Global: How likely are car buyers to engage with social media advertisements?

In this piece, we look at whether consumers intending to buy a car – certified pre-owned, used, and/or new - in the next 12 months are more likely to engage with advertisements on social media than on regular websites.

But first, it is worth examining how many consumers who are intending to buy a car in the next 12 months, notice online advertisements.

Data from YouGov Global Profiles reveals that almost three-fifths of global respondents (58%) say that they notice advertisements on the internet.

While more than six out of ten car buyers in the Americas (64%) and MENA (65%) agree that they notice online advertisements, it’s a slightly lower proportion in APAC markets (57%).

On the other hand, a quarter of European respondents (25%) say they disagree with the statement, and do not notice online advertisements - that's much higher than the global average of 14%.

The data also reveals that four out of ten global consumers expecting to buy a car in the next 12 months (39%) are more likely to engage with advertisements on social media than on other regular websites.

Car buyers in the MENA region (45%) are also significantly more likely to engage with social media advertisements over other online advertisements. However, this number drops to a quarter of car buyers in Europe (26%). Europeans are much more likely to disagree with the notion that they give more attention to ads on social (47%), making them a tougher audience to reach on these platforms.

Similarly, more than a third of American consumers (35%) also disagree with the statement.

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Methodology: YouGov Global Profiles is a globally consistent audience dataset with 1000+ questions across 43 markets. The data is based on continuously collected data from adults aged 16+ years in China and 18+ years in other markets. The sample sizes for YouGov Global Profiles will fluctuate over time, however the minimum sample size is always c.1000. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from India and UAE, which use urban representative samples, and China, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, which use online representative samples. Learn more about Global Profiles.