I will have to admit that product placement works for companies selling to me.  BMW used their 745i in the first Transporter movie and just before my M5 fell out of warranty I traded it for a new 7 series.  Jason Statham trades his BMW for an Audi in the second installment of the Transporter and I it has caused me to start considering the Audi for my next ride.  So what?  Audi figured out a way to get ‘way’ more bang for their buck by using blogs to get their message out.

Brian Clark, CEO of GMD Studios (Audi’s ad agency), indicated that almost a third of the traffic to Audi most recent A3 compaign was generated by advertising on various blogs.  The most interesting thing Brian revealed was that these advertisments only took one half of one percent of the budget.  McKinney + Silver and Adrants indicated:

"The media cost of the entire blog ad buy was less than the cost for one ad on a mainstream site such as Yahoo!" Of course "one banner ad on a mainstream site such as Yahoo" is a nebulous statement at best, however, again 29 percent of traffic to an A3 promotional website came from one half of one percent of the budget.  Shall we say it again?

[via Adrants and Hyku]