October 9, 2025 • 31 mins
Streaming is splintered, AI is the new TV guide, and last-click is dead—Michael Kraut lays out the dealer playbook for what’s next.
Auto Collabs history: our first ever in-studio guest! Experian’s Michael Kraut sits down with Paul to map the new media reality—where streaming splinters attention, Yahoo and Amazon quietly re-emerge as ad heavyweights, and AI agents become the front door to what we watch and how we buy. Marketing isn’t just media, it’s math—and Michael explains how identity, enrichment, and hygiene turn messy dealer data into competitive advantage.
We dig into practicals dealers can act on today: service as a growth engine, outcome-based measurement borrowed from retail media, and the signals that actually predict lift. We also get real about affordability, totaled-vehicle dynamics, fewer true “new” model launches, and a Gen Z buyer who cares more about tech than badge. Plus a little Syracuse nostalgia and a hot take: we may all be headed back to a cable-like bundle (with AI riding shotgun).
Takeaways
0:00 — Our First In-Studio Guest & Why Being In-Person Changes the Conversation
0:58 — “We’re Building More Sets”: The Plan to Bring Dealers to Syracuse
3:17 — From Circuit City to CarMax: Why Adaptation Beats Legacy Every Time
4:11 — LinkedIn’s Organic Reach Is Gone: What We’d Do Differently (x5 Harder)
6:42 — Your Ads Are Everywhere (and Nowhere): The Platform Explosion No One Can Manage
8:32 — Streaming Fatigue Is Real: Why “Cable 2.0” Might Win the Sunday Sports Fight
10:32 — AI As Your TV Guide: Voice-In, Watch-Now, With Ads Baked Into the Agent
12:46 — Your Best Data Isn’t for Sale: CRM/DMS Hygiene as the Unfair Advantage
16:33 — Stop Worshiping Last-Click: How Outcome-Based Marketing Actually Looks in Auto
18:32 — Measuring Lift the Real Way: Service RO Signals, Search Intent & Scheduling
24:07 — What We’ll Talk About at NADA: Fixed Ops as the 2025 Growth Thesis
25:22 — Affordability Won’t Blink: Totals, Insurance, and the Case for Keeping Cars Longer
26:32 — Fewer True Launches, More Rebadges: Why Creative Has to Sell Utility, Not Novelty
27:17 — Gen Z Isn’t Loyal to Badges: If the Tech Works, They’ll Switch
29:23 — From 13 Subscriptions to One Bill: The Bundle Is Coming Back (With Hyper-Personalization)
Connect with Michael Kraut at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kraut-1b9b3/
Learn more about Experian Automotive at https://www.experian.com/automotive/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul J Daly (00:00):
I could not be any more excited about this episode.
Unknown (00:08):
This is auto Collabs.
Kyle Mountsier (00:10):
This is my jealous face. You
Paul J Daly (00:12):
should be so jealous because Nathan and
Spencer and I, we set up thestudio here in Syracuse. We got
the chairs, we get the backdrop,the paint we have, the flowers
we have, the glasses of water.
And Michael, Michael kraut cameand visited us in person in
studio, and we were able to sitdown and have a face to face,
live conversation. It wasamazing. I could have gone for
(00:35):
an hour. 20 minutes went by so
Kyle Mountsier (00:38):
fast. I am purely jealous. I want to fly to
Syracuse, to the studio all thetime. I think that being in
person with people is socritical. That's why we have
events like ASOTU con. That'swhy we love going to all the
industry events, because thatcritical mass of like being with
people, especially for those ofus that aren't in dealerships
every day, is so important.
Paul J Daly (00:58):
We're never going I'll tell you what, though, I'll
tell you, I'll put this flag inthe ground right now never.
We're building out more studiosets in the studio, more podcast
sets, and we are going to invitemore dealers and industry
partners and industry leaders toSyracuse white glove them right
from the airport. We havehospitality suites.
Kyle Mountsier (01:15):
Expectations.
People are going to be coming.
Paul J Daly (01:18):
I Kyle. They call this manifesting, manifesting,
manifesting. I can't until I sayI want a Ferrari, I'll never
have a Ferrari. Oh, my goodness,I don't want a Ferrari, by the
way. But we already have astudio. We already have the
chairs. We already have Michaelkraut, who came into Syracuse to
have a conversation. So I'm notmanifesting. It's happening. We
hope you enjoy this conversationwith myself and Michael kraut in
(01:39):
person. Michael's with Experian.
By the way, we didn't say thatyet about what's going on with
all these connected TVs andwhat's going to be the future of
how we watch stuff. Check itout. Well, Michael, thank you so
much for joining us. Great to behere. This is amazing. You are
literally the first in studioguest auto Collabs episode ever,
you know, you walk by thestudio. Wait, is this for us?
(02:03):
It's for us. You came andvisited us in the studio. This
is great. And the first of manywe're going to get your picture.
You sign it, I get a sign. Andthen next will be like, Tony
Danz, right? And all the one yousee it like the cheese steak
place, yeah, exactly. It'sfunny. We looked at the wall
color we decided to paint forthis episode. And I came in and
I came in and I was like, Well,I'm the one that picked the
color. And then I just came in,I was like, looks awful. A lot
(02:24):
like eagles green, doesn't it? Ididn't do that on purpose. The
orange chairs throw it
Michael Kraut (02:30):
off. Well, are you giant or bills eagles?
You're eagles. I grew up inPhilly. Oh gosh,
Paul J Daly (02:35):
yeah. I'm sorry. It was a birthright, like I had no
choice, you know. But, you know,my sister married a Giants fan,
by the way. This is Eagle. Thisis totally not, according to
Sherwin Williams, okay, but,yeah, great. So funny. Look what
when did we meet or our pathscrossed? We have
Michael Kraut (02:54):
our paths crossed somewhere in the mid 2000s you
were still doing yourrefurbishing business, I
believe. And Alex better broughtyou into a cars.com sales
Summit, yeah, just wild, whichis, which was probably one of
those where it was snowing inSyracuse, and it was really
(03:16):
snowing in Chicago.
Paul J Daly (03:17):
It was, it was cold in Chicago. Was cold in Chicago
in the winter,
Michael Kraut (03:21):
like, I just remember meeting, like, yeah,
you started to become on thescene, yeah. And I don't
remember the messaging, but itwas, whatever you talked about
Paul J Daly (03:30):
was really, I was, if I remember correctly, that
was what I started by, talkingabout the need to adapt and
change, yeah. And I talked aboutCircuit City and how they became
Carmax, which at the time,wasn't a story that a lot of
people knew, because it was abig reveal moment. And like,
heard it in the room, like, Oh,there. That's where Carmax came
from. And then I actually talkeda lot about LinkedIn and how,
(03:51):
Oh, that's right. And I talkedabout LinkedIn back then and
just saying that, hey, there's alot of opportunity on the table
for you to organically buildLinkedIn traffic. And isn't it
kind of ironic that you bringthe story up, because literally,
in the last 120 days, that hasdisappeared from LinkedIn,
organic reach, really, oh yeah.
And if you talk to people whopost a lot on LinkedIn, you
realize organic reach has been
Michael Kraut (04:11):
cut, really, cut down. I've noticed it, but not
until you just like, Now,
Paul J Daly (04:15):
one of my regrets is that I didn't lean in five
times as hard while I wasdelivering that message. Because
everyone I'm doing somethingright, I would have went five
times as hard and that. Butthat's what it's like in this in
this world of constant changeand marketing and data like
opportunity, whatever you'redoing today is not what you're
going to be doing 100% in twoyears from now, one year from
now, sometimes six months fromnow. Yeah. And so that's one of
(04:36):
the things that you know as wetalk about marketing and data
and how dealers deploy it, andhow we, even as professionals,
trying to get our message outthere right? How are we going to
deploy
Michael Kraut (04:46):
in a good way? I one thing that we've started to
notice. When I started atExperian and we were building
out our data for advertisingpractice. There really were two
if. Fishes that you could playoceans to play with, right? It
was sort of like a trade deskand Oracle and LiveRamp. I'm
(05:08):
using those as examples. Theplaces we have our data today
are in so many different places,and when we get say usage
reports now you're seeing namesthat you you'd never even heard
of,
Paul J Daly (05:25):
right? I always make fun of Kyle, because Kyle
knows them all, yeah, and he'sjust ripping off these names. Is
like, what is that?
