Cash For Clunkers - What does this mean for Automotive Marketing?

With the Government's " Cash for Clunkers Program " now underway. Auto dealers will be ramping up their advertising spend to sway potential car buyers to their dealerships over their competitors.

Recent surveys suggest that most US citizens don't understand the program and are still trying to see if their vehicles qualify as clunker so they can claim the cash voucher.

In this day and age when spend is essential, the local dealer that can explain the program can place themselves in an advantageous position for the cash for clunkers customer.

One quick way to move with the market place is to utilize Pay Per Click PPC advertising and create an ad for local searchers looking to learn more about the program. Ensure that the ad leads to a well constructed page with a great explanation of the cash for clunkers program. And even offer a form or email address for those with questions to submit an inquiry.

Session Based Search in Google Adwords (session-based search)

Google Adwords launched a new more "Advanced Broad" match type for PPC advertisers called session based search. Google will now show ads for searches related to the search query being performed.

My initial thought: this benefits Google by increasing click revenue but not the advertiser. If an advertiser wanted to show for the related search term then I would hope they would have included it within their campaign.

The other implication for PPC advertisers now that session-based search has launched is since Google will be showing ads for more searches it requires the PPC manager to have to be extremely vigilante in adding negative keywords to stop Google showing ads for what it "thinks" your ads should show on.

Why Google......WHY????