Promotion is a marketing mix that cannot be ignored by companies in the context of marketing their products or services. Promotion is a step in which a company tries to communicate its products to the public so that people who are also the target market for the product can recognize, evaluate and ultimately use the product. No matter how good the product is produced by the company, if the promotion function does not go well, the possibility of the product being recognized and used as an alternative choice by the target market is also getting smaller. Therefore, promotion has an important position in the process of marketing a product to the target market. Marketing guru Philip Kotler said there are five promotional mixes that can be used by companies in order to maximize their promotional activities, namely advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, direct selling. (direct marketing).

Among one of these marketing mixes, advertising or advertising is an interesting thing for us to discuss further. If we look together, the development of advertising is directly proportional to the development of technology. In addition, the development of advertising channels has a linear trend with changes in people's behavior. Before the development of digital technology as it is today, advertising channels were still limited to media such as radio, television, newspapers, magazines, tabloids, billboards, billboards and so on because these media were the main choice for people in seeking information. Advertising rates on these media are also fairly high, so that only large companies with large capitalization can take advantage of this advertising channel. However, today with the presence of technology, advertising channels have developed in such a way. One of the growing advertising channels is online car branding, which is starting to be widely used by companies in Indonesia for advertising media. Although advertising channels such as television, newspapers, magazines, tabloids, billboards, billboards and so on are still used by many companies as an advertising medium, online car branding offers a new breakthrough by utilizing technology to provide added value to companies that advertise. Online car branding is done by attaching a non-permanent sticker of a certain product to the body of the car used by driving to reach a certain distance in an area.

Online car branding offers the advertising company an effective and efficient advertising option. In accordance with the characteristics of the advertising display, we can compare online car branding with advertisements on billboards. When compared to billboards, online car branding offers much cheaper prices with a much wider level of visibility due to its dynamic nature. This is different from billboards which are static in certain strategic places in an area so that the visibility of the advertisements displayed is limited to people passing through the area where the billboard is located. In addition, when advertising through billboards, the number of target markets who see our advertisements cannot be known quantitatively because so far there is no tool to measure this. However, online car branding using GPS technology (Global Positioning System) and other software can measure the effectiveness of advertisements. Advertisers can monitor the performance of ads in real-time on the smartphone monitor screen to find out where the car is moving, how many kilometers the car has run, how many times the ad is seen by the target market (impression), and how much advertising costs at that time must be spent by the company. displayed in full. In fact, with the development of increasingly sophisticated technology, online car branding has developed in such a way by not only placing advertisements with stickers on the car body but also using LED monitors like a videtron which can display visualization of advertisements that change according to the wishes of the advertiser.

In Indonesia, the development of online car branding cannot be separated from the development of online transportation in Indonesia, especially the types of cars. With a relatively promising profit sharing, many partners of online transportation also use their cars as car branding for certain products. The new style of advertising in Indonesia using online car branding is likely to undergo significant development and could become an industry that promises to be profitable. In addition, through the use of technology, the benefits of advertising are not only enjoyed by advertising agency companies, but can also be enjoyed by everyone who owns a vehicle and seizes these opportunities. In addition, online car branding can be an alternative solution for beginner business people as an effective, broad impact, measurable advertising place at a relatively affordable price.

Author: Abu Amar Fauzi, SS., MM.