Michael Kraut (05:31):
What is that word? What's What's even more
bizarre is you start seeingnames that you don't know, and
then all of a sudden, you'reseeing Yahoo showing up,
Paul J Daly (05:40):
right? You're like, Excuse me, this is my
playground. Where did right overthere? Where did
Michael Kraut (05:45):
Yahoo come from?
And now in in my little our datafor advertising world, we're
seeing, obviously, Amazon istaking their share major and
it's companies like yourselvesthat have marketing or or tier
one holding company, agenciesthat are looking for different
types of scale, different typesof audiences. And it's, it's,
(06:06):
it's sort of very hard to, froma management perspective,
justify all these places, whatwe have to be, but we have to be
everywhere, because I don't knowwhere you're going to come up
with a really interesting socialactivation next, it might be the
next, the newest thing thatwe're not paying attention to.
Yeah. So all these names arealways coming up with us. And
(06:29):
I'm like, we started with like,three platforms, and now we have
things from, you know, our datais at NBCU and Disney and trade
desk and Amazon. It's all overthe place.
Paul J Daly (06:42):
So you know that no dealer operates their tech stack
the same, which is an additionallayer that always makes it
complicated. Not only is everydealer different, but every the
understanding, even of verysimilar dealers and their, you
know, appetite for tech, or evenability to understand, yeah,
probably put you much more inthe seat of like, I need to be a
(07:03):
guide to just like, how do I,how do I bring it to the lowest
common denominator in simpleterms, that helps bring some
simplicity to the complexity youwere just
Michael Kraut (07:11):
talking about.
It's, it's really hard. That'swhy, you know, we work with, you
know, some of the bigger tierone agencies and some of the big
dealer agencies as well, and weexpect them to kind of
understand how to translate alot of that stuff, but we have
to understand it ourselves,because we have to tell our
these agencies like, Hey, ifyou're looking for our
(07:36):
audiences, they are in thesespecific destinations. But the
complexity, I sort of feel badfor someone that's been
traditionally buying media inthe traditional format, yeah,
and all of a sudden they'relike, You mean there's no radio?
I'm like, No, there's no radio.
Yeah, there's podcasts, yeah?
And that's about as personal,
Paul J Daly (08:00):
but the good news is, I know who's listening to
the pod. You know who'slistening to the podcast. You
tell me who's listening to theradio. Probably. I was like, Oh,
we don't need to put theprobably in, right?
Michael Kraut (08:10):
You can. And the same thing is happening in the
TV space. Being more of an OG TVperson, I do think that there's
going to be this shift sort ofback to cable television.
Because, tell me about that, theamount of streaming and
distribution places that aregoing, it's just getting more
(08:31):
complex.
Paul J Daly (08:32):
It's getting more complex. I'm spending more
money. It's it really, exactly.
Now you bring that up, you know,we've Kyle and I talk about this
sometime about the level, like,now, how much are we spending a
month to get our programming?
Probably more than cable. But wedon't really know. But you don't
know because, like, my five yearold is like, I want to watch
this movie. And I'm like, okay,so I have used Apple TV. So I go
on Apple TV and I search themovie, and then I would like,
(08:54):
figure out how we're going towatch it. And oftentimes that's,
I guess we're going to subscribeto peacock for a month, right?
Because you don't know exactlywhat's going to happen, right?
And that's what's happening. Ithappens every, every day in my
house, and we've heard
Michael Kraut (09:07):
this cord cutting piece now you're going to see
this shift at some point back tocable, and it's it's going to
happen when the large masses,the nbcus, the Disney's, are
want to start take taking thingsmore through the streaming
channels, and then on a Sundayafternoon, you're not going to
know where. You know we're inbaseball season right now. We're
(09:30):
moving into football season.
Hoops are going to start soon.
Do you going to remember thatthe Yankees are on Amazon and
you know you want to watch a manU soccer on NBC, peacock, and
you're going to be flipping andgoing back and forth, but you
really can't, because you got togo, dad, at some point,
someone's going to just say, youknow, give me my XFINITY clip.
(09:52):
You know, interesting. I thinkthat's going to happen, because
you're not going to write itdown, no ever. And, you know, we
grew. Up in a world with, youknow, going way back, like a TV
Paul J Daly (10:04):
guy, baby, yes, I remember that the long and as a
some of our audience neverpicked up. They never got they
never see a grandma's house.
Actually, exactly, was always onthe table.
Michael Kraut (10:13):
It was always on on the table. But, you know, as
as someone, you know, once theyou know, we've saw it with the
Olympics like that was reallyhard to find. But sports usually
it's, it's the most importantpart of the media landscape
right now. It's got sight,sound, motion, and it's live.
Paul J Daly (10:32):
Now I'm thinking, my mind always goes, these days,
whenever I'm presented with aproblem, my mind immediately
goes, How is AI going to solvethis problem? Right? Because,
because you think, well, youthink about it, and we haven't
really seen AI tools overlaidinto viewing experiences,
correct, right? But the realityis, when you say someone's going
to fix it, someone's going tomake a way for me to be like,
(10:54):
hey, I want to watch the Eagles,the Yankees Manchester on
Sunday. Show it to me. Show itto me. And it's going to say,
here's how you see it. Do youwant me to make right? Like that
is probably where we're going,probably.
Michael Kraut (11:06):
And I think that what's gonna happen is, I mean,
only because this is the waymedia works, you're gonna use an
AI agent to do that. Yep, right?
I'll gamble it nine times out of10. There's gonna be advertising
in there as well, for sure,right? And that's kind of the
next, next sort of, we'll callit those, those AI agent plays,
(11:28):
or, yeah, it's gonna happen,yeah. But I do think that, you
know, knowing back to youroriginal point, the beauty of a
podcast, the beauty of streamingis, you know, you're you're
informed on identity, yeah, andI think, you know, with a lot of
the services that we mightprovide in enrichment, even data
(11:50):
hygiene dealers specifically,have to really know their data.
They have to know theircustomers. What do
Paul J Daly (12:00):
you think it's funny that we're talking about
this. I'm just thinking Nielsenhas been blowing up my phone for
the last Yes, three weeks. Yeah,because they sent me 10 bucks in
an envelope. Yep. And my son waslike, what? Somebody sent you
cash? Was like, well, first ofall, used to be two bucks,
right? And then you fill out thething, they'd send you another
three, three bucks, right? Sothey sent me a $10 bill in an
envelope. And no curious ago,we're going to call you, right?
And I really want to be a partof it, because I'm just curious.
(12:21):
For sure, I'm just curious onwhat they're doing, what they're
asking, but every time they callcomes across as Nielsen. And I
don't say stop calling because Iwant to do it. Because you want
to, you want to try. What do youthink? What do you think all
these sources of data likeyou're saying, it's getting more
complicated. Yeah. What do youthink is the biggest
misconception that dealers haveabout why the type of data that
they're using in overlay mattersso much because everybody says
(12:43):
we have the best data. Everybodysays it,
Michael Kraut (12:46):
well, the best data, you know, specifically for
dealers, is going to beeverything that's in your CRM
and your DMS system. That'sthat's your core. If you have
people answering that inimproperly, that's not great.
