A new report from Autotrader, completed by Perficient using Clarivoy data, has revealed a critical issue in automotive sales tracking. According to the whitepaper, “From Click to Car Sale: How Multi-Touch Attribution Improves Marketing Measurement for Auto Dealers,” a staggering 92 percent of car sales were untraceable in dealership CRM systems, exposing significant inefficiencies in current attribution methods.
The study underscores a disconnect in the car-buying process, where complex consumer journeys are rarely reflected in the data dealerships rely on. From a dataset covering 875,000 sales, only eight percent could be tied to traditional lead metrics such as inquiries or form submissions. The majority of buyers did not engage in activities dealers typically trace, such as calls or chats, yet they still made purchases. This gap has wide implications for both sales strategies and advertising effectiveness.
“Paid search, organic search and third-party marketplaces pose the biggest blind spots for dealers, yet according to our data, digital channels, especially marketplaces like Autotrader, consistently play a meaningful role in most customer journeys,” said Jade Terreberry, senior director of strategic planning at Cox Automotive. “Multi-touch attribution analysis confirms that this apparent lack of information among dealers who rely solely on one-touch attribution or lead tracking isn’t just perception—it’s reality.”
The Complexity of the Buyer Journey
According to Cox Automotive, today’s typical car buyer spends 95 days in the market, interacts with an average of 62 touchpoints, and uses as many as four distinct channels during the shopping process. However, most dealerships record only the last touchpoint, typically the dealer website, as the lead source. Known as last-touch attribution, this approach overlooks the broader path buyers take, including visits to marketplaces, paid search ads, and third-party reviews.
Failure to acknowledge all touchpoints creates underfunded channels and wastes advertising budgets. Marketplaces like Autotrader, for instance, were found to influence 55 percent of car sales in Clarivoy’s dataset, more than 2.5 times higher than the 21 percent dealers attributed to them under last-touch models. This scenario demonstrates how outdated tracking methods undervalue high-performing channels, leading dealers to allocate their advertising investments ineffectively.
Multi-Touch Attribution as the Solution
Multi-touch attribution (MTA), the methodology most highlighted in the whitepaper, provides a more holistic view of the customer journey by attributing value to every interaction along the way. Advanced models like U-shaped or machine-learning-based attribution allow dealerships to understand the proportionate influence of first, middle, and last interactions on a sale. This insight is vital when earlier actions, such as seeing a car ad on social media or browsing a marketplace listing, play a crucial role in shaping buyer decision-making.
“To stay competitive, dealers need to rethink how ROI is measured,” said Terreberry. “With multi-touch attribution, they can shift focus from lead quantity to lead quality—and tailor weighted engagement formula models that reflect their unique customers, markets, and close rates, ultimately driving more profitable outcomes.”
By replacing traditional key performance indicators (KPIs) like cost per lead with weighted engagement formulas, dealers gain a clearer view of the impact of their marketing strategies. Engagement activities such as walk-ins, chats, or even retargeted ads can be quantified and normalized, giving weight to higher conversion behaviors.
For example, only 14 percent of buyers begin their journeys on a dealership website, whereas 48 percent start on a third-party marketplace and 23 percent on a search engine. This underscores the importance of investing in a well-rounded marketing approach rather than overly focusing on end-stage lead submissions.
Unlocking Competitive Advantages
Perficient’s analysis provides dealerships with actionable insights, enabling smarter ad spend allocation based on what genuinely drives sales. For instance, the data suggest that marketplaces and search engines should receive greater attention, as these channels are essential in the early stages of the customer journey. Insights like these allow dealerships to identify inefficiencies in their budgets and reallocate those resources more effectively.
Autotrader has carried out pilot tests to demonstrate the real-world benefits of MTA. By crediting every relevant interaction in a customer’s buying cycle, the analysis helped participating dealers surface “hidden impact” that would otherwise go unnoticed. The findings not only reaffirmed the utility of marketplaces in influencing buyer decisions but also unearthed new ROI opportunities across digital channels.
Shaping the Future of Dealership Success
As digital shopping continues to transform the automotive landscape, the need for dealerships to adopt modern measurement models becomes increasingly urgent. Multi-touch attribution paired with weighted engagement promises a better understanding of consumer behavior, allowing dealers to make data-informed decisions that go beyond metrics like lead volume.
Dealers who still base their strategies on one-touch attribution are losing out on valuable insights and sales opportunities. With tools like multi-touch attribution and weighted engagement, the industry can finally close the visibility gaps, bringing smarter, more profitable investments into focus.
For a deeper exploration into these findings the full whitepaper is available on Autotrader’s website.
Digital Dealer Conference & Expo is coming to Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, NV this October 14-15! Register today and see great exhibitors like Cox Automotive at Booth #503.
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