The Angry Video Guy on Automotive Advertising: Why Most Dealership Commercials Miss the Point
Behind The Camera at Buzz Chew Chevy, Southampton NY
I'm going to say something that might upset a few advertising agency account executives, and I'm completely fine with that.
Most dealership commercials just aren’t great. Not just creatively meh, but also strategically wrong. Built on assumptions about car buyers that stopped being true sometime around 2005, produced by people who think "high energy" is a substitute for honesty, and priced as if the agency's overhead is somehow your dealership's problem.
I've been a car guy since my pre-teen years (yikes, that’s a long time ago), so I like filming cars and I know what's under the hood of what I'm pointing my camera at. I've watched the automotive advertising industry make the same mistakes on a loop for decades while dealers spend a lot of advertising dollars and wonder why foot traffic isn't what it used to be.
Let's talk about what's actually going wrong, and more importantly, what works.
The Agency Problem
There I said it…and I’m probably not going to make any new “agency” friends from this article, but so be it. Here's how automotive advertising typically works at the local dealer level. The dealer signs with an ad agency (maybe even one who “specializes” in car dealer advertising). The agency assigns an account manager who probably can’t tell the difference between a Chevy and a Honda. That person works with a copywriter who thinks "COME ON DOWN TO THE LOT" is still a viable creative direction. They produce something loud, sales “pitchy”, generic, and expensive. The dealer runs it because they don't know what else to do. Rinse-Repeat annually.
The agency charges for strategy, creative development, production, and media placement….ya know…fancy agency stuff. Hopefully they at least asked you who your target audience is and what sets your dealer apart. Maybe, maybe not.
Agencies overthink the creative and underthink the strategy. Local dealership advertising isn't a branding exercise for a national launch. It's a trust exercise for a specific community. Those are completely different problems requiring completely different solutions, and a mid-size agency billing at New York City rates is not the right tool for either one.
I can do what they do. For less. And I actually know what I'm filming.
The Trust Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let me ask you something. When you see a car salesman in a commercial, what's your gut reaction?
Right. That's the problem.
The car salesman on television is one of the most universally distrusted figures in American advertising. No offense to any who may be reading this…it may just be a stereotype and hopefully you’re trying to move away from that.
I’ve seen local car dealer commercials displaying that car-salesman stereotype front and center…loud, pushy, too much hair gel, arms waving at rows of inventory like he's conducting an orchestra of depreciation. Nobody watches that and thinks "I want to do business with that person." They think “this is going to cost me more than it should”.
And yet dealerships keep putting that guy in their commercials…again, no offense, I’m sure you’re not that guy…but what if broke that stereotype in your commercials? Hmmm.
The car-buying public in 2026 is the most informed it has ever been. They've already researched your inventory online before they set foot on your lot. They know what the car costs. They know what the trade-in is worth. What they don't know, what they're actually trying to figure out when they choose a dealership, is whether they're going to get treated fairly or walk out feeling like they got screwed. Heck, they can just order cars from Amazon or Costco these days…and that could hurt.
Your commercial needs to answer that question. Not "we have the best deals." Everyone says that. Not "lowest prices guaranteed." Nobody believes that. The real answer is: we've been here 40 years, we sold cars to your parents, and your grandkids are going to buy their first car from us too.
That's a story. Tell it. That build trust.
What Actually Works in a Dealership Commercial
Stop writing scripts. Start having conversations.
The most effective automotive commercials I've produced aren't scripted pitches. They're interviews. Real customers talking about why they've bought four cars from the same dealer. A service manager who's been turning wrenches in the same building for 22 years explaining why he's never worked anywhere else and actually enjoys going to work. The finance manager who personally calls customers after purchase to make sure everything went smoothly.
Those people on camera are worth more than any tagline an agency copywriter ever came up with, because they're real and your potential customer knows it.
Think about what actually builds trust in the car business: no-haggle pricing, free loaner cars while yours is being serviced, free oil changes and inspections, top dollar paid for used car trade-ins, transparent financing with no surprise fees at the closing table. If your dealership offers any of those things, they belong in your commercial. Not buried in the fine print at the bottom of the screen. Front and center, spoken by a human being who actually delivers on those promises. That's your differentiator.
Manufacturers Shoot Car Footage…Use It!
Here's something some production companies or agencies won't tell you, because either they don’t know it or they want to charge you more to shoot their own.