Yeah, you're gonna keepmerchandising or marketing to me
when I already sold that 2015Land Rover, blah, blah, blah,
(13:10):
right?
Paul J Daly (13:10):
It's like starting a song
Michael Kraut (13:12):
with an auto tune guitar, yeah, it's never gonna
sound never gonna sound good. SoI think, and it's a very con.
It's not as simple as peoplemake it, but if they could get a
good snapshot of those consumersthat are their most, most loyal
customers, they should befishing for more of those people
that look like that. And I thinkthat's where the good data
(13:38):
hygiene and cleansing methodsmake the most sense for dealers
like you can't go outside thatfar outside of your market area,
but you should be mining in thatarea for a variety of things.
And I think like in today'sworld, we're going to have a
window where service is going tobe critical for dealers with
(13:59):
affordability is so high. Peopleare holding onto cars. They're
servicing those cars a lotlonger. That being said, they're
also not in market to buy cars.
So if you have invested infacilities and have anywhere
from 10 to 20 bays, you want tokeep those busy. So all of a
sudden, hey, how could I marketin my marketplace to people that
(14:20):
have vehicles that I canservice. Those are the those are
the sort of things that where,if you have a good understanding
of your loyal customers, of yourbase of cus, of your base of car
owners in your marketplace, Boy,that's a that's an advantage the
it's not any everyone can't justdo this. It's a commitment. It's
(14:44):
not easy. We're working withlots of large dealer groups and
lots of like marketing and CRMrelated agencies that are trying
to do this for dealers.
Paul J Daly (14:56):
Yeah, no, we're in the middle as hard the agency
side of the business. It's like.
Like everyone's trying newthings right now, which is
really encouraging, yeah, butthere's no prescription to give
people. That's the hard part. Ican't say this, then this, then
this, put these three thingstogether. It's gonna work,
because you're starting in adifferent place than they're
starting. Then they're starting,they're
Michael Kraut (15:15):
starting Absolutely. And it's also like,
we've, we've tried to identifyspecific pockets of data that we
could provide, because we havereally good automotive data, we
have ownership data, we haveconsumer data, we have some
credit data, like when you putit together, we could kind of
stitch together a really goodclientele in your marketplace
(15:38):
that you're not touching rightnow. But there's, there's no,
it's not a secret formula. It'sstill hard to do. And I think
you know No, no, less than youknow you've heard dealers say,
All right, I'm not looking at 30days of sales only. I'll look at
a quarter. Well, they always goback to 30 days. How did I do
this? Right? So true, and thisis something that it takes a
(15:58):
little bit of time, and it's notas prescriptive as dropping, you
know, an ad on your local TVstation, you know, on Saturday
night or something like that, orarguably, Friday night, where
people are in front of the TV.
First of all, they're not evenin front of that TV anymore.
That's right, that's half thebattle is finding where those
(16:19):
customers, where are
Paul J Daly (16:21):
they going to be paying attention? Yeah. So if
you were to kind of break itdown to a metric, what would be
the most important metric thatdealers should be paying
attention to?
Michael Kraut (16:33):
There's a there's a thread that's happening. I'll
kind of take you back to whatI've what I've watched. And at
Experian, we have our automotivegroup. We also have marketing
services. We've seen the retailmedia network. Those are the
Amazons, the Walmarts, thetargets, yeah, they've become
(16:57):
very outcome based. So if you doadvertising, if you're a
customer of Walmart, and you doadvertising on Walmart, they
actually could tell you, becausethey have barcodes and they have
God knows how many stores, whatkind of lift you've gotten. So
this outcome based marketing isstarting to seep into other
(17:21):
industries. Automotive is beingone of them. So at some level,
you're gonna have to look atgeneral outcomes in
Paul J Daly (17:30):
your market list, not direct attribution, exactly,
right? And that's the big shift.
That's a big shift last clickattribution was like this, this
thing that we were chasing, thatwe could have sworn we saw its
tail as we're chasing it overthe horizon. I think that's, I
think that then we got over thehorizon, we were like, oh,
there's, like, 50 unicorns overhere. And I don't know which
Michael Kraut (17:48):
one, I don't know which one did it. It's just
important for you to be in so,you know, there's, I think
people or dealers and theiragencies don't realize that
there's a there's a limitedamount of time that people care
about advertising, or are infront of that advertising, you
have to be at a different very
Paul J Daly (18:09):
time the life cycle of the purchase consideration,
exactly,
Michael Kraut (18:13):
and what was so kind of back to your question, I
think there has to be some sortof outcomes that can be
measured, that dealerships have,and it's not in
Paul J Daly (18:26):
so what are some of the outcomes, like, what are,
what do you how do you thinkabout lift? How should a dealer
think about lift?
Michael Kraut (18:32):
I think right now, we've, we've started to see
a lot of if you're looking forservice, for instance, you
could,
Paul J Daly (18:39):
it's probably much easier. It's much easier to
measure, because it's like amore immediate thing. It's more
Michael Kraut (18:44):
immediate. It's sustainable for a couple of
weeks. And you could just lookat your arrows, and you could
see if you're getting some yearof years trending quarter,
quarter over quarterly,adjusted, seasonally adjusted
car sales. Yeah, there's only ahandful of companies that could
actually do it. But there's
Paul J Daly (19:01):
a lot of variables.
There's a lot of variables. Whatare the, what are the what are
the deals being run? What arethe deals? What are the tariffs?
What are the incentives? Like,you
Michael Kraut (19:09):
know, we're doing an inventory level. We're doing
a workshop at our sales Summitin September, and a lot of the
things that we're talking about,you know, the dealer hears that
they're going to heavy up on aspecific make and model. It
could be on air TV, it could beon radio, could be on podcasts,
whatever, whatever they'redoing. You can't measure it like
(19:31):
a day to day to day. You got tolook at it a little longer, but
so, but you're going to want tolook at that so
Paul J Daly (19:37):
hard to do in this business, really hard, because
it's a 30 day cycle.
Michael Kraut (19:41):
And in the mind of the advertiser, it's not a 30
day cycle in consumers.
Paul J Daly (19:46):
That's right, I mean, and I think that the
pressure even mounts the largerthe group gets. Well, I don't
know there's like this. I feellike smaller stores, smaller
groups tend to be like, reallywatching 30 days. And then you
get to this middle. Eyes where Ifeel like sometimes you can earn
more latitude, whether they'rerolling out 90 days 126 months,
(20:08):
and they're saying, Okay, we'regonna try to campaign to overall
change these numbers. And thenyou get to the publics, and if
anything takes longer than 60days or between you have, like,
your earnings report andearnings report, that's the only
latitude. You have latitudethere. And so, like, we saw this
firsthand, you know, Kyle and Iwere consulting with the public,
and we learned really quickly,in our ignorance that, like, oh,
(20:29):
like, the leadership understandsthat this would probably take
nine months to really work, butthe Leadership isn't going to
get nine. We're not going to getit's just the reality, they're
going to get maybe six.
Michael Kraut (20:41):
So I think what you know, what we're
identifying, is, what are somesignals that we could look at
that will indicate,
Paul J Daly (20:51):
yes, tell me about those.
Michael Kraut (20:52):
So we've had a lot of we have access to a lot
of different activity that thathappens. There's a couple of
companies that are doing reallygood jobs at measuring, say,
service, you could start seeingsome signals that people are
doing, like, what's a goodexample might be, you know, just
(21:16):
coming in for an oil change,someone's just not going to do
it because they they see the ad,but they may take action
through, you know, search andsay, you know, oil in my area,
all right, there's a signalthere. If the agency is
measuring all kinds of signals,they could start to build a
picture, yep, and saying, Ithink this is going to work.
(21:38):
You're going to start seeing anda great example now is how
there's a lot more connectivityaround scheduling services or
scheduling an appointment tolook at a new car, for instance,
or a used car. Those are thetypes of signals that are
(21:59):
embedded. We just choose not topay
Paul J Daly (22:01):
attention, right?
