Clarivoy’s Attribution API helps CarSoup.com Show Auto Dealers how it’s Helping them Sell More Cars

Columbus, OH, June 25, 2018 – Clarivoy, a pioneer and leader in automotive marketing attribution, today announced that CarSoup.com has embedded Clarivoy’s multi-touch attribution technology into its website, which ensures proper credit is attributed to those marketing sources that influenced the customer’s vehicle purchase. Now CarSoup.com dealers will gain a more holistic view of all the vehicle sales that CarSoup.com influenced from Clarivoy’s independent, unbiased attribution technology.

CarSoup.com is an online venue for buying, researching and selling new and used vehicles with 6 million vehicles listed nationally from over 20,000 dealers and thousands of private sellers.

Clarivoy’s Attribution API software will help CarSoup.com dealers by using “Any-Touch” attribution. Any-Touch attribution makes sure proper credit is attributed to those marketing sources which influenced the customer’s vehicle purchase, whether first, last, or somewhere in the middle, finally getting away from the dated last-click attribution models plaguing the industry.

“We are very excited about this partnership with Clarivoy. With Clarivoy’s new Attribution API, we can finally show performance according to the amount of sold vehicles that have CarSoup.com in the buyer’s purchase journey. Dealer’s will no longer be reliant on salespeople to properly source where a buyer came from. This enables us to consult with our dealers and provide data they can trust. As a result, our dealers know they are spending their marketing budget in the right place; thus, we can truly prove our value,” said Brian Bowman, President of CarSoup.com.

According to Steve White, Clarivoy CEO, in the eyes of a dealer, the value of a third-party auto vendor, marketing agency or website provider is reduced to one thing: Leads. Since most visitors to a dealer’s website or third-party site are unidentifiable, 95 percent of the value of that vendor or marketing partner is lost. “Unless you are the first or last touch in the CRM, you probably aren’t getting credit from the dealer. Even if you do get credit, it’s only for leads you delivered and NOT for anonymous shoppers that result in sales. Dealers and third-party auto vendors receive millions of unique web visitors per month, and yet less than five percent identify themselves. Who are the other 95 percent, and did they purchase a vehicle? By partnering with us, CarSoup.com can now truly show dealers their real performance,” said White.

Clarivoy’s Attribution API software gives dealers, vendors and marketing agencies visibility into the total number of cars each vendor and marketing source are responsible for influencing monthly.  It provides continuous confidence in the value of the vendor’s offering to the dealer through an independent, trusted voice.

Clarivoy’s Identity Graph fuels the new API technology and is created using proprietary technology that can match a person to multiple devices across multiple channels. The Attribution API software delivers monthly attributable sales to Clarivoy’s growing Attribution API partners and is very simple to set up. All that is required is the installation of Clarivoy’s tracking code on all relevant website properties. Clarivoy then works with dealers to obtain sales data and deterministically matches the sales file with leads and vendor website traffic to show the vendors’ true impact on vehicle sales.

“Our Attribution API software provides dealers with monthly visibility into the total number of vehicles sales that our Attribution API partners influenced each month. This will allow CarSoup.com, armed with more data, to consult with their dealers to improve their results,” said White.

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com

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About CarSoup.com.com (http://www.CarSoup.com.com)

CarSoup.com is an online venue for buying, researching and selling new and used vehicles with 6 million vehicles listed nationally from over 21,000 dealers and thousands of private sellers.

About Clarivoy:

Clarivoy is a marketing technology firm specializing in unified, unbiased business intelligence. Their measurement and identity solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s attribution software was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers superior visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline. Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com.

In the old days, if consumers wanted to buy a product or find specials, they turned to the Sunday paper, the radio, or simply visited their local store. Then, the Internet appeared, and everything changed. It became incredibly easy for consumers to find information and, at the same time, gave marketers more ways to push their messages to consumers. But now it seems as if we may be amid a new trend – voice search.

The two leaders in voice assistants are Amazon, with its Echo line, and Google, with its Home devices. A recent article in Forbes solidifies this upward trend in consumer use, focusing mostly on Amazon’s Echo, and how consumers are using it.

