Male Millennial, Gen-X Media Opps: CarGurus announces CMO transition (Score 52)

CarGurus announced Sara Welch, its CMO of close to three years, is stepping down. Welch joined the company as consumer marketing SVP in 2016, and was promoted to CMO in 2019.  Effective December 8th, Dafna Sarnoff will takeover. Sarnoff joins from Aura, where she also served as CMO. This will affect the company's marketing strategy and could lead to agency reviews. 

**We are unable to confirm Sarnoff's email address at the time of publication.** 

According to Pathmatics, CarGurus earned 1.4b impressions YTD through Instagram ads (42%), Facebook ads (32%), desktop video ads (22%) and desktop display ads (5%). It placed the majority (98%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as instagram.com, facebook.com, youtube.com, yahoo.com and sports.yahoo.com. It placed the remainder (1%) through a variety of indirect channels onto sites such as yahoo.com, msn.com, yourdailydish.com, cnn.com and accuweather.com. It spent around $12.8m on digital display ads YTD, a 54% increase from $8.3m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend fell from $38.2m in 2019 to $9.9m in 2020. 

Magellan estimates CarGurus placed about 160 podcast ads over the last year. 

Per iSpot, CarGurus spent around $21.7m on national TV ads YTD, a 17% decrease from $26.2m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend fell 19% from $37.6m in 2019 to $30.5m in 2020. This year, it placed ads during programming such as "FOX and Friends," "Special Report With Bret Baier," "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "Your World With Neil Cavuto." 

Sellers-- It seems CarGurus mainly targets Gen-X and millennial men through digital display and national TV ads. It has been decreasing spend in both channels for the last two years. I predict the new CMO will ramp spend back up once she has time to implement her strategy. Sellers should start contacting Sarnoff soon to see what types of ad space you may be able to offer. 

Agency & martech readers-- CarGurus works with creative AOR VIA and media buying/planning shop Ocean Media. As you know, new CMOs commonly review their company's agency roster, so start reaching out soon to be top-of-mind. Those of you with online automotive experience may have an advantage.