Measure them, consider like. Isthis marketing affecting that
metric exactly versus like?
Because that, I mean, someonescheduling an appointment is
like, I feel like, at thatpoint, the marketer is like, now
it's a sales, now it's a salesconversation. Now it's a sales
and that's one of the problems.
Is when, like, we're not sellingcars so many times, I actually
see the sales process is brokenthe way Lee handling, you know,
(22:24):
like staffing properly duringpeak hours. And in my mind it's
like once, once, theappointments delivered, the
marketing has done its
Michael Kraut (22:33):
job. Yeah, right.
But you know, you have some ofthese organizations, and if
you're talking to a public youyou walk into some of these
stores, they're huge. Yeah, theygot 100, 150 people. There's a
lot of touch points in yourdealership. It's that sort of
goes back to, sort of your thedata that you're putting in.
Like, how accurate is it? Youknow, some guys are calling in
(22:56):
sick. You get somebody, get youpulling over. All right, you're
working the Service Desk today,or you're handling ups and stuff
like that. So it is not, it'snot a it's not a rocket science.
It's a very challenging businessto run. But back to your point,
if you're doing the rightmarketing sort of touch points.
(23:18):
What we just talked about,there's a lot of touch points,
so don't get caught onattribution is last right?
Paul J Daly (23:29):
You're not, you're never gonna figure it out. It
Michael Kraut (23:32):
was a fallacy when it came out.
Paul J Daly (23:34):
I mean, yeah, but on the digital side, like, but
back in the day, was like,Here's the phone number we put
in that ad. If anyone calls thatphone number. We know, we know
exactly what happens, yeah. Butnow it's like, what are all the
things that make up the story ofwhy the person redirect correct?
So we're at time of recording,right? We're heading into
September, yeah. And so, youknow, you and I were just
talking a little bit about,like, what happens now with the
(23:57):
loop into a conference season,event season, nada is not that
far away already. What are wegoing to be talking about at
nada? What are you going to betalking about at nada?
Michael Kraut (24:07):
I think we are going to get caught up on
everything in the back of thestore, all the fixed op stuff I
think you're hearing. Obviously,it's always been a profit center
for owners of dealerships.
Paul J Daly (24:22):
So much more controllable. It's controllable
Michael Kraut (24:26):
their talent there is. They want to use that
talent, especially all your techtalent, is back there. There's
also, you know, we really arefalling into this sort of the
cars, whoever you speak to, anylarge data providers,
unequivocally, cars are beingheld a lot longer. They're being
(24:46):
built better. Interestinglyenough, you know, the one thing
that is great for new cars isthey're totaling more cars now
than ever, because if you getinto an accident, you know, it's
now that sensor, that thing,that calibration. Not even worth
it, and that's why insurancerates are up, obviously. But the
affordability piece is going tobe here for a while. It's not
(25:09):
going to ebb or change, so
Paul J Daly (25:13):
even interest rates, if they go down, don't
make that much difference. It'snot like a house you buy a house
that's a few $1,000 the interestrate matters a lot more than if
you buy a car, that's $50,000
Michael Kraut (25:22):
correct, which is probably close to what the
average price of a new vehicle.
Yeah, it's 49 something. 49something tracker I see And and
so I think people that areinvolved in dealerships are
going to be looking at the backat that fixed Ops is going to be
really critical. If you couldincrease repair orders,
(25:44):
fantastic, you might startseeing a much more active role
in marketing from the OEM partsdivisions. Those are big there's
a big business. A lot of that, a
Paul J Daly (25:57):
lot of momentum in that area. A
Michael Kraut (25:58):
lot of momentum in that area. And then, you
know, I one thing that that froman advertising perspective, that
we noticed, was there's not asmany new cars coming out
anymore. There's a lot ofrebadges. Yeah, you know, I saw
someone has a Ford Maverick outthere, which is an f1 50. It's
(26:19):
just an
Unknown (26:19):
electric vehicle, yeah, that's mine. That's yours. 150
lightning, yeah,
Michael Kraut (26:23):
the white one, yeah, that's nice. But you're
not seeing a lot of new vehicleslike we used to have new
launches.
Paul J Daly (26:32):
Oh, yeah. Non stop.
Non stop, yeah? Because, I mean,they're unable to, they have to
focus on efficiency, yeah? Andnew new vehicles, new lines,
just naturally brake efficiency,yeah, right. And now the EV
challenge to keep up with it
Michael Kraut (26:44):
like you got EVs now you got hybrids. I mean,
they're changing gearsconstantly, and I don't know if
they have, you know, I neveroperated at an OEM, but you have
to have a really,
Paul J Daly (26:56):
I do not, I do not think gamble. They have a hard,
hard job, right?
Michael Kraut (27:00):
Yeah, because it also like, designs are
important. I don't know howimportant they are, because
Paul J Daly (27:06):
everything looks kind of similar. How's the tech
work, right? With, what's,what's the lease payment, what's
the monthly Exactly, yeah,different, different set of
considerations with, especiallywith Gen Z coming into the
market,
Michael Kraut (27:17):
yeah? And I do think that that Gen Z owner is,
is not as loyal, obviously. Imean, we've learned that
Paul J Daly (27:26):
Spencer, Spencer, are you loyal to car brand? No.
He says, Are you loyal? He goes,Yeah. He's like, Oh no, no, no,
yeah.
Michael Kraut (27:37):
And, you know, I think that that's that's a
challenge for the manufacturersto build new cars. People just
wanted to work with their
Paul J Daly (27:46):
tech. That's it.
That's it. Well, look, it's somuch fun to have you here. It's
great to be here. You came back.
So you went to su I went toSyracuse. And so how long has it
been since you've been inSyracuse? Quite a long time,
1520, years. What did you dotoday? Let's see. I saw you.
Went to campus. I went tocampus. I saw the Carmelo
Center,
Michael Kraut (28:05):
which was present there 15 years. Was not there.
Those were our football footballfields. What did you eat? I had
a slice of Varsity. Okay, that'sMarshall Street's not the same,
obviously. Yeah, it's a littledifferent. It's a little
different. Now, there wasn'thungry chucks or anything like
that, or zorbs, which is now aparking lot, but it was great
(28:28):
walking around the quad. I wentup to Mount Olympus to Flint, to
see my old dorm and freshmenwere moving
Paul J Daly (28:36):
in. Yeah. So brings you right back. It brings you
right back. Oh, well, thank youso much for making it. Was great
to be here and hanging out for alittle bit and all the work you
little bit and all the workyou're doing awesome. Can't wait
to hang out some more. Yes.
Kyle Mountsier (28:49):
Thanks a lot, see, and this is why I never
can. So my cable subscription,Paul, yes, you did no cable.
Still have cable. Wow. Well,because down here, yeah,
because, like, the cable is,yeah, it's it. I actually, like,
we watch, I never actually turnon the cable box. We watch all
of our cable elements on phone,Apple, TV. It's, it's basically
(29:13):
the same thing as all the otherones. But I just, you know, it's
one payment instead of 13, whichis what he's arguing we're gonna
go back to, which is sohilarious,
Paul J Daly (29:23):
right back to cable. I know AI is like I
brought up in the interview. Iknow it's gonna play a role in
this that we haven't seenanything of yet. Because if you
think of a frontier that hasn'treally been affected by
generative AI or any kind of AI,like verbal input, that actually
thinks about what I told it
Kyle Mountsier (29:40):
Yes. Like machine learning,
personalization, you seeNetflix, Apple TV always trying
to refine the way that they'redoing personally,
Paul J Daly (29:48):
even Apple TV doesn't know what it wants,
right? Tell me if you want towatch a show like my, my little
five year old likes to show thecartoon bad guys. Okay, where do
I go to find bad guys? I don'tknow what platform it's on, so I
go to Apple, and then apple. Waslike, Oh, here you can buy it,
and then I buy it, and then Irealize, like, oh, well, I could
have watched it on Peacock,right for free.
