Broadcast TV Advertising For Car Dealers.
Put your dealership in front of your entire local market with with targeted Broadcast TV advertising designed for the automotive industry.
Broadcast TV acts as a demand engine alongside your automotive SEO, SEM, and social ad campaigns, putting your name in the market before a shopper begins their car buying journey.
Why Broadcast TV Advertising Still Works For Car Dealership Marketing
Today 80 to 90% of the average dealer’s ad budget sits at the bottom of the funnel, in inventory ads, paid search, and retargeting. That is the most crowded and competitive space for ads in automotive. You are bidding against every store in your DMA to win a shopper that’s likely already talking to a dealership.
Own The Market.
Then Prove It.
You can fight for the click. Enter the auction, pay for every visit, and watch costs climb while your share stays flat. That is rented traffic at rising prices. Or you can build the demand. Saturate your market with your store’s name until shoppers search for you instead of dealers near me. That traffic arrives direct and organic and can be tracked by comparing TV spot schedules with direct traffic and footfall matchbacks.
The cheapest reach money can buy
On a cost-per-thousand basis, local broadcast is the least expensive line on your media plan. Often under a penny per person reached.
Local TV advertising influences every downstream conversion and it’s cheaper than you think. On a cost-per-thousand basis, broadcast is the least expensive line on your media plan, often under a penny per person reached. Run it alongside your current digital advertising to raise conversions in every channel
Local placement as low as
1¢
per person
Local TV Advertising Built Around Your Market
Whether you are launching a model line, moving aging units, or filling the service drive, the schedule gets built around your store. Not a template someone printed before they met you.
OEM Co-Op Compliance Support
We build your creative and your documentation to manufacturer guidelines, so your spots can qualify for available OEM co-op dollars and your budget stretches further. Co-op advertising is money already sitting on the table at most stores. We help you claim it.
Market & Station Research
We analyze station ratings, program lineups, and audience demographics across your market to find where local attention actually concentrates.
Custom Media Plan Development
Your schedule gets built around your market, your budget, and your goals, factoring in your busiest days, your lead flow, and the inventory that’s aging on your lot.
Live, Local Programming Placement
Spots run in heavy-rotation local news and fresh programming that people watch live. Local attention is highest there, and the fast-forward button is not an option.
Extended-Radius Coverage
Your footprint gets built around real customer behavior instead of an arbitrary boundary around your store. We can extend the buy to other local affiliates, so your reach follows your customers.
Measurable TV Advertising ROI, Just Like SEM & Social Ads
We log every single air time and track it against direct and organic website traffic in GA4, so you can see the lift each spot produces.
Every month you get a report covering delivery, air times, traffic lift, and branded search movement, plus the recommendations that come out of it. Then we get on a call and refine the schedule against your sales goals.
DRIVE REAL MARKETING RESULTS WITH BROADCAST TV
3.7
Average hours of daily TV time per American
83%
of car buyers are reached by television
1¢
cost per person reached on local placements
Live, Local Placement.
Your spots run in heavy-rotation local news that viewers watch live, where ads are often DVR-proof.
Full-Funnel Impact.
Lift conversions across SEO, SEM, and Social Ads with broadcast TV as your demand engine.
Verified Traffic Lift.
Every air time logged and tracked against direct and organic traffic in GA4.
Broadcast TV Advertising Lifts Every Channel You Already Run
Think about it like loading the bases. Awareness, then recognition, then message alignment. By the time a shopper hits your paid search ad, they already know the name. When TV runs at the top of the funnel, conversion rates climb everywhere else and ROI goes up.
22%
conversion rate paid search
9%
conversion rate paid social
19%
conversion rate email marketing
Why Dealerships Choose Dealers United
Automotive Specialists
We only work with car dealers. Every schedule, every spot, and every report is built around how a dealership actually makes money.
Creative Built For Broadcast
Our team writes and produces your spots to a formula that performs, and to your manufacturer’s co-op guidelines.
Proven Results
Transparent reporting on delivery, air times, traffic lift, and branded search movement. You see what ran and what it did.
One Partner for Everything
From automotive SEO and SEM to Social Ads, Streaming TV, and now Broadcast, one team runs your full strategy. Your Account Manager owns the business goals. Your Broadcast Specialist is hands-on with the buy, the creative, and the schedule.
Webinar
5 TV Myths That Are Costing You Sales
In this webinar, Matt Moldovan (VP of Sales, Dealers United) and Adam Armbruster (Founder, Armbruster & Associates) break down the five myths keeping TV off dealer media plans, and what changed for the stores that put it back.
Ready To Put Your Dealership On Broadcast TV?
Broadcast TV advertising is not just for the big groups anymore. Dealers United makes it accessible, measurable, and built around your store.
See what a real plan looks like for your market. Book a call to get a custom strategy review.
Build your dealership’s custom Streaming TV ad campaigns with our team of experts!
Frequently Asked Questions About Broadcast TV Advertising
What is broadcast TV advertising for car dealerships?
Broadcast TV advertising places your dealership’s commercial on the local over-the-air stations in your market, the ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CW affiliates your neighbors already watch. One buy reaches your entire DMA. Unlike a station-direct buy, Dealers United ties the schedule back to your website traffic so you can see what the spots actually did.
How much does local TV advertising cost for a dealership?
Broadcast is bought on a cost-per-thousand-viewers basis, and it is usually the least expensive line on a dealer’s media plan. Local placements can run under a penny per person reached. Your actual investment depends on your DMA, the programs you want, and how heavy the schedule needs to be. We research the market and show you the rates before anything airs.
How do you measure TV advertising ROI?
We log every air time and track it against direct and organic website traffic in GA4. Branded search lifts up to 60% in coordinated campaigns, often within hours of a spot running. Your monthly report covers delivery, air times, traffic lift, and branded search movement, so you can see which spots pulled hardest.
Does Dealers United handle TV commercial production?
Yes. Our creative team writes and produces every spot, built around the elements we know make a broadcast ad work and around your store’s own value propositions. We also build the creative and documentation to your manufacturer’s guidelines so your spots can qualify for available OEM co-op dollars.
Should my dealership run broadcast TV or Streaming TV?
Most stores should run both. Broadcast buys your entire market at the lowest cost per person reached. Streaming TV targets specific people by income, ZIP, in-market signals, and the exact inventory they browsed. Broadcast builds the name. Streaming closes the gap.
Does Broadcast TV advertising still work when everyone is streaming?
Streaming did not replace TV, it became another layer of it. Streaming passed broadcast and cable combined in 2025 and now holds about 48% share of audience, which means the other half is still watching live and local. Americans average 3.7 hours of television a day across both. To a car shopper, none of it is different. It is all just TV.
I ran TV before and it did not work. What is different now?
Campaigns fail for three reasons: wrong creative, wrong schedule, or no measurement. Most dealers who gave up on TV had a station-built schedule, recycled creative, and no way to see results. We research the market, write and produce the spot, build the schedule around your inventory, and connect the whole thing to GA4.
Ready to Turn Broadcast TV Into A Revenue Stream?
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