Flock / Automotive category integrated marketing insights & implications for marketing and procurement

The Automotive category spent about $3.6billion on advertising in the US across the period April-June 2013. For a full marketing spend you could comfortably double that figure. It is the second largest adspend category (behind retail) in the US and it grew at 6.9% quarter on quarter, according to Kantar Media Research. Globally Automotive represents c.10% of total advertising expenditure.

The Automotive category is relatively consolidated versus other categories with large players such as GM, Ford, and Toyota having high shares of category expenditure compared to market leaders in retail, or FMCG.  Ford is ranked the 4th largest advertiser in the World, GM the 5th, and Toyota the 6th. The Automotive category is marketing intensive and has control over many of the marketing channels it uses to sell cars, from advertising and sponsorships, through digital and CRM, to dealer and experiential.