Kyle Mountsier (30:05):
Unbelievable.
And so it's coming. I think thisis, this will be the next wave,
and it'll be really critical foradvertisers to understand how
the wave comes, because it'sgoing to get more hyper
personalized. You're going toget voice input. It's not just
going to be personalizationbased off of history, but off of
real time. And figuring out howto navigate that matrix is going
to be really interesting. Yeah,so
Paul J Daly (30:27):
for me, it's just gonna be like, How can I watch
Eagles highlights all the time?
Silly Kyle's like, take us out,Kyle, then take us out.
Kyle Mountsier (30:36):
We're out of here. Hey, on behalf of Paul J
Daly. Michael Cirillo, myself.
Kyle Mountsier, really gladyou're hanging out with us here
on auto Collabs. We'll catch younext time.
Unknown (30:46):
Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for
a free shot of relevant news inautomotive retail media and pop
culture, you can get itnow@asotu.com that's asotu.com
if you love this podcast, pleaseleave us a review and share it
with a friend. Thanks again forlistening. We'll see you next
time.
(31:17):
Welcome to auto Collabs. Are werecording? We're you.
I could not be any more excited about this episode.
Unknown (00:08):
This is auto Collabs.
Kyle Mountsier (00:10):
This is my jealous face. You
Paul J Daly (00:12):
should be so jealous because Nathan and
Spencer and I, we set up thestudio here in Syracuse. We got
the chairs, we get the backdrop,the paint we have, the flowers
we have, the glasses of water.
And Michael, Michael kraut cameand visited us in person in
studio, and we were able to sitdown and have a face to face,
live conversation. It wasamazing. I could have gone for
(00:35):
an hour. 20 minutes went by so
Kyle Mountsier (00:38):
fast. I am purely jealous. I want to fly to
Syracuse, to the studio all thetime. I think that being in
person with people is socritical. That's why we have
events like ASOTU con. That'swhy we love going to all the
industry events, because thatcritical mass of like being with
people, especially for those ofus that aren't in dealerships
every day, is so important.
Paul J Daly (00:58):
We're never going I'll tell you what, though, I'll
tell you, I'll put this flag inthe ground right now never.
We're building out more studiosets in the studio, more podcast
sets, and we are going to invitemore dealers and industry
partners and industry leaders toSyracuse white glove them right
from the airport. We havehospitality suites.
Kyle Mountsier (01:15):
Expectations.
People are going to be coming.
Paul J Daly (01:18):
I Kyle. They call this manifesting, manifesting,
manifesting. I can't until I sayI want a Ferrari, I'll never
have a Ferrari. Oh, my goodness,I don't want a Ferrari, by the
way. But we already have astudio. We already have the
chairs. We already have Michaelkraut, who came into Syracuse to
have a conversation. So I'm notmanifesting. It's happening. We
hope you enjoy this conversationwith myself and Michael kraut in
(01:39):
person. Michael's with Experian.
By the way, we didn't say thatyet about what's going on with
all these connected TVs andwhat's going to be the future of
how we watch stuff. Check itout. Well, Michael, thank you so
much for joining us. Great to behere. This is amazing. You are
literally the first in studioguest auto Collabs episode ever,
you know, you walk by thestudio. Wait, is this for us?
(02:03):
It's for us. You came andvisited us in the studio. This
is great. And the first of manywe're going to get your picture.
You sign it, I get a sign. Andthen next will be like, Tony
Danz, right? And all the one yousee it like the cheese steak
place, yeah, exactly. It'sfunny. We looked at the wall
color we decided to paint forthis episode. And I came in and
I came in and I was like, Well,I'm the one that picked the
color. And then I just came in,I was like, looks awful. A lot
(02:24):
like eagles green, doesn't it? Ididn't do that on purpose. The
orange chairs throw it
Michael Kraut (02:30):
off. Well, are you giant or bills eagles?
You're eagles. I grew up inPhilly. Oh gosh,
Paul J Daly (02:35):
yeah. I'm sorry. It was a birthright, like I had no
choice, you know. But, you know,my sister married a Giants fan,
by the way. This is Eagle. Thisis totally not, according to
Sherwin Williams, okay, but,yeah, great. So funny. Look what
when did we meet or our pathscrossed? We have
Michael Kraut (02:54):
our paths crossed somewhere in the mid 2000s you
were still doing yourrefurbishing business, I
believe. And Alex better broughtyou into a cars.com sales
Summit, yeah, just wild, whichis, which was probably one of
those where it was snowing inSyracuse, and it was really
(03:16):
snowing in Chicago.
Paul J Daly (03:17):
It was, it was cold in Chicago. Was cold in Chicago
in the winter,
Michael Kraut (03:21):
like, I just remember meeting, like, yeah,
you started to become on thescene, yeah. And I don't
remember the messaging, but itwas, whatever you talked about
Paul J Daly (03:30):
was really, I was, if I remember correctly, that
was what I started by, talkingabout the need to adapt and
change, yeah. And I talked aboutCircuit City and how they became
Carmax, which at the time,wasn't a story that a lot of
people knew, because it was abig reveal moment. And like,
heard it in the room, like, Oh,there. That's where Carmax came
from. And then I actually talkeda lot about LinkedIn and how,
(03:51):
Oh, that's right. And I talkedabout LinkedIn back then and
just saying that, hey, there's alot of opportunity on the table
for you to organically buildLinkedIn traffic. And isn't it
kind of ironic that you bringthe story up, because literally,
in the last 120 days, that hasdisappeared from LinkedIn,
organic reach, really, oh yeah.
And if you talk to people whopost a lot on LinkedIn, you
realize organic reach has been
Michael Kraut (04:11):
cut, really, cut down. I've noticed it, but not
until you just like, Now,
Paul J Daly (04:15):
one of my regrets is that I didn't lean in five
times as hard while I wasdelivering that message. Because
everyone I'm doing somethingright, I would have went five
times as hard and that. Butthat's what it's like in this in
this world of constant changeand marketing and data like
opportunity, whatever you'redoing today is not what you're
going to be doing 100% in twoyears from now, one year from
now, sometimes six months fromnow. Yeah. And so that's one of
(04:36):
the things that you know as wetalk about marketing and data
and how dealers deploy it, andhow we, even as professionals,
trying to get our message outthere right? How are we going to
deploy
Michael Kraut (04:46):
in a good way? I one thing that we've started to
notice. When I started atExperian and we were building
out our data for advertisingpractice. There really were two
if. Fishes that you could playoceans to play with, right? It
was sort of like a trade deskand Oracle and LiveRamp. I'm
(05:08):
using those as examples. Theplaces we have our data today
are in so many different places,and when we get say usage
reports now you're seeing namesthat you you'd never even heard
of,
Paul J Daly (05:25):
right? I always make fun of Kyle, because Kyle
knows them all, yeah, and he'sjust ripping off these names. Is
like, what is that?
Michael Kraut (05:31):
What is that word? What's What's even more
bizarre is you start seeingnames that you don't know, and
then all of a sudden, you'reseeing Yahoo showing up,
Paul J Daly (05:40):
right? You're like, Excuse me, this is my
playground. Where did right overthere? Where did
Michael Kraut (05:45):
Yahoo come from?
And now in in my little our datafor advertising world, we're
seeing, obviously, Amazon istaking their share major and
it's companies like yourselvesthat have marketing or or tier
one holding company, agenciesthat are looking for different
types of scale, different typesof audiences. And it's, it's,
(06:06):
it's sort of very hard to, froma management perspective,
justify all these places, whatwe have to be, but we have to be
everywhere, because I don't knowwhere you're going to come up
with a really interesting socialactivation next, it might be the
next, the newest thing thatwe're not paying attention to.
