Canadian firm patents innovative search technology that can search live vehicle inventory from within your online display ads
John Marshall, inventor and President of Inoventiv, a unique Search & Display technology to help auto dealers market their inventory online in real time.
That’s the feeling you get when you explore the functionality and possibilities of the innovative search and display technology invented and patented by Canadian firm Inoventiv.
Let’s start with the problem the technology addresses. Dealerships spend big money buying online banners and big box ads on popular sites, trying to get the attention of car buyers. But getting anyone to click on a display ad to drive them back to your website is a huge challenge — one that has been dogging the online ad industry for years.
According to DoubleClick, the average clickthrough rate of display ads is 0.1 per cent. That means you are more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad, according to Solve Media.
Inoventiv’s Search & Display technology lets website visitors source and perform live searches of real time vehicle inventory from within a dealership’s branded display ad unit — without leaving the host website.
The search results are displayed inside the online ad in real time. You can then zero in on a specific model and visit the vehicle details page, view pictures and even videos, or visit the dealership’s site.
The company was granted a U.S. Patent recently to add to its existing Canadian patent, and has been racking up awards including the “Best Online Rich Media” award from the Web Marketing Association IAC in 2013 and 2014 for the technology in the real estate marketplace.
John Marshall, the inventor and President of Inoventiv Canada Corp., says it’s an idea whose time has arrived. After success in the highly-competitive New York real-estate market displaying housing and apartment listings, Marshall is rolling out the product to auto dealers. “You want the user to be able to take a peek inside your lot,” says Marshall. “The Vehicle Detail Pages are the most valuable content that a dealer can provide to a potential buyer.”
The ad changes right before the user’s eyes, based entirely on the vehicles for which they are searching. “We have database engineers who can access any database,” says Marshall. “We pull data in real-time. When the inventory changes in the dealer’s database it automatically changes on the ads.”
All the ad units are created to IAB standards which is the global standard for online advertising, and the company can work with existing creative or develop the branded ads for the dealerships. The company also provides a back-end analytics package that tracks all the searches and activities.
Shelly Hebert, Business Development and Marketing Manager at Glenmore Audi, in Calgary, Alta., says she loves the technology and says the company has been fantastic to deal with. It also meshes with the dealership’s strategy to move all their marketing to digital channels. “They are there for a short-period of time and it captures their attention,” says Hebert, of the ad units. “There is a vehicle details page right there. It’s so easy to stay within that ad.”
She says Inoventiv looks after all the details to implement the Search & Display campaigns. “It is the easiest implementation in the world,” says Hebert. “They are honestly the best third-party company I have ever worked with,” she says, adding the company does whatever is required to make sure the results are there for its customers.
For info visit: www.inoventivcorp.com
