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Few purchases demand more careful consideration than a car. With so much money being spent, customers need to research their options thoroughly, so it comes as no surprise that car manufacturers have among the most sophisticated web sites, where users can get the latest specs and take a virtual test drive. But while these sites are often popular with owners of particular marques, they are not reaching a wide audience. In September, only Vauxhall and Renault scored above the 0.6 per cent reach needed to register with internet tracking firm NetValue.

So, with their sites not attracting as much business as they would like, car manufacturers have changed strategy. According to media intelligence firm Thomson Intermedia, online spend in 2002 was 34 per cent higher than in 2001. And this leap in online car advertising has been accompanied by a clearer understanding of the importance of partnering other sites.

Companies are realising that their target buyers are comparing the features of models at independent car sites such as Autotrader.co.uk, which, at 4.9 per cent, had a bigger reach in September than all of the manufacturers' sites combined.

Julian Ormerod, client lead on the pan-European General Motors account at online agency Modem Media, says: "The launch of the Meriva and Signum brands next year will represent a big shift from the things GM has done before, which were much more based around the web site (www.gm.com). It will be more about attracting prospects - reaching out to new customers, rather than waiting for them to come to us."

Richard Payne, passenger car marketing communications manager at Mercedes-Benz, says: "It is overstating things to say that car sites have failed. Our site is still a very important shop window, but we are trying to be cleverer in how we use the rest of the web, meaning sites such as AOL and MSN."

Car firms have long used these independent sites for buttons and banners, but are now using advertorials, microsites and sponsorships in a more co-operative approach.

Ken Ebenezer, business manager for MSN's Cars channel, confirms that manufacturers seem keen to get involved editorially, possibly integrating their content within independent car sites. "They have specific things they want us to use. It could be video footage or design work that will create a richer, more interesting experience of their cars." MSN lets manufacturers go one step further and buy editorial coverage in the form of a special feature. Such techniques blur the boundaries between advertising and editorial, but Ebenezer says it's acceptable if done carefully. "There is no bias. Integrity is key to the independence of the site. We just give it more prominence in the way the page is built, using more images and more depth," he adds.

Firms are also uploading their stock of used cars to sites such as Autotrader.co.uk.

Jim Murray-Jones, head of digital channels at Auto Trader, says Saab, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are among those exporting their content in this way.

Xanthe Arvanitakis, chief operating officer at Audi's digital agency, Good Technology, is looking at ways of incorporating this information in interactive banners. "Exporting content like this is not new, but doing it in a targeted way is. People can put their postcode on a banner and get local dealer details. We are looking at the feasibility of extending it and maybe putting locally available used cars in a rich-media banner."

Aside from sites associated with car magazines, TV and newspaper motoring sections, car manufacturers are looking to the sites of motoring organisations, portal car channels and online retailers such as Virgin Cars (www.virgincars.co.uk) and Jamjar (www.jamjar.co.uk). Part of this year's increased car activity has even gone beyond car-related sites, with manufacturers seeking branding on lifestyle sites previously considered poorly targeted, as they didn't reach people thinking specifically about cars.

Having a presence on lifestyle sites, via banners and buttons or by advertorial or sponsorship, is a tactic adopted by Ford. It sponsors a parenting channel on Emap's Redmagazine.co.uk as well as on women's site iVillage.co.uk.

Ford has particularly targeted sites aimed at women, working with Vogue.com, Totallyjewish.com, Cosmopolitan.co.uk and handbag.com.

Jo Lyall, account director at Ford's online planning and buying agency, m digital, points out: "The past six months have seen a big move onto lifestyle web sites. At the beginning of the year we seemed to be the only one doing it, but now everyone is doing it, with the problem that there is too much clutter - you can go to a web site and see 12 different cars in 10 pages."

With a high level of activity around the most popular sites, agencies are having to work harder to identify new partners. Aside from the standard media industry criteria of the number and profile of visitors and the nature of the environment, sites are being chosen on the basis of what they highlight in the car or its typical customers. One of Mercedes' tactics is to look at the lifestyle of its customers and find sites that match.