Yeah. So all these names arealways coming up with us. And
(06:29):
I'm like, we started with like,three platforms, and now we have
things from, you know, our datais at NBCU and Disney and trade
desk and Amazon. It's all overthe place.
Paul J Daly (06:42):
So you know that no dealer operates their tech stack
the same, which is an additionallayer that always makes it
complicated. Not only is everydealer different, but every the
understanding, even of verysimilar dealers and their, you
know, appetite for tech, or evenability to understand, yeah,
probably put you much more inthe seat of like, I need to be a
(07:03):
guide to just like, how do I,how do I bring it to the lowest
common denominator in simpleterms, that helps bring some
simplicity to the complexity youwere just
Michael Kraut (07:11):
talking about.
It's, it's really hard. That'swhy, you know, we work with, you
know, some of the bigger tierone agencies and some of the big
dealer agencies as well, and weexpect them to kind of
understand how to translate alot of that stuff, but we have
to understand it ourselves,because we have to tell our
these agencies like, Hey, ifyou're looking for our
(07:36):
audiences, they are in thesespecific destinations. But the
complexity, I sort of feel badfor someone that's been
traditionally buying media inthe traditional format, yeah,
and all of a sudden they'relike, You mean there's no radio?
I'm like, No, there's no radio.
Yeah, there's podcasts, yeah?
And that's about as personal,
Paul J Daly (08:00):
but the good news is, I know who's listening to
the pod. You know who'slistening to the podcast. You
tell me who's listening to theradio. Probably. I was like, Oh,
we don't need to put theprobably in, right?
Michael Kraut (08:10):
You can. And the same thing is happening in the
TV space. Being more of an OG TVperson, I do think that there's
going to be this shift sort ofback to cable television.
Because, tell me about that, theamount of streaming and
distribution places that aregoing, it's just getting more
(08:31):
complex.
Paul J Daly (08:32):
It's getting more complex. I'm spending more
money. It's it really, exactly.
Now you bring that up, you know,we've Kyle and I talk about this
sometime about the level, like,now, how much are we spending a
month to get our programming?
Probably more than cable. But wedon't really know. But you don't
know because, like, my five yearold is like, I want to watch
this movie. And I'm like, okay,so I have used Apple TV. So I go
on Apple TV and I search themovie, and then I would like,
(08:54):
figure out how we're going towatch it. And oftentimes that's,
I guess we're going to subscribeto peacock for a month, right?
Because you don't know exactlywhat's going to happen, right?
And that's what's happening. Ithappens every, every day in my
house, and we've heard
Michael Kraut (09:07):
this cord cutting piece now you're going to see
this shift at some point back tocable, and it's it's going to
happen when the large masses,the nbcus, the Disney's, are
want to start take taking thingsmore through the streaming
channels, and then on a Sundayafternoon, you're not going to
know where. You know we're inbaseball season right now. We're
(09:30):
moving into football season.
Hoops are going to start soon.
Do you going to remember thatthe Yankees are on Amazon and
you know you want to watch a manU soccer on NBC, peacock, and
you're going to be flipping andgoing back and forth, but you
really can't, because you got togo, dad, at some point,
someone's going to just say, youknow, give me my XFINITY clip.
(09:52):
You know, interesting. I thinkthat's going to happen, because
you're not going to write itdown, no ever. And, you know, we
grew. Up in a world with, youknow, going way back, like a TV
Paul J Daly (10:04):
guy, baby, yes, I remember that the long and as a
some of our audience neverpicked up. They never got they
never see a grandma's house.
Actually, exactly, was always onthe table.
Michael Kraut (10:13):
It was always on on the table. But, you know, as
as someone, you know, once theyou know, we've saw it with the
Olympics like that was reallyhard to find. But sports usually
it's, it's the most importantpart of the media landscape
right now. It's got sight,sound, motion, and it's live.
Paul J Daly (10:32):
Now I'm thinking, my mind always goes, these days,
whenever I'm presented with aproblem, my mind immediately
goes, How is AI going to solvethis problem? Right? Because,
because you think, well, youthink about it, and we haven't
really seen AI tools overlaidinto viewing experiences,
correct, right? But the realityis, when you say someone's going
to fix it, someone's going tomake a way for me to be like,
(10:54):
hey, I want to watch the Eagles,the Yankees Manchester on
Sunday. Show it to me. Show itto me. And it's going to say,
here's how you see it. Do youwant me to make right? Like that
is probably where we're going,probably.
Michael Kraut (11:06):
And I think that what's gonna happen is, I mean,
only because this is the waymedia works, you're gonna use an
AI agent to do that. Yep, right?
I'll gamble it nine times out of10. There's gonna be advertising
in there as well, for sure,right? And that's kind of the
next, next sort of, we'll callit those, those AI agent plays,
(11:28):
or, yeah, it's gonna happen,yeah. But I do think that, you
know, knowing back to youroriginal point, the beauty of a
podcast, the beauty of streamingis, you know, you're you're
informed on identity, yeah, andI think, you know, with a lot of
the services that we mightprovide in enrichment, even data
(11:50):
hygiene dealers specifically,have to really know their data.
They have to know theircustomers. What do
Paul J Daly (12:00):
you think it's funny that we're talking about
this. I'm just thinking Nielsenhas been blowing up my phone for
the last Yes, three weeks. Yeah,because they sent me 10 bucks in
an envelope. Yep. And my son waslike, what? Somebody sent you
cash? Was like, well, first ofall, used to be two bucks,
right? And then you fill out thething, they'd send you another
three, three bucks, right? Sothey sent me a $10 bill in an
envelope. And no curious ago,we're going to call you, right?
And I really want to be a partof it, because I'm just curious.
(12:21):
For sure, I'm just curious onwhat they're doing, what they're
asking, but every time they callcomes across as Nielsen. And I
don't say stop calling because Iwant to do it. Because you want
to, you want to try. What do youthink? What do you think all
these sources of data likeyou're saying, it's getting more
complicated. Yeah. What do youthink is the biggest
misconception that dealers haveabout why the type of data that
they're using in overlay mattersso much because everybody says
(12:43):
we have the best data. Everybodysays it,
Michael Kraut (12:46):
well, the best data, you know, specifically for
dealers, is going to beeverything that's in your CRM
and your DMS system. That'sthat's your core. If you have
people answering that inimproperly, that's not great.
Yeah, you're gonna keepmerchandising or marketing to me
when I already sold that 2015Land Rover, blah, blah, blah,
(13:10):
right?
Paul J Daly (13:10):
It's like starting a song
Michael Kraut (13:12):
with an auto tune guitar, yeah, it's never gonna
sound never gonna sound good. SoI think, and it's a very con.
It's not as simple as peoplemake it, but if they could get a
good snapshot of those consumersthat are their most, most loyal
customers, they should befishing for more of those people
that look like that. And I thinkthat's where the good data
(13:38):
hygiene and cleansing methodsmake the most sense for dealers
like you can't go outside thatfar outside of your market area,
but you should be mining in thatarea for a variety of things.
And I think like in today'sworld, we're going to have a
window where service is going tobe critical for dealers with
(13:59):
affordability is so high. Peopleare holding onto cars. They're
servicing those cars a lotlonger. That being said, they're
also not in market to buy cars.
So if you have invested infacilities and have anywhere
from 10 to 20 bays, you want tokeep those busy. So all of a
sudden, hey, how could I marketin my marketplace to people that
(14:20):
have vehicles that I canservice. Those are the those are
the sort of things that where,if you have a good understanding
of your loyal customers, of yourbase of cus, of your base of car
owners in your marketplace, Boy,that's a that's an advantage the
it's not any everyone can't justdo this. It's a commitment. It's
(14:44):
not easy. We're working withlots of large dealer groups and
lots of like marketing and CRMrelated agencies that are trying
to do this for dealers.
