steve Pruett: I would say that Mark touched on you know the main points of the news, which is you know, growth of CTV, OTT, and uh obviously, you know, a maturation of what I'll call um you know, search engine marketing and and retargeting and and and kind of what kicked off the dealership digital parade, if you will, um a decade or so ago, where it really got very, very serious about um search and uh where we as broadcasters you know got involved in a number of ways, which I'll talk about in a little bit.
• 7:48
  Steve Pruett: I think that um speaking to it from a broadcaster perspective, we are still as uh a portion of uh the dealer spend um very, very significant.
• 8:01
  Steve Pruett: Some people say it's 40%, some people say it's half.
• 8:05
  Steve Pruett: What it what you're going to find throughout the morning as we talk about this is that it is really a case of what different dealers want to do along with whatever uh manufacture programs are the best for them in terms of co-op, right?
• 8:24
  Steve Pruett: So on the digital side, there's a lot of factory programs and a lot of limitations that broadcasters face that we aren't uh approved for.
• 8:34
  Steve Pruett: Direct co-op.
• 8:36
  Steve Pruett: So we have to combat that in different ways uh by selling for the non-co-op, you know, really targeting for the non-co-op part or the broadcast co-opable part uh to the degree they still have the I don't not as familiar as I once was with every co-op program.
• 8:54
  Steve Pruett: They change.
• 8:55
  Steve Pruett: Um, you know, they don't change dramatically every year, but if you look at it five years apart, I'm not as close to the ground as I used to be.
• 9:04
  Steve Pruett: It will be a fairly different landscape.
• 9:06
  Steve Pruett: And if you look at it over a decade, it'll be really different.
• 9:10
  Steve Pruett: But uh the challenge um is with all media, whether you're selling home services or to auto, especially in these big categories, is the competition um with digital advertising for a broadcaster.
• 9:26
  Steve Pruett: And I'm assuming you know, I'm here today to kind of speak from that perspective of being a broadcaster.
• 9:34
  Steve Pruett: Um, we are still incredibly relevant uh as uh as an advertising vehicle.
• 9:42
  Steve Pruett: We still command the attention of broad of uh auto dealers.
• 9:47
  Steve Pruett: Uh we still have tremendous access to dealers, and we have big local brands that they want to be a part of.
• 9:55
  Steve Pruett: So um that is you know, the at the heart of our pitch is what we stand for in the market, what our brand is in the market, and what we can deliver to a dealer um in terms of visibility and not just uh impressions per se, but you know, connection with an audience that we have proven over time broadcasters move people to do things, whether that's click, call, or go, we can do that with you know a big uh a big voice that fills the top of the funnel.
• 10:31
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 10:31
  Mike Boland: So several sort of threads there to tug on, specifically around how a lot of those changing factors uh sort of translate to strategies.
• 10:41
  Mike Boland: Um and I think one of them, where I'd like to start is you mentioned that you know there there was sort of this uh sort of jump towards a lot of lower funnel digital SEO type of things at a certain point.
• 10:54
  Mike Boland: And then combining that comment with the fact that what you just said there at the end, which is that the the strength that you know um that broadcasters have in a lot of cases is the ability to deliver um a really rich sort of top-of-funnel mass market reach sort of play where it's leads that are high quality, they're owned.
• 11:18
  Mike Boland: And it's like, you know, not getting too far away from that when you're sort of chasing these lower funnel digital targeting types of strategies.
• 11:26
  Mike Boland: So talk about that in terms of strategically how to sort of uh you or any broadcaster, look at those assets and make sure you emphasize them, emphasizing them in positioning and sales and and all the above.
• 11:38
  Steve Pruett: Uh I think that what happened uh in over the course of about a decade in digital, say from you know the early 20 teens uh till just recently, is dealers as operators, most dealers got very, very good at um mid and low funnel um because they were inundated with information and sellers and software and analytics, and they in it yielded results.
• 12:12
  Steve Pruett: What would happen?
• 12:13
  Steve Pruett: We would see it tilt and the manufacturers tilted toward um digital because of accountability.
• 12:21
  Steve Pruett: Manufacturers were really pushing, like, hey, we're doing all this advertising and we're doing all this marketing, and we want to hold the dealers accountable for leads.
• 12:33
  Steve Pruett: And then at different times that argument has been the dealers are you're not giving us the right kind of leads, right?
• 12:39
  Steve Pruett: So there's two sides, three sides, four sides to our restore, ranging from you know how you're coming at the problem, whether you're an agency, a dealership owner, a salesperson for a radio or TV station.
• 12:54
  Steve Pruett: Uh, the main part there to think about is that dealers are very entrepreneurial.
