By Stephanie Forshee
ONLINE M A RK E TING
ON THE BRINK
OF INNOVATION
Dealer.com's Dave Winslow weighs in on
upcoming developments that will change
the way dealers connect with customers.
PHOTOS BY VINCE TAROC
22
AUTO DE ALE R MONTHLY • FE BRUARY 2014
Dave Winslow
Dave Winslow is chief digital strategist for Dealer.com, an auv i s
to tive indust
o
e industry
n u
tomotive indus marketing frm. About 40 percent of the compa
clients ar
n
pany's clients are franchised dealers, so Winslow is responsible
fo ying ahea
o
n ahead
e
for staying ahea of the technological advancements and societal
sh that afect
h
a
c
shifs that afect their ability to connect with customers. It's a task
he says e enjoy Auto Dealer Monthly sat down with Winslow at
y
he says he enj
enjoys.
Dealer.com Manhattan Beach, Calif., ofces to learn more about
a o
Dealer.com's Ma
how dealers and customers will connect in 2014 and beyond.
ADM: Much of your job centers around staying abreast of
the major advertising trends. Going into 2014, what are some
of the biggest changes auto dealers will likely be facing?
Winslow: Tere are two major trends right now. One is realtime bidding, which allows an advertiser, through an ad technology platform, to buy across all the ad networks — Google,
Yahoo, Microsof, AOL and Facebook. Instead of placing a bid
to one of them and accepting a price, you end up placing multiple bids for an ad placement, and then whichever one has the
best price with the best targeting options, the machine learning
technology — mathematical algorithms and sofware devoted
to performing certain types of tasks — will determine that bid.
It's kind of a moving media buy in this capacity, from an individual purchasing those media placements, to letting an algorithm driven by machine learning place that bid. What it allows
us to do is place thousands of ads simultaneously and reach the
exact consumer at the right time with the right message. It's making the media buy much more efcient.
ADM: Are there any technology trends that concern you?
Winslow: Cookies have typically been the primary source
of technology used to personalize [the online experience], but
there's been a lot of fanfare in the industry about whether cookies
will continue to exist. Firefox has tried to remove cookies entirely,
which would not only change the personalization for consumers, but ad targeting as well. So we're always looking into … what
the macro trends are for personalization, and then adapting our
products. We're pretty fuid in how we would allow users to personalize their experience over time.
ADM: Dealer.com recently launched MyCars, which allows