CarGurus said Thursday it is teaming up with vAuto, Clarivoy and Vistadash to give its dealer customers a bit more attribution insight into how their vehicles are performing on the online auto marketplace. 

By integrating with these analytics platforms, the company is aiming to give dealers a better view into the journey car shoppers take on the CarGurus platform before eventually arriving at their store.

“Attribution is a difficult puzzle for dealerships to solve, and these partnerships enable us to provide our dealer customers with a better understanding into the digital paths shoppers take to arrive at their stores,” CarGurus senior vice president of business development Marty Blue said in a news release.

“CarGurus is committed to providing transparency to dealers, and we look forward to offering them additional avenues to gain better visibility into their digital marketing investments,” Blue said.

Blue will be among the scores of speakers at Used Car Week next week. Her session, titled “Today's Car Buyers – What the Data Says and How You Need to Adapt,” will dive to car shopper expectations during research, ways dealers can adapt to changing buyers and what shoppers value most in a dealership. 

It is set for 11 a.m. (MDT) on Wednesday at Used Car Week, which is being held Monday through Friday at the Westin Kierland in Scottsdale, Ariz.

 'Justify their ROI' 

In an emailed Q&A, Auto Remarketing asked Blue what attracted CarGurus to the trio of companies. She said: “Those companies are trying to help dealers understand how their marketing investments are performing, and we want to help them have access to data that allows dealers to justify their ROI.”

Recently, CarGurus had allowed third-party analytics companies access to its application programming interface. The integrations with vAuto, Clarivoy and Vistadash gave dealers more comprehensive information into their respective inventories’ performances on CarGurus, with more than 6,000 stores taking advantage in the initial go-round.

Those dealers are getting more information on how many shoppers are viewing their cars on CarGurus and how many customers are then going to their stores afterward.

“Today’s primary showroom for dealers is online, and dealers need to know how often buyers are looking for and shopping their inventory across all third-party platforms and websites our clients are using,” vAuto senior vice president and general manager Randy Kobat said in a news release.

“Our integration with CarGurus enhances our ability to help vAuto dealers assess and track their online listing performance and use these insights to make better-informed merchandising and pricing decisions,” he said.

A Better View

Transparency has been a strong focus for CarGurus, Blue said in the Q&A, and the company has provided this kind of information through its own dashboard. But these partnerships give dealers a view of how CarGurus compares to similar platforms.

“CarGurus has always believed in transparency, this data has always been available through our own dashboard,” Blue said. “However, not all dealers use just our dashboard, and these partnerships give dealers the ability to see how CarGurus is performing when compared to other third-party sites.”

In emailed comments, Clarivoy chief executive Steve White said ROI for dealers needs to be shown through more than “vanity metrics,” and this partnership gives them some of that proof.

“They need real proof of what is working, which doesn’t happen without making the necessary investments in attribution. Our integration with CarGurus helps dealerships connect the dots from online traffic to the ready-to-buy shoppers in their stores," White said. "We are excited about this partnership and look forward to providing more ways for dealerships to get independent validation that they are getting solid returns on their investments."

 Vistadash president Dan Moore added: “We are excited to be collaborating with CarGurus on providing more transparency to dealers. With this partnership we are able to provide CarGurus metrics in Vistadash to give dealers a complete view of their marketing investments.”