• 13:01
  Steve Pruett: Uh, the owners are typically very aware up until the you know, a certain group size, uh you know, the owners, it'll be the general managers of the stores, are hyper aware of what is happening in terms of their sales uh flow, people walking onto the lot, people going onto the website, people answering the chat bot, people you know calling in.
• 13:28
  Steve Pruett: And uh they are very sophisticated in terms uh in terms of accounts that you will deal with, dealers will tend to be the most advanced in terms of uh point of sale uh and converting customers.
• 13:44
  Steve Pruett: Now, there have been occasions when, you know, personally I was on a journey to buy a car and I walked into a dealership and nobody I didn't get called on and I wondered about that and didn't, you know, nobody came up to me.
• 13:58
  Steve Pruett: Maybe I just hit a bad time, but generally speaking, they're you know pretty front and center, they're very organized, they kind of know what their message has been, and they kind of know what their walk-ins and call-ins are going to do, plus they monitor their phones and conversions and all of those things.
• 14:18
  Steve Pruett: Um, so there's a lot of moving parts in dealing with dealers.
• 14:23
  Steve Pruett: Digital helps satisfy down funnel, helps them feel good about that.
• 14:30
  Steve Pruett: And then they'll tilt back sometimes, very suddenly, they'll tilt away from broadcast for a while, and then all of a sudden they're thinking I need to get people in the door, I need to get people on the website, I need to get people looking at the cars I have, and they'll revert back to filling the top of the funnel.
• 14:51
  Steve Pruett: Plus, the top of the funnel, the main thing that broadcast does in this broad way is maintain, and this has been researched by Nielsen and the industry.
• 15:03
  Steve Pruett: We've we've built pitches to frame this idea that um reputation, uh, top, you know, top of mind awareness, those kinds of things uh are critically important.
• 15:17
  Steve Pruett: And that's the kind of thing that broadcast delivers.
• 15:20
  Steve Pruett: And then, you know, we also are very conversant as companies typically.
• 15:26
  Steve Pruett: Our salespeople are very conversant about digital, right?
• 15:30
  Steve Pruett: We all, I'm sure, you know, the people that are going to watch this video are are digitally educated, digitally savvy sellers and uh sales leaders who understand what is available, what we are selling as uh broadcasters versus what dealers are faced with in terms of choices.
• 15:56
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 15:56
  Mike Boland: And you're right about those upper funnel dynamics and how it maps to the psychology of buying a car because you know, name recognition, branding, these things instill trust.
• 16:05
  Mike Boland: And you want trust more than anything when you're you know putting down 40 grand for a new Toyota Highlander or whatever the case may be.
• 16:12
  Mike Boland: Um, so so that's interesting.
• 16:14
  Mike Boland: And and when while we're talking about the funnel and the interplay of the media that map to that funnel, this is a good opportunity to trace it back to the forecast because Mark, one of the things that you delineate in the data is the sort of share shift between over the air, OTA, and CTV, connected TV.
• 16:33
  Mike Boland: Um, and those formats, not exactly, but sort of map to the funnel if you look at it in terms of the quality and the quantity of upper funnel stuff that you're gonna see in Over the Air, as Steve just went over, but also the interplay of CTV down funnel and the ability to target, and they sort of play off each other.
• 16:52
  Mike Boland: But from sort of a quantitative and aggregate spending standpoint, can you tell us a little bit about those categories and what your forecast uncovered in the sort of share spending shifts between them?
• 17:04
  Mark Dugan: Right.
• 17:05
  Mark Dugan: And uh Steve got into this as well, but um, it is really encouraging for uh traditional media.
• 17:12
  Mark Dugan: You know, you know, if you just listen to the headlines, you think everybody's moving out of OTA and into streaming.
• 17:19
  Mark Dugan: But the data really tells a more complete story that uh broadcast TV is still a workforce, workhorse for uh for automotive.
• 17:30
  Mark Dugan: The dollars have drifted down a little bit, um, but that's from a large base.
• 17:36
  Mark Dugan: CTV is building on a stronger or smaller base.
• 17:39
  Mark Dugan: Um and broadcast continues to deliver reach and uh credibility, as Steve mentioned, which is really hard to replace with uh just digital media.
• 17:51
  Mark Dugan: And um year over year we see really high single-digit growth in CTV.
• 17:57
  Mark Dugan: Um, but that money is really incremental.
• 18:01
  Mark Dugan: It's not necessarily cannibalizing the broadcast.
• 18:05
  Mark Dugan: Um, we see that it's now more of a role, not of either or but both, and using utilizing both broadcast and CTV uh for their messaging.
