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The latest automotive industry news and insights to fuel your growth.

The Rise of the Super Platform

Facebook and Amazon will command nearly 25 percent of all digital advertising dollars spent in 2018.[i] These two brands are more than powerful advertising destinations. They are super platforms, or self-contained universes offering businesses – including automotive dealerships — a vast audience and tools to reach them. The rise of super platforms is an example […]

How Personalization Is Changing Automotive Shopping

Automotive dealerships are now trying to please consumers whose expectations for a great customer experience are set on non-automotive sites such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and Tinder. These online destinations have successfully responded to a new breed of consumer who demands a more personalized shopping experience. They’ve flourished in part by using machine learning to […]

Is Your Dealership Ready for a Voice-First World?

The battle for the voice-first experience in automotive is heating up. Recently both Amazon and Google made the news for making breakthroughs with voice-guided navigation and information systems in the automobile, underscoring how dealerships need to stay abreast of rapidly evolving voice-based technology: Amazon launches Echo Auto. For $50, car owners will soon be able […]

How Ride Sharing Is Changing Automotive Dealerships

For auto dealerships, change does not hit in waves — it’s an everyday reality that can help or harm you depending on your adaptability. In coming days on the Grow with Cars blog, we are going to discuss some of the catalysts of ongoing change. Today let’s look at one of the most talked about […]

Cars.com August 2018 and Labor Day Weekend On-the-Lot Report Analysis

For the first eight months of 2018, visits to dealer showrooms from mobile shoppers increased by 13 percent. That’s one of the take-aways from the Cars.com August On-the-Lot report. As we have done each month with our On-the-Lot reports, we used our patented Lot Insights technology to study data from shoppers who use their mobile […]

Three Ways Dealers Can Close the Year Strong

It’s make-or-break time for automotive retailers. U.S. automakers reported that the average selling price of a new car is increasing based on August auto sales, but the demand for passenger cars is dropping, and as the industry approaches the fourth quarter, clouds are on the horizon in the form of expected higher interest rates and […]

Amazon Puts Automotive at the Center of a Voice-First World

Amazon recently showed that automotive is leading the way to a voice-first world. On August 9, Amazon announced the launch of Alexa Auto Software Development Kit (SDK), which makes it easier for software developers to integrate Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa, into vehicles. As a result, automakers can integrate Alexa to perform more tasks through hands-free […]

Three Ways to Prepare Your Digital Brand for Labor Day Weekend

Is your digital brand ready for Labor Day weekend? This year’s Labor Day sales might attract more shoppers than usual if the threat of auto tariffs creates a spike in searches for new cars to buy. As shoppers gear up for the big weekend, they’re visiting nearly 20 digital touchpoints, such as your website, digital […]

The Untapped Source for Attribution Learnings: Customer Reviews

Understanding the factors that influence a customer’s purchase decision is such a thorny issue that our industry devotes an entire conference focused solely on analytics and attribution. Dealerships continue to invest in tools that provide only a partial view of how and why a customer purchased a vehicle. To get a more complete picture of […]

Cars.com July 2018 On-the-Lot Report Cross-Shopping Analysis

Which automotive brands do Cars.com mobile consumers visit the most? Which ones do they cross-shop while they are on someone else’s lot? Cars.com tracks the answer by applying our patented On-the-Lot technology. For our July report, Toyota and BMW emerged as the most visited non-luxury and luxury brands. Nissan and Cadillac were the most cross-shopped […]

How to Humanize Your Dealership with Video

The automotive industry spends more on video to build our brands than any other industry except travel – even more than media and entertainment.[i] The heavy spend, though, makes it harder for a dealership to set itself apart amid a sea of video content. Here’s one way to do so: share your brand through people, […]

Cars.com Launches a New Way to Shop for Cars

Today Cars.com announced a fundamental change to our site that re-imagines the car shopping experience. The new Cars.com Matchmaking Experience uses machine learning to give consumers personalized vehicle recommendations based on their lifestyle preferences. The more Cars.com learns about a person’s interests, the smarter and more personal the recommendations become. As a result, Cars.com sends […]

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