Payne suggests that sports sites associated with events such as the Cricket World Cup would be appropriate.

Lyall agrees that the smartest online marketing seeks sites that reflect a car's unique selling point. "You look at the brand's traits and find a site to match. Glamour magazine is small and fun, so you might use it to advertise a small, fun car, as Ford has done with the Fiesta and Vauxhall with the Corsa," she says.

Another example is Audi's work last summer with music sites to tie in with its offline advertising campaign, which featured Jimi Hendrix. Unusually, media agency MediaCom placed the brand on music and radio sites. MediaCom planner/buyer e Samantha Barke says: "The TV ads were all about the designers of the car listening to Hendrix, so the idea was to associate the car with music. Using music and radio sites gave great standout too."

This is part of a trend away from hard-nosed commercialism to a more subtle approach that Ford internet and new-media manager Noreen Kazim identifies.

"More companies are trying to get into less commercially orientated messaging. Having partnerships with lifestyle sites is part of this, as is having lifestyle stuff within your own site," she says.

As well as getting out across the web and getting involved with non-car-related sites, manufacturers need to be better at reaching 'out of market' customers - those between purchases. This would focus on brand building rather than the short-term generation of test drives that uses the web as a direct response mechanism. Andrew Walmsley, chief operating officer of online media agency i-level, points out that this is what car firms do on TV. "There still seems to be no real online equivalent of the 30-second car ad in the middle of Hollyoaks. Companies shouldn't just want a dialogue with car buyers when they're thinking about buying a car. They should be more strategic."

Richard Harrison, director of customer marketing and e-commerce at Renault UK, agrees: "Online advertising should not just be about direct response. If people see an innovative piece of Renault communication, they may click through, but it should be about more than that." He adds that Renault is particularly interested in 'soft' measurement indices, such as improvements in brand awareness and image shift, when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of a web campaign.

Some car manufacturers already have such strong brand equity that their advertising has long been about brand building rather than short-term sales. It is no surprise, then, that these same firms are leading the way with similar strategic brand-building activity online. BMW, for example, has made a series of short high-quality online films featuring its cars only incidentally. A five-film series called The Hire was shot to feature-film standards and made available last year to registers on its site, BMWfilms.com. Another series is being released this year.

The film format lets cars do things they can't do in advertising, like being driven fast and recklessly. BMW is also using a sequential ad-serving system on GuardianUnlimited, under which advertisers book ads per user session, rather than per thousand page impressions. This allows a narrative to be developed - in this case, it takes users through the model line-up.

BMW's German rival, Mercedes-Benz, has been experimenting with film as part of its own brand building. This year, it produced a mock film trailer to promote the launch of the SL-Class, which was shown on TV and in the 'forthcoming attractions' slot at cinemas. The trailer proved popular online, being downloaded 50,000 times in the first four weeks of the campaign.

Damian Burns, digital account director at BMW's agency, Zenith Interactive Solutions, says such activity can harness the web's capability to allow firms to demonstrate technical innovation.

However, the connection can backfire. The dynamic html ads used by many car firms to make an impression on life-style sites have proved hugely unpopular. Any manufacturers that want an insight into how a dhtml campaign can negatively affect attitudes towards a brand can check out the postings on the discussion boards of sites such as 4car.co.uk. Some sites, such as TheAA.com, have now decided to only allow a very limited branded presence.

Even so, the increased number of dhtml car ads, as well as other less irritating techniques, has begun to bring car manufacturers' online spend closer to where many believe it should be. I-level's Walmsley estimates that car firms are still spending less than one per cent of their media budgets online, while the web accounts for a far greater percentage of total media consumed. But, if the car industry continues to develop new creative solutions online, this discrepancy may soon disappear.

