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More Dealers Using Viral Videos to Attract Customers

As dealers struggle to sell vehicles, they are looking into new types of advertising to help attract buyers. Viral videos are a new form of advertising that some dealers are attempting.

Wikipedia says that a viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing Web sites.  Viral videos are often humorous in nature.
An estimated 25 percent of all U.S. dealers currently use online video in their advertising, says Howard Polirer, director of industry relations for AutoTrader.com.  There are 20,800 new-car dealers in the U.S. that spent more than $7.8 billion in advertising last year.  
Advertising Age reports that most car dealers are still interested only in "move the metal" TV commercials, rather than the many digital tools they can use now.
"Video is exploding," said Larry Pryg, national marketing and ad manager for GM’s certified-used-auto business, largely because it can be created inexpensively (less than $100) and quickly, and be easily measured.
When it comes to used cars, Web sites with video are twice as likely to generate calls or e-mails from shoppers to dealers than ones without, says Pryg.  Because of this, GM shifted out of traditional media and placed all its spending online for its certified-used products in 2006.
Some dealers have put their viral videos on sites such as YouTube. One such video currently has almost 200,000 hits. The video was done by North Carolina Hyundai and Kia dealer David Johnson. It’s called "Tired of Being Badgered" and it stars a talking badger acting as a tacky, old-school car salesman. We’ve posted a compilation video of several of their videos below.