Online car information site Edmunds.com Tuesday says it has entered into a one-year ad campaign with luxury car manufacturer Lexus.
Now, while that may not be enough news to wrap your fish with, the companies want to also point out that Lexus will be one of Edmonds’ first advertisers to purchase conquest ads on its competitors’ model-dedicated “index pages.”
A conquest ad in this case is an advertisement that steals away consumers by offering ads on pages that give information about similar products.
“For example, you could be looking into buying a Volvo and there on the page are small advertisements for another advertiser, in this case Lexus,” says Edmonds Director of Corporate Communications Jeannine Fallon.
But, unlike traditional Web advertising, Santa Monica, Calif. Edmonds.com says its message units stay within the site.
In addition, the non-intrusive four-inch boxes allow users to decide how much of the ad they’d like to see.
Lexus ads will also appear in conjunction with Edmunds.com’s vehicle comparison tables, which allow a visitor to select and compare vehicles of personal interest or on models that Edmunds.com has selected as competitive with each other.
“Some of the other car makers were mad at us for selling the space to competitors, but the ones that buy up the space are doing so on specifically targeted portions early in the research of buying a type of car,” says Fallon.
While competing companies have used the tactic of buying ad space to outshine each other in the past, Edmonds.com says this is the first time that it has officially used this type of approach within its site.
In addition, the company says it will host Lexus advertising on its wireless Web site known as Edmunds2Go!