• 18:18
  Mike Boland: Yeah, and sort of good news for both in that you know OTA is is is holding steady.
• 18:24
  Mike Boland: It's not the exodus that that you mentioned that some people perceive, while CTV is sort of the the growth engine.
• 18:30
  Mike Boland: Um so it's good news for both, and also sort of to give OTA some credit.
• 18:35
  Mike Boland: Some people look at numbers and they say, okay, well, CTV's growing faster, but we should always delineate in terms of the mathematics of forecasting that it's growing from a smaller base.
• 18:45
  Mike Boland: It's a smaller number, so it's it's more inclined to often have higher growth rates.
• 18:49
  Mike Boland: Whereas OTA is more challenged to keep up high growth rates as such a sort of larger base figure.
• 18:55
  Mike Boland: Would that be fair to say?
• 18:58
  Mark Dugan: Yeah, that's definitely fair to say.
• 19:00
  Mark Dugan: Um broadcast has always um been strong with auto and does work from a much larger base and is still getting a lot higher percentage of the dollars than CTV is.
• 19:15
  Mike Boland: Yeah, so the scale between the two is is important to delineate.
• 19:18
  Mike Boland: So thank you for doing that.
• 19:19
  Mike Boland: So um, Steve, I want to go back to something you said earlier.
• 19:22
  Mike Boland: When you were talking about sort of the macro environment, one of the things that stood out is the variance and the inconsistency of all of the sort of dynamics that you have to deal with as a broadcaster from a sales perspective.
• 19:33
  Mike Boland: You mentioned over time things are changing, even between different dealer groups or different tier three players, the sort of franchise agreements, the co-op agreements, it's gonna be different between everyone.
• 19:45
  Mike Boland: So you sort of have to go in um and just sort of really know your audience, so to speak, and learn each dealer and the nuances of it to go in with like, you know, a targeted pitch.
• 19:57
  Mike Boland: So, what's your advice from a sales perspective of how to do that and go in with like sort of the right knowledge position um when you're selling um, you know, any of the tiers, really, I guess two or three primarily.
• 20:11
  Steve Pruett: A quick comment on CTV.
• 20:13
  Steve Pruett: Uh dealers love CTV, and it's an opportunity for us because it is television and it is targeted.
• 20:20
  Steve Pruett: And most broadcasters now have a CTV platform or a minimum an OTT or a website streaming platform.
• 20:29
  Steve Pruett: What we're finding out as a company is there's way more viewers on our news streams, which is effectively most of us repeat our news in real time on our streams.
• 20:40
  Steve Pruett: And those are building very, very significant audiences.
• 20:44
  Steve Pruett: And dealers love those.
• 20:46
  Steve Pruett: If you can sell them either as an add-on or separately, depending on whether you're using digital ad insertion or not in your streams, it's a whole other um rabbit hole I won't go down, but what I will tell you is there's a couple of times there's O and O CTV, which is stuff we produce in stream, and then there is reselling OTT that where we do it using uh a partner or an executor to place it, whether um, you know, uh it's Amazon or Google Ads or Madhive or any of those companies that um you know, or even Free Wheel.
• 21:27
  Steve Pruett: Some people use Free Wheel and Locality has uh, which is a company we used to own, um that does that for broadcasters, right?
• 21:38
  Steve Pruett: They they package and process uh resold CTV.
• 21:43
  Steve Pruett: So having said that, it's an important piece of the puzzle.
• 21:47
  Steve Pruett: It's important to understand it, and it goes into your product mix.
• 21:51
  Steve Pruett: But looking at dealer dynamics, that's where I really like to spend my time because the assumption is I believe we all know the marketing product that we sell.
• 22:05
  Steve Pruett: We all understand it.
• 22:06
  Steve Pruett: And if and if you don't, you need to look at the you know basic training of your sales force and make sure they do, right?
• 22:14
  Steve Pruett: It is table stakes to be conversant in the products, how they work, where they fit, how they are utilized by all of your clients.
• 22:25
  Steve Pruett: Dealers are interesting because dealerships and who you're likely meeting, unless you're calling on a Large dealer group.
• 22:35
  Steve Pruett: There's a feeling that there are a lot of large dealer groups and they happen to be very, very big spenders.
• 22:41
  Steve Pruett: But the truth of the matter is that dealerships are not as consolidated as they seem.
• 22:49
  Steve Pruett: There are there are 10 big dealer groups that make up a small fraction of all 18,000 in terms of rooftops.
• 23:00
  Steve Pruett: The top, I'm guessing the top 10 um uh dealer groups make up 2,500 uh rooftops out of 18,000.