MERCEDES-BENZ LINKS WEB COMPETITION TO SPOOF TRAILER

This summer, Mercedes-Benz ran an elaborate campaign to back the launch of the new SL-Class. A trailer was created for a film called Lucky Star, which went out on TV and in cinemas. Featuring Mercedes cars but no company branding, the trailer was later revealed to be a spoof - no film existed.

To capitalise on the awareness created by the trailer, the manufacturer tied up with FT.com and the Financial Times in August for a promotional campaign and competition.

Mercedes-Benz passenger car marketing communications manager Richard Payne says: "We wanted to get some tangible benefit from the brand work and chose to work with the FT, as it had the right audience and is a prestigious brand."

FT.com carried skyscrapers, pop-ups and interactive banners. The objective was to drive users to a special web site where they could play an online card game and win the chance to be a character from the trailer - 'the luckiest man in the world' - for a weekend.

The work was supported by ads in the Financial Times and an email, which went out to the FT's database of 500,000 registered users. It was aimed at generating sales leads and had data capture at its heart.

Those wanting to enter the competition had to fill out a 17-field form, which gave Mercedes-Benz's sales team good demographic and historical data to help them score each lead.

In three weeks, detailed data was collected on more than 14,000 people who entered the competition. Almost one-quarter of them wanted a test drive. About one-third of users who played the game also told a friend about it and encouraged them to enter.

The online work was created by digital communications consultancy Oyster Partners and the campaign was co-ordinated by ad agency CDD.

AUDI ECHOES HENDRIX TV ADS IN TIE-UP WITH MUSIC SITES

Dual logic lay behind Audi's campaign on Q4music.com and other music-related sites in support of the Audi TT Coupe in June last year.

One idea was to integrate the online work with the Audi TV execution which boasted the tagline: 'Designed under the influence of Jimi Hendrix'.

The second was that a tie-in with music sites would produce higher cut-through, as the car ads would stand out.

Among the 15 sites chosen by agency MediaCom for the three-week campaign were dotmusic.com, NME.com, Jazz FM (www.jazzfm.com), MP3.com, Capitalgold.com, Virginradio.com and Q4music.com.

Terry Slade, Audi's head of marketing, says: "The brief was to find our audience in a place they wouldn't expect to find us, so the media buying was different from normal. If you are surfing on NME, you don't expect to see an Audi symbol next to Hendrix."

The creative, produced by Good Technology, involved Flash pop-ups using the campaign tagline, and invited users to click through to a special microsite set up on Audi.co.uk. This carried the streamed TV advertisement and background information on both Hendrix and the car.

The focus was on brand building, so the key was to get the Audi brand in the right environment. As no spotlight tags were used, it wasn't possible to count the brochure requests, but the average clickthrough rate was a high 3.6 per cent.

Samantha Barke, planner/ buyer at MediaCom, says the sites where the tie-up worked best were MP3.com (four per cent) and Jazz FM (almost nine per cent).

FORD PROMOTES JOURNEY PORTAL TO A FEMALE AUDIENCE

Ford sponsored a new motoring channel on iVillage, the lifestyle management site for women, with its Ford Journey online buying arm.

The tie-up was in line with a subtle web strategy, which often targets women and introduces branding into a lifestyle environment.

There were two objectives: to educate women about buying cars online and to get them to the Ford Journey site; hence the brand's presence consisted of relatively discrete buttons linked to Ford Journey.

IVillage.co.uk was chosen because it fitted the audience requirement and the management was prepared to launch a special motoring channel, which Ford could take ownership of through sponsorship.

Noreen Kazim, internet and new-media manager at Ford of Britain, says: "This is one of several placements we've done with female-oriented sites.

We are trying to get women, who often do not have good experiences with car dealers, to explore the product online.

"We've done quite a lot of tracking and the awareness of Ford Journey has gone up a substantial amount in the target group," she says.

"We have had a lot of women going to the web site and configuring cars, although they're not buying online as yet. I think that is understandable, bearing in mind the nature of cars - it is still very much about getting a feel for the product," she adds.

The one-year tie-up was negotiated by the m digital arm of media agency MindShare. The campaign went live in January 2002.