Paul J Daly (14:56):
Yeah, no, we're in the middle as hard the agency
side of the business. It's like.
Like everyone's trying newthings right now, which is
really encouraging, yeah, butthere's no prescription to give
people. That's the hard part. Ican't say this, then this, then
this, put these three thingstogether. It's gonna work,
because you're starting in adifferent place than they're
starting. Then they're starting,they're
Michael Kraut (15:15):
starting Absolutely. And it's also like,
we've, we've tried to identifyspecific pockets of data that we
could provide, because we havereally good automotive data, we
have ownership data, we haveconsumer data, we have some
credit data, like when you putit together, we could kind of
stitch together a really goodclientele in your marketplace
(15:38):
that you're not touching rightnow. But there's, there's no,
it's not a secret formula. It'sstill hard to do. And I think
you know No, no, less than youknow you've heard dealers say,
All right, I'm not looking at 30days of sales only. I'll look at
a quarter. Well, they always goback to 30 days. How did I do
this? Right? So true, and thisis something that it takes a
(15:58):
little bit of time, and it's notas prescriptive as dropping, you
know, an ad on your local TVstation, you know, on Saturday
night or something like that, orarguably, Friday night, where
people are in front of the TV.
First of all, they're not evenin front of that TV anymore.
That's right, that's half thebattle is finding where those
(16:19):
customers, where are
Paul J Daly (16:21):
they going to be paying attention? Yeah. So if
you were to kind of break itdown to a metric, what would be
the most important metric thatdealers should be paying
attention to?
Michael Kraut (16:33):
There's a there's a thread that's happening. I'll
kind of take you back to whatI've what I've watched. And at
Experian, we have our automotivegroup. We also have marketing
services. We've seen the retailmedia network. Those are the
Amazons, the Walmarts, thetargets, yeah, they've become
(16:57):
very outcome based. So if you doadvertising, if you're a
customer of Walmart, and you doadvertising on Walmart, they
actually could tell you, becausethey have barcodes and they have
God knows how many stores, whatkind of lift you've gotten. So
this outcome based marketing isstarting to seep into other
(17:21):
industries. Automotive is beingone of them. So at some level,
you're gonna have to look atgeneral outcomes in
Paul J Daly (17:30):
your market list, not direct attribution, exactly,
right? And that's the big shift.
That's a big shift last clickattribution was like this, this
thing that we were chasing, thatwe could have sworn we saw its
tail as we're chasing it overthe horizon. I think that's, I
think that then we got over thehorizon, we were like, oh,
there's, like, 50 unicorns overhere. And I don't know which
Michael Kraut (17:48):
one, I don't know which one did it. It's just
important for you to be in so,you know, there's, I think
people or dealers and theiragencies don't realize that
there's a there's a limitedamount of time that people care
about advertising, or are infront of that advertising, you
have to be at a different very
Paul J Daly (18:09):
time the life cycle of the purchase consideration,
exactly,
Michael Kraut (18:13):
and what was so kind of back to your question, I
think there has to be some sortof outcomes that can be
measured, that dealerships have,and it's not in
Paul J Daly (18:26):
so what are some of the outcomes, like, what are,
what do you how do you thinkabout lift? How should a dealer
think about lift?
Michael Kraut (18:32):
I think right now, we've, we've started to see
a lot of if you're looking forservice, for instance, you
could,
Paul J Daly (18:39):
it's probably much easier. It's much easier to
measure, because it's like amore immediate thing. It's more
Michael Kraut (18:44):
immediate. It's sustainable for a couple of
weeks. And you could just lookat your arrows, and you could
see if you're getting some yearof years trending quarter,
quarter over quarterly,adjusted, seasonally adjusted
car sales. Yeah, there's only ahandful of companies that could
actually do it. But there's
Paul J Daly (19:01):
a lot of variables.
There's a lot of variables. Whatare the, what are the what are
the deals being run? What arethe deals? What are the tariffs?
What are the incentives? Like,you
Michael Kraut (19:09):
know, we're doing an inventory level. We're doing
a workshop at our sales Summitin September, and a lot of the
things that we're talking about,you know, the dealer hears that
they're going to heavy up on aspecific make and model. It
could be on air TV, it could beon radio, could be on podcasts,
whatever, whatever they'redoing. You can't measure it like
(19:31):
a day to day to day. You got tolook at it a little longer, but
so, but you're going to want tolook at that so
Paul J Daly (19:37):
hard to do in this business, really hard, because
it's a 30 day cycle.
Michael Kraut (19:41):
And in the mind of the advertiser, it's not a 30
day cycle in consumers.
Paul J Daly (19:46):
That's right, I mean, and I think that the
pressure even mounts the largerthe group gets. Well, I don't
know there's like this. I feellike smaller stores, smaller
groups tend to be like, reallywatching 30 days. And then you
get to this middle. Eyes where Ifeel like sometimes you can earn
more latitude, whether they'rerolling out 90 days 126 months,
(20:08):
and they're saying, Okay, we'regonna try to campaign to overall
change these numbers. And thenyou get to the publics, and if
anything takes longer than 60days or between you have, like,
your earnings report andearnings report, that's the only
latitude. You have latitudethere. And so, like, we saw this
firsthand, you know, Kyle and Iwere consulting with the public,
and we learned really quickly,in our ignorance that, like, oh,
(20:29):
like, the leadership understandsthat this would probably take
nine months to really work, butthe Leadership isn't going to
get nine. We're not going to getit's just the reality, they're
going to get maybe six.
Michael Kraut (20:41):
So I think what you know, what we're
identifying, is, what are somesignals that we could look at
that will indicate,
Paul J Daly (20:51):
yes, tell me about those.
Michael Kraut (20:52):
So we've had a lot of we have access to a lot
of different activity that thathappens. There's a couple of
companies that are doing reallygood jobs at measuring, say,
service, you could start seeingsome signals that people are
doing, like, what's a goodexample might be, you know, just
(21:16):
coming in for an oil change,someone's just not going to do
it because they they see the ad,but they may take action
through, you know, search andsay, you know, oil in my area,
all right, there's a signalthere. If the agency is
measuring all kinds of signals,they could start to build a
picture, yep, and saying, Ithink this is going to work.
(21:38):
You're going to start seeing anda great example now is how
there's a lot more connectivityaround scheduling services or
scheduling an appointment tolook at a new car, for instance,
or a used car. Those are thetypes of signals that are
(21:59):
embedded. We just choose not topay
Paul J Daly (22:01):
attention, right?
Measure them, consider like. Isthis marketing affecting that
metric exactly versus like?
Because that, I mean, someonescheduling an appointment is
like, I feel like, at thatpoint, the marketer is like, now
it's a sales, now it's a salesconversation. Now it's a sales
and that's one of the problems.
Is when, like, we're not sellingcars so many times, I actually
see the sales process is brokenthe way Lee handling, you know,
(22:24):
like staffing properly duringpeak hours. And in my mind it's
like once, once, theappointments delivered, the
marketing has done its
Michael Kraut (22:33):
job. Yeah, right.
But you know, you have some ofthese organizations, and if
you're talking to a public youyou walk into some of these
stores, they're huge. Yeah, theygot 100, 150 people. There's a
lot of touch points in yourdealership. It's that sort of
goes back to, sort of your thedata that you're putting in.
Like, how accurate is it? Youknow, some guys are calling in
(22:56):
sick. You get somebody, get youpulling over. All right, you're
working the Service Desk today,or you're handling ups and stuff
like that. So it is not, it'snot a it's not a rocket science.
It's a very challenging businessto run. But back to your point,
if you're doing the rightmarketing sort of touch points.
