For decades, automotive advertising has operated within a familiar structure: National campaigns led by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), regional marketing managed by dealer associations, and hyper-local promotions executed by individual dealerships. This framework, known as tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 marketing, has helped provide coordination between brands, regional associates, and dealerships.
But today’s consumer journey looks very different from even a few years ago, and the best opportunity to streamline marketing lies in modernizing how these tiers work together.
Car shoppers today move seamlessly across media channels — watching connected TV (CTV), researching vehicles online, comparing offers on their phones, and browsing local inventory before ever stepping into a dealership. As a result, automotive marketers face a new challenge: Aligning national brand storytelling with the localized offers that ultimately drive purchase decisions.
The traditional tier structure can inform an evolved approach to create more coordinated, responsive, and efficient advertising strategies across tiers.
The importance of tier 2 and 3 messaging
While automotive advertising is organized into tiers, consumers don’t experience it that way. They simply encounter messages about vehicles and dealerships across the media they consume every day. Successful campaigns align OEM, regional, and dealership messaging rather than treating each level independently.
While 56% of prospective car buyers agree tier 1 campaigns enhance the likelihood to purchase from a brand,1 local advertising still has influence on driving purchase decisions. In fact, tier 2 and 3 campaigns are effective tools for shaping consumer choice, with 54% of auto shoppers agreeing they enhance brand confidence and 51% saying they enhance brand consideration. 1
Tier 2 and Tier 3 marketers, at local dealer associations or individual dealerships, often operate closest to the realities of the market. They must respond to local demand, dealership inventory levels, regional competition, and evolving consumer sentiment. In today’s economic climate, affordability is a particularly important factor.
Research from The Trade Desk shows that auto intenders are 44% more likely to find ads focused on deals and value helpful. For marketers, this insight reinforces the importance of creative and messaging that clearly communicate incentives, whether that’s limited-time offers, financing terms, or competitive pricing.
Aligned messaging across national brand storytelling to local dealership offers can make the consumer experience more cohesive and persuasive. Modern advertising platforms make it possible to maintain that alignment while still giving local teams the flexibility they need.
- Tier 1 campaigns establish brand identity and product positioning.
- Tier 2 campaigns amplify those messages while highlighting regional offers.
- Tier 3 campaigns surface dealership-specific incentives and inventory.
When these layers work together, campaigns can become both more effective and more efficient. Put simply: while brand storytelling builds awareness, specific, action-oriented messaging can often drive action.
Simplify campaign management
One of the biggest challenges in automotive marketing is managing varying markets at scale. A Tier 2 marketer may oversee campaigns across dozens of markets, while Tier 1 OEM campaigns must align messaging across thousands of dealerships serving very diverse demographics — consider the difference between a typical automotive shopper in Los Angeles, CA and Billings, Montana.
Managing each market individually can quickly become inefficient.
Traditional workflows often require marketers to duplicate campaigns, manually adjust budgets, and manage dozens—or even hundreds—of separate targeting configurations. The result is slower campaign launches and limited flexibility when market conditions change.
New programmatic planning tools are helping solve this challenge to coordinate campaigns across dozens of markets without increasing operational complexity.
Within The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform, “geo lists” allow advertisers to organize campaigns by geography and manage them through a centralized workflow. Instead of building separate campaigns for every market, marketers can coordinate multiple locations within a single structure.
This approach allows regional marketers to adjust co-op or dealer-level budgets in minutes, shifting spend toward markets with stronger demand or aligning investment with available inventory.
For Tier 2 and Tier 3 marketers who need to move quickly, that kind of agility can make a meaningful difference.
Use data to guide investment
Advanced advertising platforms can evaluate millions of potential ad opportunities every second, helping marketers identify relevant audiences and optimize campaigns in real time. Data signals, from geography to browsing behavior to offline sales and dealership activity, enable campaigns to adapt dynamically as market conditions change.
For automotive marketers, this means you can:
- Shift spend toward markets where demand is strongest
- Align messaging with available inventory and consumer demand
- Optimize creative toward audiences most likely to purchase
- Connect media exposure to real-world outcomes like dealership visits and vehicle sales
This level of measurement is especially valuable for local campaigns. By incorporating offline signals, marketers can better understand which touchpoints are driving results and use those insights to optimize campaigns in flight.
A “data in, data out” approach makes this possible, bringing in the signals that matter most and turning them into actionable insights as campaigns run.
A modern opportunity for automotive marketers
In today’s dynamic media environment, the best opportunity lies in modernizing how auto tiers work together.
By using centralized planning tools, scalable campaign structures, and data-driven insights, automotive marketers can streamline local advertising while staying responsive to market realities.
5 recommendations for modern automotive marketers:
Many brands using the Kokai platform experience to coordinate automotive campaigns across all three tiers have seen incremental performance gains, including:
- 4x return on ad spend2
- 37% incremental household reach3
Want to learn more about The Trade Desk’s automotive solutions and how they can help drive better performance for marketers? Visit TheResourceDesk.com for more automotive information, inspiration, and insights.
This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance.
Sources
- The Trade Desk Intelligence and PA Consulting, Auto Priming Journey, U.S., n=1481, November 2025.
- The Trade Desk Platform Data, Jan – Aug 2025 Notes: 1) Limited to US Campaigns with “Conversion Revenue” as Primary KPI; 2) Top 100 Campaigns by Spend
- The Trade Desk Reporting, Jan-Aug 2025 (Top 100 Campaigns by Spend)
