Autotrader Finds Dealers Miss Key Sales and Wasted Ad Budgets with 92% of Vehicle Sales Untraceable

ATLANTA, July 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Autotrader, a Cox Automotive brand, reports new findings from Perficient fueled by Clarivoy data on the limitations of current sales tracking in dealerships in its latest white paper, "From Click to Car Sale: How Multi-Touch Attribution Improves Marketing Measurement for Auto Dealers". According to Clarivoy data, in a sample set of 875k automotive sales, only 8% were traceable in CRM, which means 92% were people who never submitted an inquiry that resulted in a lead.

Today's car shoppers navigate a complex buyer journey more than ever before, and many dealers still only track the last channel a customer engaged with, such as a dealer's website, as the lead source, known as last-touch attribution. In fact, the average number of touchpoints in a buyer's journey is 62, and with the average dealerships only tracking 2, findings revealed they are only capturing 3.5% of actual touchpoints, leaving a significant number of sales opportunities on the table that could have played a more influential role in the sales process, and possibly sooner.

Key metrics uncovered include:

• 92% of marketplace-assisted sales were not traceable in CRM systems.
• 48% of car shoppers start their search on a marketplace, 23% visited a search engine first and only 14% reported a dealer website as their first stop.
• Eight out of 10 shoppers interacted with a third-party site in the buyer journey.
• The average car buyer uses four distinct channels during the shopping process.

Multi-touch attribution addresses this problem, giving the dealer the ability to see all the places or touchpoints where their customer engages with their advertising before making a purchase. When paired with a weighted engagement formula, it helps dealers move beyond lead volume by turning all types of shopper activity into a single, comparable metric tied to sales potential, making them more likely to close. This more granular picture of the customer's behavior enables dealers to understand which marketing efforts exert the most influence and how customers are really finding their dealership.

"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."

In a test, Autotrader has helped a set of dealers explore how multi-touch attribution surfaces hidden impact. By crediting every relevant interaction in the journey, Autotrader was found to influence 55% of sales—more than 2.5x as many as indicated by one-touch measurements.

"Cox's data shows the average car buyer spends 95 days in market, interacting with dozens of channels and tools, before making a purchase," added Terreberry. "To stay competitive, dealers need to rethink how ROI is measured. 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."

For more insights about multi-touch attribution and what the full car buyer journey reveals about marketplaces, download the white paper from Perficient and fueled by Clarivoy data at https://b2b.autotrader.com/perficientwhitepaper2025marketingmeasurement/.

About Autotrader 
Autotrader is the most recognized third-party car listings brand, with the most engaged audience of in-market car shoppers. As the foremost authority on automotive consumer insights and expert in online and mobile marketing, Autotrader makes the car shopping experience easy and fun for today's empowered car shopper looking to find or sell the perfect new, used or Certified Pre-Owned car. Using technology, shopper insights and local market guidance, Autotrader's comprehensive marketing and retailing solutions allow consumers to build their deal online, and guide dealers to personalized digital marketing strategies that grow brand, drive traffic and connect the online and in-store shopping experience. Autotrader is a Cox Automotive™ brand. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. For more information, please visit http://press.autotrader.com.

About Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive is the world's largest automotive services and technology provider. Fueled by the largest breadth of first-party data fed by 2.3 billion online interactions a year, Cox Automotive tailors leading solutions for car shoppers, auto manufacturers, dealers, lenders and fleets. The company has 29,000+ employees on five continents and a portfolio of industry-leading brands that include Autotrader®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, vAuto®, Dealertrack®, NextGear Capital™, CentralDispatch® and FleetNet America®. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately owned, Atlanta-based company with $23 billion in annual revenue. Visit coxautoinc.com or connect via @CoxAutomotive on X, CoxAutoInc on Facebook or Cox-Automotive-Inc on LinkedIn.

SOURCE Autotrader