• 23:12
  Steve Pruett: I think that the top, and and this is where then when you get below the outside the top 10, you start seeing the groups we all know really well, which you know, the Ken Garfs and people like that that are regional, the Hendricks that are regional, they're 70 to 100 rooftops, and then you get into the Randy Marions of the world that are 15 to 20 rooftops in a very like in in the Charlotte area, for instance, uh in region of North Carolina.
• 23:47
  Steve Pruett: So you have two or three different kinds of businesses just from a structural point of view.
• 23:54
  Steve Pruett: You have the Auto Nations, the Penskeys that are public companies, they're optimizing everything, including advertising.
• 24:03
  Steve Pruett: And to really get to them, you're having to get to a regional or national headquarters level.
• 24:10
  Steve Pruett: And you're having to get pretty far up the food chain.
• 24:14
  Steve Pruett: And maybe you get there through your Toyota Rub, maybe you get there through somebody else, through your GM, somebody you know because you do probably likely have a contact.
• 24:25
  Steve Pruett: People in your organization probably do.
• 24:28
  Steve Pruett: What I'm emphasizing here is it is important in almost it's all in sales 101, right?
• 24:34
  Steve Pruett: There's no new, I think I said this earlier, there's no new school of sales beyond really what I call shoe leather, which is who is making the decision and how do I get to them?
• 24:48
  Steve Pruett: And how do I talk to them about their business and what they need?
• 24:52
  Steve Pruett: Those fundamental things will take you a long way.
• 24:56
  Steve Pruett: Um, and they will get you in the office.
• 24:58
  Steve Pruett: In order to stay in that office, you have to intrigue the decision maker, and you along the way will have to go through a couple of gatekeepers, right?
• 25:08
  Steve Pruett: But what you want to find out whether it's uh a three-rooftop guy in Lafayette, Louisiana, or the biggest guy in in Baton Rouge, maybe has 10 or 15 rooftops right in Baton Rouge.
• 25:24
  Steve Pruett: Maybe that dealership has 25 rooftops in southern Louisiana.
• 25:30
  Steve Pruett: Whoever that is, and you're calling on them, you have to get to that decision maker and you have to find out about their business.
• 25:39
  Steve Pruett: What are their challenges?
• 25:40
  Steve Pruett: What are their challenges with the manufacturers right now?
• 25:44
  Steve Pruett: Right now, because that changes all the time.
• 25:47
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 25:49
  Steve Pruett: What are their challenges with their advertising budget?
• 25:52
  Steve Pruett: What are their challenges with their sales floor?
• 25:55
  Steve Pruett: What are their challenges with their cost?
• 25:57
  Steve Pruett: What are their challenges in their service department?
• 26:00
  Steve Pruett: This is gonna sound like a CNA because it is.
• 26:04
  Steve Pruett: You have to constantly be CNAing dealers.
• 26:08
  Steve Pruett: Uh, I, you know, it's funny.
• 26:11
  Steve Pruett: I would say to people, you know what?
• 26:13
  Steve Pruett: We're gonna like re-CNA all of our car dealers this week.
• 26:17
  Steve Pruett: And they're like, oh, that's gonna take me off the street.
• 26:20
  Steve Pruett: That's so dumb, right?
• 26:22
  Steve Pruett: It's like, really?
• 26:23
  Steve Pruett: A CNA takes you off the street because you're spending an hour or two either with a client, sometimes virtually, or going to see them, and you're going through their business.
• 26:37
  Steve Pruett: We have to change that mentality.
• 26:39
  Steve Pruett: There's something wrong there.
• 26:41
  Steve Pruett: But I hear that, I still hear it today when we ask things like that.
• 26:45
  Steve Pruett: I still hear it, I've heard it a lot over the years, uh, that you know, salespeople will uh fight the bit a little bit on CNAs.
• 26:56
  Steve Pruett: Now, those who are the most successful will not.
• 27:00
  Steve Pruett: Why?
• 27:01
  Steve Pruett: Because they're already doing it, they're doing it all the time.
• 27:04
  Steve Pruett: They they know the decision maker.
• 27:07
  Steve Pruett: They've been with them, they've spent a lot of time with them.
• 27:11
  Steve Pruett: They understand what they think about their marketing and advertising.
• 27:16
  Steve Pruett: And uh, you have to understand that these things are changing from a couple of points of view.
• 27:23
  Steve Pruett: New generations are coming in and taking over dealerships, and they have new ideas, and their parents are finally letting go of the reins, and they're getting to take over the business.