Major automakers spend enormous amounts of money producing high-end footage of their vehicles: on canyon roads, in city environments, in driveways, at sunrise. Beautiful, cinematic stuff, shot by specialized crews/gear with budgets that dwarf what any local dealer could afford. And in most cases, that manufacturer footage is available for local dealers to incorporate into their own commercials…for FREE (note, I have run into a few who charge a fee to use the footage, but that’s not the norm).
That means your automotive commercial can open with a sweeping exterior shot of the new model year that looks like it came from a national campaign, because it did. Then cut to your dealership, your staff, your real customers. The production value jumps immediately, and the cost is a fraction of what it would take to produce that footage independently.
But you need someone behind the camera (and editing desk) who knows which manufacturer footage exists, what to use, how to cut it seamlessly with locally-produced material…to make your dealership be the one that people actually want to visit.
Streaming and Pre-Roll: You Already Know Who's Shopping
This is where automotive advertising gets genuinely exciting, and where local dealers have a massive opportunity that most of them are still ignoring.
Streaming TV platforms like Hulu, the broader connected TV ecosystem and Pre-roll advertising on YouTube, don't just target by zip code and demographics. They can target based on online behavior. And in automotive, that behavioral data is extraordinarily precise.
Someone in your market has been cross-shopping midsize SUVs on Google for the past three weeks. Someone else's lease is ending in 90 days and they've started browsing your manufacturer's website. A third person just got pre-approved for an auto loan. All three of those households are identifiable and targetable. Your commercial can be sitting on their television when they sit down to watch Hulu that evening or on their phone when watching YouTube videos with their morning coffee.
That's not a spray-and-pray cable buy where you hope the right person was watching News 12 at 7:15. That's precision. You're putting your message in front of people who are actively in the market, in your geographic area, at the exact moment they're deciding where to shop.
A QR code in your commercial pointing directly to your current inventory page or your deals-of-the-month landing page turns a passive viewer into an active shopper in one step. No typing URLs. No hoping they remember your name or getting sidetracked by another dealer’s ad on google. One scan from their phone while the commercial is still on screen.
The Monthly Update Strategy (One Shoot, Many Months of Content)
Here's a production approach that saves dealers real money and keeps campaigns fresh year-round.
Produce one well-built commercial with a modular structure: a strong open that establishes your brand and trust story, a middle section that's designed to be swapped out monthly, and a closing call to action. The middle section is where your current offers live: this month's lease specials, the holiday sales event, the end-of-model-year clearance, whatever's relevant.
Instead of producing a new commercial every time your offers change, you shoot the interchangeable segments in a single additional session, cut them in, and you're done. Creative rotation keeps your campaign feeling current without the cost of full productions on a monthly cycle.
Your media budget goes further. Your creative stays fresh. And you're not paying an agency to reinvent the wheel every 30 days.
El Mercado Hispano: The Audience Long Island Dealers Are Leaving on the Table
The Hispanic population across Long Island, Queens, and the broader NY Metro area represents one of the fastest-growing car-buying demographics in the region. And the overwhelming majority of local automotive advertising ignores them entirely.
Spanish-language commercial production isn't a translation exercise. Effective Spanish-language automotive advertising uses culturally relevant voice-casting, natural conversational Spanish (not textbook formal Spanish), and ideally features your bilingual staff members in the commercial.
With programmatic CTV targeting, you can run your English commercial to English-language-preference households and your Spanish commercial to Spanish-language-preference households simultaneously, in the same geographic area, without any overlap. Two campaigns, one production day, one market that's actually being served properly.
What to Do Next
If you're a dealership in Long Island, the Hudson Valley or anywhere in the NY Tri-State area, and you're tired of paying agency rates for commercials that look like everyone else's: let's talk.
I'm a car guy with a camera, 25+ years of commercial production experience, and a genuine understanding of what actually moves people from their couch to your showroom floor. I know what manufacturer footage is available and how to use it. I know how to interview your staff so they come across as human beings instead of salespeople. And I know how to put your commercial in front of people who are already shopping for exactly what you're selling.
Contact Absolute Motion for a free consultation. See our automotive commercial samples here.
About the Author:
The Angry Video Guy is the alter ego of Mike Meyerson, owner of Absolute Motion, a commercial video production company based in Mahopac, NY. He has been filming cars, trucks, and the people who sell them for over 25 years. He wishes cars still had manual transmissions and has strong opinions about that too.
