COLUMBUS, Ohio — Dealer marketing solutions provider Clarivoy announced the results of an industrywide study designed to better understand the current state and usage of marketing measurement in the retail automotive industry.

“Things have changed considerably with the state of marketing measurement and we wanted to know how dealers are adapting to new measurement tools like multitouch attribution,” said Steve White, CEO of Clarivoy. “So, in April 2017, we decided to ask and surveyed approximately 120 dealers for our State of Automotive Attribution study.”

Among other results, the survey found most dealers feel accurate measurement of their marketing campaigns is important. Most rely on in-house reporting (68%) and/or vendor reporting (64%). However, a key point in this survey is that only 30% of dealers report being satisfied with how they currently measure their data.

“Out of the many reports dealers use, each puts emphasis on different metrics and different attribution models. This leads to a confusing mess of data forcing dealers to, in a way, compare apples to oranges,” White said.

In response to the question, “Which vendor categories need the most blind faith as to if they are working?,” 40% of dealers chose display ads, followed by third-party listing sites at 38%.

White described the predilection toward display ads as “a little curious,” noting they should be easy to measure. “However, the third-party listing site answer is not that surprising. The actions a consumer takes following a visit to a third-party listing site and viewing a vehicle of interest can vary over an entire spectrum of possibilities. … And, more often than not, attribution depends on proper sourcing by the salesperson or last-click attribution models — both of which have huge gaps in accuracy.”

As far as what dealers want from an attribution tool, 46% would like a multitouch attribution solution. They believe last-click is unreliable for reporting accurate sources and what really influenced the sale. When asked what their ideal attribution solution should include, 59% stated the ROI contribution of each marketing channel, 57% replied that they want analytics that deliver actionable insights; 48% want a transparent view of a customer’s full purchase path and 41% desire reporting accountability and accuracy.

In response to the question, “How knowledgeable are you about marketing attribution?,” 30% think attribution and analytics are important, but don’t know where to begin, and 20% do not know anything about marketing attribution. Overall, 68% of dealers aren’t effectively using, or are failing to use any type of marketing attribution to measure the results of their advertising.

“This is a glaring hole and effectively makes measuring marketing efforts and spending a guessing game,” said White.

To read the full results of the Clarivoy study, click here.