• 27:36
  Steve Pruett: Um, and then that's one kind of change, ownership change.
• 27:41
  Steve Pruett: And they also then, by growing the business, maybe becoming more corporate, more consolidating dealers in the area or in their markets, or even really trying to grow very big.
• 27:55
  Steve Pruett: Then there are the really big, fully consolidated public companies, which you can learn from them.
• 28:03
  Steve Pruett: You should spend time reading their filings and getting to know who's who there and getting to know what their metrics are, and they will tell you right in their annual report what their strategies are because they have to make a presentation to the street.
• 28:21
  Steve Pruett: So the first thing you should do when calling on any auto zone or not autozone, uh Auto Nation store, any Penske dealership, or any of those top uh four or five that are public, is read their annual report and you know uh read the management section, read their strategy section, read their section on competition, and you'll know they say it right in the report.
• 28:44
  Steve Pruett: Now, is it dressed up for a dance with investors?
• 28:47
  Steve Pruett: Absolutely, but they're saying it in writing what their plans are right between the lines, yeah.
• 28:54
  Steve Pruett: Right, and then you can go in educated when you do get to those higher ups because you will.
• 29:01
  Steve Pruett: You can get there, you can get to those people.
• 29:04
  Steve Pruett: And you know, I really thought about this interview, and I said, you know, do I really want to tell our competitors um, you know, to the playbook, some of the some of the playbook.
• 29:17
  Steve Pruett: But the truth is if if we raise our profile out there and my competitor makes a good impression about broadcast, I've benefited from that, right?
• 29:29
  Steve Pruett: Right.
• 29:29
  Steve Pruett: And uh I feel we're benefiting our competitors one way or the other.
• 29:34
  Steve Pruett: We're happy to fight over share, we're really good at fighting over share.
• 29:39
  Steve Pruett: Uh, what no broadcaster is as good as they need to be uh is working the system to get the message across of why we're so relevant and important, and while we're more important.
• 29:55
  Steve Pruett: And we've all lived through the wars of yeah, that dealer changed to 100% digital, and but they came back.
• 30:03
  Steve Pruett: Well, that's not a win.
• 30:05
  Steve Pruett: It was a loss and a recovery, but it's not a win.
• 30:08
  Steve Pruett: You fumbled the ball, okay.
• 30:10
  Steve Pruett: You that you managed to recover it somehow, or you take they picked it up and then you tackled them, and then but you most likely they weren't getting the results they wanted or needed because they weren't prepared when they did it.
• 30:27
  Steve Pruett: They did it because they're very entrepreneurial.
• 30:30
  Steve Pruett: But I I lived through that that age, it's not happening as much anymore because um dealer ownership and dealer marketing is much more sophisticated because they've been inundated for 15 years by analytics, by data, by people selling these products of how to do better.
• 30:51
  Steve Pruett: Uh, they have a really robust dealer associations, there's very robust used car independent dealer associations, and they um talk a lot about lobbying, but they also talk a lot about the business.
• 31:07
  Steve Pruett: And uh you can learn a lot from either joining, if you want to make uh an impact on auto dealer business in your uh market or state, you can actually attend those associations and uh there will be state meetings that will be near your market.
• 31:26
  Steve Pruett: And even if you are a seller and you have to pay your own way, there's a payoff to go in there because there's going to be dealers there, and uh they're members and they're supporting their association.
• 31:36
  Steve Pruett: So um there's all kinds of ways to approach it, but the most consistent, successful way is to get the dealer, whoever's in charge, to talk about their business and talk about what they want to do, what they need to do, what the manufacturer is requiring of them.
• 32:00
  Steve Pruett: Understand that and then come back to them with solutions.
• 32:04
  Steve Pruett: Um, and uh, you know, everybody by now I think understands that, you know, dealers make money three ways.
• 32:15
  Steve Pruett: They make money on selling the car, they make money on financing and selling you the window tent and uh all the little stuff when they put you in the room uh with the guy, and uh, you know, you can't get out.
• 32:28
  Steve Pruett: Even if you're paying cash, I might add, you can't get out of that room, you can't avoid that room.
• 32:33
  Steve Pruett: You're going in that room.
• 32:34
  Steve Pruett: Okay.
• 32:35
  Mike Boland: I know the room.
• 32:36
  Mike Boland: We all know the room.
• 32:37
  Mike Boland: Yes.
• 32:37
  Steve Pruett: Yeah, and that's because that's where they make money, and you have to sign a title at minimum and do all this, and then they make it in the back of the shop with service.
• 32:47
  Steve Pruett: They you should make it your business to have them instruct you about how those businesses work and how they make money because you, as a broadcast professional, as an advertising and marketing professional, will get an idea on how to help them.
