Dennis Sinks £1m Into Motoring Portal

Dennis Publishing is investing £1m in a motoring internet portal which will offer a high level of targetting to advertisers and, it hopes, early signs of success. £175,000 of the budget will go towards an online and print marketing campaign.

Multimedia division Dennis Interactive has combined content from Auto Express and evo with motorsports and retailer data from third party sites including Autobytel and Motorsport.com. The internet version of AutoExpress will be prominently positioned in the portal, which is expected attract a quarter of a million users in its first month.

Guy Sneesby, Dennis Interactive managing director, said: “Despite the recent closures of many content driven websites Dennis is investing heavily online. It sends the signal that we are confident about the future of the online car market and that we are a serious player. We are budgeting for the car portal to move into operating profit by Q4 2002”

The site includes a contextual commerce engine which allows advertisers to target against active content, eg. presenting pricing and availability of a particular make and model when a user clicks wants to see a road test of that car. Dennis has also devised a system whereby individual adverts are delivered to users by demographic profile, using registration mapped to Experian demographic data. From a users point of view it will be possible to select preferred channels from any or all of the contributing sites.

Phil Parker, publishing director of Auto Express and evo said: “We are the first website in the UK to offer this level of targetting. We are already getting an enormous amount of interest from advertisers since it offers zero advert wastage, something the internet has been promising for years. It will eventually remove the need for media planners and marketers to buy adverts on average demographics produced from surveys.”

Dennis Publishing: 020 7907 6000 www.dennis.co.uk

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