At a time when consumer spending plans are changing moment to moment, the automotive and digital ad industries need access to truly dynamic intender target audiences – responsive to changing mindsets and grounded in ongoing, top-quality research.  

Today GfK and Dstillery are announcing the availability of the most relevant and dynamic Auto Intender ad targeting models – built on the attitudes and behaviors of people who specifically intend to purchase a new automobile across 15 segments, such as Luxury SUV. These models – which are refreshed daily through GfK’s year-round intender research – are available now and already in use on a number of leading exchange platforms.

Current GfK research* shows that, even in the midst of the current pandemic, 53% of intenders are not expecting to delay their car purchase plans – and 22% expect to shop or purchase online only. Advertisers need to find these intenders more efficiently than ever to ensure that their brands stay in the consumers’ consideration sets.

* GfK AutoMobility data refreshed on April 30th, 2020

To empower wise use of precious ad budgets, GfK and Dstillery have developed a robust model for targeting today’s auto intenders, using high-quality data that is refreshed daily. The modeling begins with GfK’s ongoing AutoMobility™ research – the industry’s benchmark for understanding intenders’ purchase plans and brand attitudes, based on interviews with over 25,000 actual intenders each month.

By enriching GfK AutoMobility findings with attitudinal data from consumer insights leader MRI-Simmons — and then matching respondents to Dstillery’s consumer data platform, which leverages the observed anonymous behavior of more than 250 million US individuals – clients can activate real intender segments based on online and location data that is refreshed daily.

Performance tests show that daily refreshed, custom targeting of today’s intenders will drive much more efficient yields from auto marketing and media activation spend – making each dollar work multiple times more efficiently than existing targeting models.

“The ability to understand target consumers on a moment-by-moment basis has never been more crucial to effective media planning,” said Rolfe Swinton, GfK’s Director of Data Assets. “GfK and Dstillery – with an assist from MRI-Simmons – are empowering a new level of accuracy in auto intender targeting. By combining the freshness GfK’s top-quality intender research and the breadth of Dstillery’s digital data, we are delivering on the promise of precise intender targeting.”

“Dstillery’s ability to help clients create custom AI audiences comes from connecting unique, proprietary datasets with our daily-refreshed consumer data platform,” said Christopher Lee Boon, SVP of Dstillery’s Enterprise Solutions Group. “These custom audiences unlock targeting precision and valuable insights for advertisers. The value is enhanced with our industry-leading, AI-driven analytics, which automatically clean, organize, and rescore our predictive models every day, to help clients optimize marketing investments.”

GfK AutoMobility is the leading Auto Intenders Brand and Attitude Insights research in the US – revealing how consumers perceive brands, how they compare to their competitive sets, and – more importantly – why consumers feel this way. Since 1982, GfK’s Automotive Purchase Funnel has been the bedrock for analysis and insights throughout the automotive industry.

Dstillery is the leading custom audience solutions company, empowering brands and their agencies to maximize the value of customer data and transform the way they connect with their audiences. Its premier product, Custom AI Audiences, is built by just-for-your-brand Custom AI models that deliver the ideal combination of accuracy and scale.

MRI-Simmons is the leading provider of insights on the American consumer. With thousands of attitudinal and behavioral data points, gathered through ongoing surveys and passive measurement, MRI-Simmons empowers advertisers, agencies and media companies with deeper insights into the “why” behind consumer behavior.