• 33:02
  Steve Pruett: And they're very dealers by their nature are salespeople and they they kind of love to be sold, right?
• 33:11
  Steve Pruett: Yeah, they it's they they they respect people who are good at this.
• 33:17
  Steve Pruett: And uh gaining respect and thinking like a business person, thinking like an entrepreneur, thinking if you were the GM of the dealer, uh, that'll work.
• 33:27
  Steve Pruett: That'll work.
• 33:28
  Steve Pruett: And I guarantee you the people who are winning uh, you know, and have the confidence of those dealers have spent a lot of time doing that.
• 33:37
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 33:37
  Mike Boland: It sounds like at least part of this is sort of a classic case of know what you don't know or know that you don't know everything.
• 33:44
  Mike Boland: Have the humility to go in and do what you said, ask questions, embrace the DNA, uh, education, annual reports, um, all that.
• 33:53
  Mike Boland: That's I think that's that's good advice in in any sales context, but that's incredibly valuable here.
• 33:58
  Mike Boland: Um, I also like the sort of no new school equivalent, or I forgot how you put it, for for just good old-fashioned shoe leather.
• 34:04
  Steve Pruett: No new school of sales that changes the fact that shoe leather weighs.
• 34:08
  Mike Boland: Shoe leather, right?
• 34:09
  Mike Boland: Yeah, I love that.
• 34:10
  Mike Boland: Um for shoe leather, for any of the above, I want to sort of ground.
• 34:15
  Steve Pruett: It may be shoe leather, like it may be fingers, but you're doing the work.
• 34:19
  Steve Pruett: Shoe leather is, you know, uh uh just is what I say when it comes down to doing the work, right?
• 34:26
  Steve Pruett: Feet on the street.
• 34:27
  Steve Pruett: Right.
• 34:28
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 34:28
  Mike Boland: So um anyway, um, I I would love to sort of show rather than tell.
• 34:32
  Mike Boland: This is all incredibly valuable to sort of drill this down to any sort of concrete examples, any sort of like best practices or mini case studies you have of um, you know, you have a great perspective of all the folks and the best practices of like any of these principles in play, any of these best practices in play.
• 34:50
  Steve Pruett: Um I'm trying to think of what would be relevant to the conversation.
• 34:57
  Steve Pruett: You mean around uh auto business in particular?
• 35:01
  Mike Boland: Yeah, you know, um small for tier three dealers that are like doing it right, they're they're they're applying the shoe leather, et cetera.
• 35:09
  Steve Pruett: If you look at our business, it's tier two and tier three.
• 35:12
  Steve Pruett: Tier one is less and less uh now it's out there and it's a bit of a threat, actually, because dealers like to use tier one money.
• 35:21
  Steve Pruett: We used to get more tier one money, we don't get uh a significant amount anymore unless you're in the largest markets.
• 35:29
  Steve Pruett: And um, so we're dealing with tier two money and tier three money.
• 35:33
  Steve Pruett: And I would say if I were a sales leader, and on the I'm not as close to the ground as I used to be, obviously, but what I say and when I talk to our sales leaders and I do is um you know, know our know who they are, where they are, and you can get all that information.
• 35:54
  Steve Pruett: You can buy it online, you know, there's a couple services uh you can buy that uh they you can know what the dealer volume is, you can know who's selling the most cars by month.
• 36:07
  Steve Pruett: Um, and you can get all of that information.
• 36:11
  Steve Pruett: So, best practices, I would say, from sales management and from a salesperson is to ask your management to make sure we have access to all that data, right?
• 36:22
  Steve Pruett: Yeah, you you will be able to pump money from auto dealers in a good way by knowing who the winners and losers are in the state and in the in your area and your market.
• 36:40
  Steve Pruett: Know who the comers and goers, meaning who are people who are growing their business, and who are people who are winding down and likely to sell.
• 36:49
  Steve Pruett: Those things are all important to you as a professional.
• 36:53
  Steve Pruett: So uh it's out there.
• 36:55
  Steve Pruett: You just, you know, there are uh I'm drawing a blank right now on you know what all the services are, and uh, we've changed over the years.
• 37:06
  Steve Pruett: There's different ones uh for different purposes.
• 37:09
  Steve Pruett: Uh but uh, you know, everybody is in the game, and there's a ton of information out there on dealer profiles and dealer information and dealer data, and spend your time around that.
• 37:24
  Steve Pruett: So, best practices are be current, uh read the newsletters, uh understand the people dealers are listening to.
• 37:34
  Steve Pruett: Who are dealers listening to?
