900 touchpoints, one choice: How to capture car buyers’ attention

In today’s automotive market, standing out isn’t just about being visible — it’s about capturing true attention. Buyers spend close to 15 hours researching online (Source) and interact with 900+ touchpoints (Source) before stepping into a dealership. With so many opportunities to get lost in the noise, one factor can make or break your campaign: creative quality.

According to research, 47% of all sales impact comes down to the creative execution of the ad itself (Source). That means your choice of visuals, storytelling, and format often outweighs other factors when it comes to driving real business outcomes.

Why creative matters more than ever

• Emotion wins over rationality: Emotionally engaging ads consistently outperform purely rational ones in driving brand recall. Attention-grabbing creatives telling a story help buyers see themselves in the driver’s seat.
  
  
• Format amplifies impact: High impact display ad formats like Skins and Midscrolls give brands the space to showcase immersive visuals and interactive elements, like configurators, to provide an engaging ad experience.
  
  
• Video grabs attention: Video ads generate 50% more attention (More here) than static formats, making them a powerful tool for storytelling across awareness and consideration stages.

Lessons from leading brands

Some of the world’s top automotive brands are already proving the creative advantage:

• Ford combined video and carousel formats to showcase “winter heroes” vehicles in Sweden — boosting awareness in an engaging, scroll-stopping way.
  
  
• Mazda used an interactive Topscroll ad to let users configure colours and features — blending product exploration with creativity.
  
  
• Jaguar Land Rover tapped into dramatic design elements in a Skin format to highlight the Defender Octa’s off-road capabilities.
  
  
• Huutokaupat, an online car auction platform, used a Dynamic Feed to pull live vehicle images and data (such as model info and pricing) directly into their ads, making each impression more relevant. The result: major uplifts in attention, engagement, and CTR.

Each of these campaigns have something in common. They didn’t just show a car. They invited consumers to interact and demanded attention.

--> You can view all of these ads and more in our white paper 'Driving success – The attention advantage in automotive advertising'.

The bottom line

If nearly half of your campaign’s success comes down to creative, it’s no longer an afterthought — it’s the main event. In the hyper-competitive automotive space, the brands that invest in attention-grabbing, emotionally charged, and interactive creative will be the ones driving buyers all the way to the dealership.

Here’s where it gets more interesting: Adnami’s automotive-specific white paper reveals more insights and tips with data from billions of impressions across automotive campaigns, showing:

• Which formats deliver the strongest KPIs, such as attention, CTR, and engagement
  
  
• Which ad types perform best at each stage of the funnel — awareness, consideration, and action
  
  
• Real benchmarks and strategic tips you can use to optimise your own campaigns