In a study of 39,000 Amazon Echo users, it was found that Echo owners spend more per year than non-Echo owners and purchase items more often. In fact, once consumers purchase an Amazon Echo their spending on Amazon jumps 29 percent. Not too shabby! While this is great for Amazon, other retailers are more guarded in their participation, since Amazon typically only pushes Amazon products.

Google, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Google Home may not have been first, but it’s catching up. And it is more attractive to retailers since, well, Google isn’t a retailer. According to the Forbes article, Google recently surpassed Amazon’s Echo in quarterly sales for the first time ever. While consumers can still do searches on Amazon’s Echo, Google’s knowledge-base is far larger; and their technology is designed to help consumers find what they want, when they want it, whether that be information or retail products.

Why does any of this matter to car dealers? Well, voice assistants aren’t going away. In fact, manufacturers recently began integrating Amazon Echo and Google technology into vehicles.

And then Google recently partnered with one dealership, Paragon Honda, to develop technology that makes it easier for consumers to communicate with the dealership. Consumers will eventually be able to schedule service appointments and pick-up and delivery through Google Home, without ever having to call the dealership.

In January, I wrote a blog about the future of marketing and autonomous vehicles that discusses the opportunities for marketers to get their messages in front of consumers who aren’t doing anything but riding in a vehicle. If voice assistants continue to grow in popularity, it’s inevitable that Google will figure out how to integrate marketing messages into their voice assistants – and, of course, create additional revenue.

It is even possible that, rather than using computers for a simple Google search, consumers will shift towards using voice assistants instead. This, of course, could put a dent in PPC revenue for Google that can only be recovered through integrating marketing into Google Home.

Amazon created two products that could be perfect at this – Amazon Echo Show and Amazon Echo Spot. Like the Echo itself, both are effective as voice assistants. And, they also recognize when a person is walking by and display messaging on their screens. Currently, these messages are about news, trending videos, weather, etc. But, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t easily become advertisements. AND, if a customer chooses to watch news via their Amazon device, advertisements could easily be included. Then that “click” that was once done with a computer, suddenly becomes a voice prompt from the customer.

In our technology-filled world, as a marketer you must keep on top of new technologies and think about all future possibilities, so you can capitalize on them once they appear. We can already write a book purely using voice dictation software. Is it an impossible thought that voice assistants will eventually create marketing opportunities?

For decades, advertising enjoyed a fairly predictable business. Print, radio, and TV coalesced into a three-pronged approach that was mastered after decades of relative stability. Simply put, if a vendor demonstrated expertise, then clients willingly trusted them, generation after generation. Then the Internet happened.

The ones and zeros that began streaming through our phone lines created a reverberating disruption to media that is still being felt wirelessly today. From video pre-roll to dynamic targeting, to machine-readable content, advertising has been dealt an onslaught of changes. While some merged, and others went out of business, some have faced the tide, developed new capabilities and are standing tall against the emerging, digitally native competition. Or, so they’d have you think.

While there are some very talented agencies out there, the sad truth is that many advertising mediums talk the talk but do little to walk the walk. Understanding today's advertising strategies takes lots of thought and research. Nobody denies that it is complicated. Advertising vendors know that. Sure, they can speak the industry jargon, but when it comes time to spending the money and executing, the stakes are high, and it is truly a digital game of craps, some just using junior talent and white-labeled tools. Some will win, some will lose, and some of them just sing the blues.

Unfortunately, some advertising vendors can’t attract the talent to properly shift into an omni-channel media strategy. Omni-channel media is a term used to describe all forms of consumed media, from billboards to computer monitors. Outside of the mega-budget ad campaigns, the newer, digital-first strategies can nimbly navigate the ever-changing digital landscape, while simultaneously reverse-engineering traditional media deployments. Hypertargeting granular demographic and psychographic segments is a way of life. Traditional media companies are sometimes too mired in the way things were to strategically implement new media campaigns. Instead, it’s merely treated like a tactic to convert consumers to traditional marketing channels.