• 37:36
  Steve Pruett: Um, you know, who what do they look at?
• 37:39
  Steve Pruett: What do they care about?
• 37:41
  Steve Pruett: You can find that out by visiting your local dealer and talking to the head of sales or marketing, and um, you know, whoever's buying the advertising will know.
• 37:51
  Steve Pruett: Like, what trade papers do you guys read?
• 37:53
  Steve Pruett: What newsletters do you look at?
• 37:55
  Steve Pruett: Um, so again, back to shoe leather, best practices is be really good at gathering information.
• 38:02
  Steve Pruett: Same is true in about any big category, like home services uh or healthcare is a little more tough because a lot of information is protected.
• 38:12
  Steve Pruett: And um, you know, even patient, even anonymized patient data is tricky.
• 38:18
  Steve Pruett: Uh, like how many patients do you treat for certain diseases, that kind of thing.
• 38:23
  Steve Pruett: I don't know that you know, that information is as readily available.
• 38:28
  Steve Pruett: Um, but what I'm interested in for our industry is having people be the most professional um marketing person that a dealership sees, right?
• 38:44
  Steve Pruett: And not be like, oh, my TV rep is wasting my time telling me they're the number one station and they reach the most people.
• 38:52
  Steve Pruett: That's so 20 years ago.
• 38:54
  Steve Pruett: Uh, don't be that person.
• 38:56
  Steve Pruett: Don't be that person.
• 38:58
  Steve Pruett: They know who you are, they know who your station is.
• 39:01
  Steve Pruett: That can be now.
• 39:03
  Steve Pruett: What can your station do that's different?
• 39:06
  Steve Pruett: How can you differentiate your station from digital?
• 39:11
  Steve Pruett: I'll give you one tip, right?
• 39:13
  Steve Pruett: CTV, I love it.
• 39:16
  Steve Pruett: Dealers love it, but it has its limitations.
• 39:19
  Steve Pruett: And what CTV doesn't do is fill the top of the funnel.
• 39:23
  Steve Pruett: Oddly enough, it's television, but it's very targeted.
• 39:27
  Steve Pruett: And when you buy four million impressions or whatever it is in Atlanta on CTV, you didn't reach anywhere near, yeah.
• 39:39
  Steve Pruett: Probably probably reached a hundred thousand people 40 times, right?
• 39:43
  Steve Pruett: So um if you run a spot schedule on WSB, you're gonna reach a million people in a month.
• 39:54
  Steve Pruett: If you run the whole month, you're gonna reach a million people.
• 39:57
  Steve Pruett: That might never happen on a CTV channel.
• 40:00
  Steve Pruett: They may not have a million different people, they likely don't have a million different people.
• 40:05
  Steve Pruett: I'm not knocking CTV.
• 40:07
  Steve Pruett: I love CTV, I am a huge user of CTV, but the fact is you're not reaching everybody.
• 40:15
  Steve Pruett: Know its limitations, know its limitations, and you're reaching, you know, a bit of a you know, walled garden.
• 40:24
  Steve Pruett: I mean, even even a YouTube channel that has a million, a YouTube guide that has a million views, you did not reach a million people.
• 40:34
  Steve Pruett: Okay, you didn't reach anywhere near a million people, and people there's a lot of repetition, a lot of repetition on YouTube.
• 40:40
  Mike Boland: Yeah, wasted that's wasted impressions, right?
• 40:43
  Steve Pruett: Right, right.
• 40:44
  Steve Pruett: So uh and the way the impressions are counted, right, matters.
• 40:48
  Steve Pruett: Our impressions are counted by somebody that basically watched a commercial much long enough to see a number of commercials.
• 40:56
  Steve Pruett: It's kind of it's now it's shifting, by the way.
• 40:59
  Steve Pruett: Nelson is changing the way and shortening the timeframe.
• 41:04
  Steve Pruett: Uh, I don't know, I don't think it's been implemented yet.
• 41:07
  Steve Pruett: Uh, but we went down a big rabbit hole here.
• 41:10
  Mike Boland: So yeah, no, that's it's all valuable stuff.
• 41:12
  Mike Boland: This is this is great.
• 41:13
  Mike Boland: Um, and we are sort of um getting low on time here, but before we sort of wind down with final thoughts, um, Mark, I'd love um if you have a chance if you uh want to jump in and add to or respond to anything Steve just said before we we wrap up.
• 41:27
  Mark Dugan: Uh no, just I agree completely that the broadcast is needed for the upper funnel.
• 41:33
  Mark Dugan: Uh use digital um to help help the dealers move the cars when they um have special sales or whatever.
