Streaming Media for Motorheads

Some things are difficult to market online. Take automobiles, for example. Before you buy a car you want to take it for a test drive, you want to kick the tires. You can't do that online. However, one way for marketers to compensate is with streaming video. Give the potential buyer a lot to look at. That's the path taken by Autobytel, an Internet automotive marketing services company based in Irvine, California.

Autobytel doesn't actually sell cars online. "We pair consumers up with an accredited dealer that is part of our dealer membership," explains Michael Rosenberg, the company's senior vice president of marketing and media services. "We facilitate the relationship between the consumer and the consumer's dealer in a particular neighborhood." Doing this earns Autobytel $15-20 million a year in advertising revenue, mostly from car manufacturers. "BMW pays for an ad just like they would on television," says Rosenberg, adding that Autobytel's rates for video ads are higher than the price for a banner ad, because video is more effective.

But the company's use of streaming video has at least as much to do with education as with sales, says Rosenberg. When you go to one of Autobytel's six highly visual, automobile-dedicated sites, "You're more than just looking; you're learning quite a bit about the cars," says Rosenberg. "If you're going to go out and spend $28,000 on a car, you want to know as much as you can. People want to become experts, and we help them do that."

Autobytel's six Web sites are now using streaming video (and lots of it) to provide surfers with video test drives, reviews, vehicle crash test footage, auto show coverage, step-by-step car care tips, and a weekly auto news report. This is all being done by CarTV, the company's Internet broadcast division.

"CarTV is adding an entirely new dimension to the Autobytel auto research and shopping experience," says Rosenberg. "So much more information can be communicated through video—for example, how a six-foot adult fits into a back seat, how quietly a car accelerates, how a vehicle looks from all angles. CarTV is helping us empower our shoppers with the 'look and feel' factor that so often shapes car-buying decisions—details that can't be reduced to data points on a page."

In addition to www.autobytel.com and www.cartv.com, Autobytel has four other Web sites Why so many? The company has been formed from a number of mergers and acquisitions, Rosenberg explains, and each time they acquired a different company, its Web site came with it. Autobytel saw no reason to consolidate.