Election season may as well be synonymous with “ad season.” Campaigns spent more than $6.4 million on ads this year alone. With so many people competing for the same advertising space, it’s little wonder that the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for advertisements during election season goes through the roof.

However, once elections are over, space for advertising opens up. Following the U.S. elections, you can expect to see Amazon’s advertising inventory becoming more available and the CPM for advertising post-election lowering drastically. This reduction in CPM makes the post-election season perfect for automotive advertisers.

Amazon’s Role In Election Advertising

Since 2016, Amazon has taken on a bigger and bigger role when it comes to elections. Today, Amazon runs websites dedicated to state and county elections, stores ballot data, and presents election-night results for more than forty states.

And with more households switching to streaming services, election advertisers increasingly rely on OTT marketing to provide precision ad targeting. As a result, the CPM for Amazon ads skyrockets during election season.

Why Amazon Is A Good Choice For Post-Election Advertising

Amazon Streaming TV is the largest online ad retailer to date. It boasts 135 million unduplicated viewers every single month. Meanwhile, most people spend around 70 minutes each day streaming TV shows and movies.  When you choose to do your automotive advertising on Amazon, you are advertising in a location that millions of users are already showing up to for long periods of time.

Another reason to consider Amazon’s automotive advertising is that OTT advertising allows you to carefully target your preferred audience. Whether you specifically want to advertise to men in their 20s or to soccer moms, Amazon’s OTT advertising tools can help you reach the people who can most identify with the ads you’ve created.

How To Use Amazon For Automotive Advertising

One of the key ways to advertise your automotive business on Amazon is to use OTT advertising. Short for “ over-the-top advertising,” OTT advertising is the term used for advertisements that play during streamed content. With so many households “cutting the cord” and opting to use streaming services in lieu of traditional cable, OTT advertising has taken off as one of the best ways to reach audiences.

Currently, 250 million people subscribe to Amazon Prime and have access to Amazon’s streaming service. When you use OTT advertising, you can gain impressions for your dealership within a large audience. The more impressions you make, the more likely people are to think of your dealership the next time they need to purchase a car,  shop for parts, or service their vehicle.

Amazon offers another location for automotive advertising. You can create a business page on Amazon and have any automotive parts that you sell featured on their website. But featured product pages won’t help you sell cars themselves. For that, OTT advertising is your best option.

Tips For Boosting Your Amazon Advertising Success

Basic advertising on Amazon is likely to return dividends, though you can take certain steps to improve your conversion rate and increase your chances of seeing results.

One way to supercharge your advertising’s effectiveness is through audience segmentation. Amazon’s first-party data is an excellent way to reach highly specific targets — and avoid any privacy concerns while you do so. Your audience targeting options on Amazon include all the usual demographic details as well as some fairly advanced geographic data. To really target your ads, you can leverage their shopper insights and automotive audiences. You can segment by intent and by life stage, including recent grads, first-time auto buyers, engaged couples, first-time homebuyers, those starting a family, retirees, and more.

You can also use your own first-party data for exclusion lists. For example, you can remove any recent customers that purchased from your dealership to ensure they aren’t seeing your sales ads for a set period of time.

In addition, you can use retargeting features to send your OTT advertisements to customers who have previously shown interest in your company. Research shows that customers are 70% more likely to make purchases with companies that use retargeting ads.

Elections Are Over. Improve Your Advertising Game Today

Every other year, election advertising takes over the advertising world, pushing other industries to the side. When election season ends, it’s critical that you have a strategy for making the most of the post-election advertising season. Advertising on Amazon is a smart way to meet your customers where they already are, build brand recognition, and increase conversions.