• 41:43
  Mark Dugan: Um, but when they just want to get their name out there and the recognition, they really need the broadcast to get that reach to do that.
• 41:56
  Mike Boland: So synthesizing all that, it sounds like one takeaway from you know a lot of what we just talked about is that it's not binary, and you shouldn't think of OTA and C T C T V as either or, but the you know, the successful tier two and three or three players are using them and synthesizing them in intelligent ways.
• 42:14
  Mike Boland: Would that be fair to say absolutely?
• 42:18
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 42:19
  Mike Boland: Great.
• 42:20
  Mike Boland: So um let's wind down here.
• 42:22
  Mike Boland: Um I guess what we could do is just sort of any final thoughts from each of you, anything you want to reiterate or anything we didn't get the chance to talk about, um, future outlook, parting advice, anything like that you want to leave our audience with.
• 42:33
  Mike Boland: Um Mark, why don't we start with you and then we'll end with Steve?
• 42:37
  Mark Dugan: Uh really as a final thought I'd like to leave uh for our listeners, um, that Otto is not going anywhere as a local category.
• 42:48
  Mark Dugan: Um they're there's they're evolving, and you need to pay attention to how they're evolving and what media they are looking at and what situations they need to improve on at the current point and be able to go in with a more of a multimedia campaign that can handle all of that for them when they need it.
• 43:11
  Mike Boland: Yeah, I think that's well said.
• 43:13
  Mike Boland: Steve, uh, parting thoughts.
• 43:15
  Steve Pruett: So I 100% agree with Mark.
• 43:19
  Steve Pruett: Um he is saying the same exact thing.
• 43:23
  Steve Pruett: What I'm adding to it is you, the individual that represents us being broadcast TV and radio, want to be the most equipped and knowledge-seeking person that dealer sees in his week.
• 43:42
  Steve Pruett: He's got plenty of people telling him about digital this and digital that and how everything works.
• 43:48
  Steve Pruett: He's not interested in that.
• 43:50
  Steve Pruett: He's interested in what is going to solve his business problems.
• 43:53
  Steve Pruett: So if you can get on that level and differentiate yourself, then you can bring to bear the knowledge that we all have and can use to talk about what you can do and then bring something to that dealer that differentiates your company, your uh your station, you know, whatever you can do, and and whatever internal insights you might have that would help them.
• 44:24
  Steve Pruett: Right.
• 44:25
  Steve Pruett: And so I I feel very, very strongly about that.
• 44:29
  Steve Pruett: And improving, I feel that if we improve as an industry.
• 44:33
  Steve Pruett: As broadcasters, we will improve our ability to serve car dealers and make them more and more successful and get more value uh out of their dollar.
• 44:46
  Steve Pruett: So that's ultimately our goal with anybody we sell advertising to, because without that goal, they will come back.
• 44:54
  Steve Pruett: And uh, you know, we do know we can deliver.
• 44:59
  Steve Pruett: Uh, and I I I love what BIA is saying here that it's not every every in every quarterly earnings report, every one I've been on in the last since 20, I've been on quarterly earnings reports since 2012.
• 45:20
  Steve Pruett: Um we the first question is what's auto doing?
• 45:26
  Steve Pruett: I mean, literally, the first question, if not the first, uh, you know, it's the second or the third.
• 45:34
  Steve Pruett: It's not the fourth or fifth ever.
• 45:37
  Steve Pruett: It's one, one, two, or three.
• 45:39
  Steve Pruett: And that's how important it is, and it still is.
• 45:45
  Mike Boland: Yeah.
• 45:45
  Mike Boland: Great, great advice.
• 45:47
  Mike Boland: Uh, and I think that's a good place to end it.
• 45:49
  Mike Boland: So I want to thank you both for joining us.
• 45:52
  Mark Dugan: Thank you for having me.
• 45:54
  Mark Dugan: Thanks, Steve.
• 45:55
  Mark Dugan: Thanks, Mike.
• 45:56
  Mike Boland: Yeah, this was fun and very illuminating.
• 45:58
  Mike Boland: So I want to thank you both.
• 45:59
  Mike Boland: Thank you all for listening.
• 46:01
  Mike Boland: This has been BIA's Leading Local Insights podcast.
• 46:04
  Mike Boland: Please like, comment, and share if you like this episode.
• 46:07
  Mike Boland: Our guests today were Steve Pruett and Mark Dugan.
• 46:10
  Mike Boland: I'm your host, Mike Boland.
• 46:11
  Mike Boland: Our producer is Patrick Buono.
• 46:13
  Mike Boland: Thanks for listening and see you next time.