‘The year in numbers’ provides a detailed overview of car brands’ performance in Europe — online and offline — during the past twelve months. Using a wealth of digital, campaign and sales data, this section provides a set of key performance indicators against which car brands can benchmark their own progress.

Since the spectacular rise and fall of automotive online retailers during the dot-com boom, the received wisdom within the industry has been that buying a car online remains a bridge too far for many — however comfortable they may have become with the digital world and the online purchase of other goods and services.

In a typical month in the UK we see as many as 315 Million automotive consumers visit car brand websites and their dedicated You-Tube channels and Facebook pages. For the ‘Big 5’ European car markets as a whole, this audience of automotive consumers is approaching 935 million.