Millennial Digital Opps: Penske alters marketing strategy to focus on digital ads

Penske Corporation is shifting from traditional marketing methods such as TV, radio and print to focus on digital ads. The company disclosed in its recent Q1 earnings report, that digital ads were responsible for over 18m visits to its website. Penske believes it will do more business online in the future and that providing omnichannel purchasing options will drive growth.  

According to Pathmatics, Penske earned 101.8m impressions YTD through desktop video ads (38%), mobile display ads (29%), desktop display ads (19%), Facebook ads (8%) and Instagram ads (7%). It placed the majority (89%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as realtor.com, youtube.com, finance.yahoo.com, facebook.com and instagram.com. It placed the remainder (11%) of these ads through a variety of indirect channels onto sites such as yahoo.com, autotrader.com, reddit.com, ebay.com and weather.com. It spent around $691.8k on digital display ads YTD, a 45% decrease from $1m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend fell 30% from $5.2m in 2019 to $4m in 2020. 

Sellers-- While spend is down so far this year, it spends the majority of its ad dollars in H2, so there is plenty of time for it to increase spend later this year. I believe Penske is mainly targeting millennials and possibly Gen-Zers, especially considering it is shifting to primarily digital ads. Sellers should contact this company offering digital ad space. 

Agency & martech readers-- To the best of my knowledge, Penske does not work with any outside agencies at this time. You will likely have better luck looking for work elsewhere as I see no signs indicating a potential review.