(23:18):
What we just talked about,there's a lot of touch points,
so don't get caught onattribution is last right?
Paul J Daly (23:29):
You're not, you're never gonna figure it out. It
Michael Kraut (23:32):
was a fallacy when it came out.
Paul J Daly (23:34):
I mean, yeah, but on the digital side, like, but
back in the day, was like,Here's the phone number we put
in that ad. If anyone calls thatphone number. We know, we know
exactly what happens, yeah. Butnow it's like, what are all the
things that make up the story ofwhy the person redirect correct?
So we're at time of recording,right? We're heading into
September, yeah. And so, youknow, you and I were just
talking a little bit about,like, what happens now with the
(23:57):
loop into a conference season,event season, nada is not that
far away already. What are wegoing to be talking about at
nada? What are you going to betalking about at nada?
Michael Kraut (24:07):
I think we are going to get caught up on
everything in the back of thestore, all the fixed op stuff I
think you're hearing. Obviously,it's always been a profit center
for owners of dealerships.
Paul J Daly (24:22):
So much more controllable. It's controllable
Michael Kraut (24:26):
their talent there is. They want to use that
talent, especially all your techtalent, is back there. There's
also, you know, we really arefalling into this sort of the
cars, whoever you speak to, anylarge data providers,
unequivocally, cars are beingheld a lot longer. They're being
(24:46):
built better. Interestinglyenough, you know, the one thing
that is great for new cars isthey're totaling more cars now
than ever, because if you getinto an accident, you know, it's
now that sensor, that thing,that calibration. Not even worth
it, and that's why insurancerates are up, obviously. But the
affordability piece is going tobe here for a while. It's not
(25:09):
going to ebb or change, so
Paul J Daly (25:13):
even interest rates, if they go down, don't
make that much difference. It'snot like a house you buy a house
that's a few $1,000 the interestrate matters a lot more than if
you buy a car, that's $50,000
Michael Kraut (25:22):
correct, which is probably close to what the
average price of a new vehicle.
Yeah, it's 49 something. 49something tracker I see And and
so I think people that areinvolved in dealerships are
going to be looking at the backat that fixed Ops is going to be
really critical. If you couldincrease repair orders,
(25:44):
fantastic, you might startseeing a much more active role
in marketing from the OEM partsdivisions. Those are big there's
a big business. A lot of that, a
Paul J Daly (25:57):
lot of momentum in that area. A
Michael Kraut (25:58):
lot of momentum in that area. And then, you
know, I one thing that that froman advertising perspective, that
we noticed, was there's not asmany new cars coming out
anymore. There's a lot ofrebadges. Yeah, you know, I saw
someone has a Ford Maverick outthere, which is an f1 50. It's
(26:19):
just an
Unknown (26:19):
electric vehicle, yeah, that's mine. That's yours. 150
lightning, yeah,
Michael Kraut (26:23):
the white one, yeah, that's nice. But you're
not seeing a lot of new vehicleslike we used to have new
launches.
Paul J Daly (26:32):
Oh, yeah. Non stop.
Non stop, yeah? Because, I mean,they're unable to, they have to
focus on efficiency, yeah? Andnew new vehicles, new lines,
just naturally brake efficiency,yeah, right. And now the EV
challenge to keep up with it
Michael Kraut (26:44):
like you got EVs now you got hybrids. I mean,
they're changing gearsconstantly, and I don't know if
they have, you know, I neveroperated at an OEM, but you have
to have a really,
Paul J Daly (26:56):
I do not, I do not think gamble. They have a hard,
hard job, right?
Michael Kraut (27:00):
Yeah, because it also like, designs are
important. I don't know howimportant they are, because
Paul J Daly (27:06):
everything looks kind of similar. How's the tech
work, right? With, what's,what's the lease payment, what's
the monthly Exactly, yeah,different, different set of
considerations with, especiallywith Gen Z coming into the
market,
Michael Kraut (27:17):
yeah? And I do think that that Gen Z owner is,
is not as loyal, obviously. Imean, we've learned that
Paul J Daly (27:26):
Spencer, Spencer, are you loyal to car brand? No.
He says, Are you loyal? He goes,Yeah. He's like, Oh no, no, no,
yeah.
Michael Kraut (27:37):
And, you know, I think that that's that's a
challenge for the manufacturersto build new cars. People just
wanted to work with their
Paul J Daly (27:46):
tech. That's it.
That's it. Well, look, it's somuch fun to have you here. It's
great to be here. You came back.
So you went to su I went toSyracuse. And so how long has it
been since you've been inSyracuse? Quite a long time,
1520, years. What did you dotoday? Let's see. I saw you.
Went to campus. I went tocampus. I saw the Carmelo
Center,
Michael Kraut (28:05):
which was present there 15 years. Was not there.
Those were our football footballfields. What did you eat? I had
a slice of Varsity. Okay, that'sMarshall Street's not the same,
obviously. Yeah, it's a littledifferent. It's a little
different. Now, there wasn'thungry chucks or anything like
that, or zorbs, which is now aparking lot, but it was great
(28:28):
walking around the quad. I wentup to Mount Olympus to Flint, to
see my old dorm and freshmenwere moving
Paul J Daly (28:36):
in. Yeah. So brings you right back. It brings you
right back. Oh, well, thank youso much for making it. Was great
to be here and hanging out for alittle bit and all the work you
little bit and all the workyou're doing awesome. Can't wait
to hang out some more. Yes.
Kyle Mountsier (28:49):
Thanks a lot, see, and this is why I never
can. So my cable subscription,Paul, yes, you did no cable.
Still have cable. Wow. Well,because down here, yeah,
because, like, the cable is,yeah, it's it. I actually, like,
we watch, I never actually turnon the cable box. We watch all
of our cable elements on phone,Apple, TV. It's, it's basically
(29:13):
the same thing as all the otherones. But I just, you know, it's
one payment instead of 13, whichis what he's arguing we're gonna
go back to, which is sohilarious,
Paul J Daly (29:23):
right back to cable. I know AI is like I
brought up in the interview. Iknow it's gonna play a role in
this that we haven't seenanything of yet. Because if you
think of a frontier that hasn'treally been affected by
generative AI or any kind of AI,like verbal input, that actually
thinks about what I told it
Kyle Mountsier (29:40):
Yes. Like machine learning,
personalization, you seeNetflix, Apple TV always trying
to refine the way that they'redoing personally,
Paul J Daly (29:48):
even Apple TV doesn't know what it wants,
right? Tell me if you want towatch a show like my, my little
five year old likes to show thecartoon bad guys. Okay, where do
I go to find bad guys? I don'tknow what platform it's on, so I
go to Apple, and then apple. Waslike, Oh, here you can buy it,
and then I buy it, and then Irealize, like, oh, well, I could
have watched it on Peacock,right for free.
Kyle Mountsier (30:05):
Unbelievable.
And so it's coming. I think thisis, this will be the next wave,
and it'll be really critical foradvertisers to understand how
the wave comes, because it'sgoing to get more hyper
personalized. You're going toget voice input. It's not just
going to be personalizationbased off of history, but off of
real time. And figuring out howto navigate that matrix is going
to be really interesting. Yeah,so
Paul J Daly (30:27):
for me, it's just gonna be like, How can I watch
Eagles highlights all the time?
Silly Kyle's like, take us out,Kyle, then take us out.
Kyle Mountsier (30:36):
We're out of here. Hey, on behalf of Paul J
Daly. Michael Cirillo, myself.
Kyle Mountsier, really gladyou're hanging out with us here
on auto Collabs. We'll catch younext time.
Unknown (30:46):
Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for
a free shot of relevant news inautomotive retail media and pop
culture, you can get itnow@asotu.com that's asotu.com
if you love this podcast, pleaseleave us a review and share it
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time.
(31:17):
Welcome to auto Collabs. Are werecording? We're you.
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