What clients are faced with is a watered-down version of a digitally naive strategy. Instead of developing services in-house, key pieces are outsourced. New technologies are offered, but frequently gutted of the novelty so that it can be offered to a broader client base. It often looks cookie cutter because it is. Often, the outsourced components are marked up dramatically in the process, driving up the costs for hollowed services. When it comes to offering support, some traditional vendors can do little in the way of help, other than offering to “check on it.” Nobody wins in this situation.

There are some incredibly talented agencies for you to work with. If your advertising partner starts or continues, to offer new digital services, please do your research. Discuss what metrics they track and how they obtain the data. It’s not hard for an advertiser to take a report, throw its name on it, or white-label an existing tool while charging a premium in the process. As with any vendor, find out who some of the other clients (similar to the size and composition of your dealership) are, to get a better indication of performance for yourself. It’s not that your existing vendor can’t do these things. It's a matter of them offering these services overnight.

While the stability of traditional advertising channels has created a foundation for lasting partnerships, today’s technology requires vendors to get smarter and faster. While it’s easy for a vendor to say they offer enhanced product offerings, it’s much harder to actually make these offerings successful. Make sure your vendor is adding the talent, training, tools, resources and technology to demonstrate that they are fully committed to a digital strategy.

What’s more important: maintaining your vendor relationship or reaching new and existing customers as their media consumption changes?

At the recent 2018 F8 Developers Conference, Facebook introduced Facebook Journeys, a new enhancement to their Analytics, which will reportedly give businesses an omni-channel view of the customer journey from introduction to purchase… but does it?

In their session, Facebook gave an example of a consumer (one of the speakers) who shared her journey towards buying a pair of boots. She explained how she jumped around before finally making that purchase decision. She began by explaining how she was a fan of a retail store and that, at some point, liked their Facebook page. She was served up an ad for boots that attracted her and went to their website (on her mobile device) to read reviews. While viewing the website on her smartphone she was prompted to install their app (which she did) and then proceeded to browse their site via the app. After some debate she finally decided to buy the boots, but the mobile site didn’t support mobile payments and she didn’t want to input her credit card information at that moment. So, she made a mental note to purchase them later. After a few days, she went to their website via her desktop computer and purchased the boots.

The message Facebook was attempting to convey with this story is that most analytics focus solely on desktop interactions and the corresponding conversion, ignoring all previous interactions. While this is true, it’s not really the omni-channel marketing they claim. Why? Because true omni-channel marketing attribution would extend far beyond the sources that Facebook Journeys tracks. Facebook Journeys only includes website visitors (if a business has the Facebook pixel installed properly), app installs, Facebook post, ad engagement and subsequent conversions. Here’s what report looks like:

Facebook claims that, with this data, a business can “connect the dots” between the first session and all subsequent sessions leading to the purchase, thus eliminating the “last-click” attribution most businesses (and analytics tools) use.

But how valuable is this information?

As illustrated on an individual level it might be relevant in some ways… but not in many; here’s why. Facebook Journeys is limited to interactions that happen on your website and app along with Facebook activity. The consumer may have visited 12 other retailer websites selling the same boots before returning to the initial retailer… but you wouldn’t know that. And that type of activity is practically a given when it comes to automotive shoppers.

In addition, Facebook will not show you the customer journey on an individual basis, but only in an anonymized and – most importantly – aggregated form. So, while you could get an overall idea of a SET of customers over a given time, you can’t pinpoint an individual customer’s journey.  This only allows you to identify and adjust marketing strategies based on friction points between devices… which leads me to the most important flaw in this report:

Facebook Journeys does not show you an omni-channel journey, but rather a cross-device attribution journey.

True marketing decisions should be made on a more individual level as each consumer is different – especially car shoppers. Most retailers (such as the boot retailer) have just a couple of variables: can the target demographic afford it? And, what payment methods should be provided for the customer?

when it comes to car dealers, however, there are many other variables which influence shoppers, including, but not limited to, new or used (doubt the boot retailer is selling used boots), mileage, financing, negotiation, and more. Facebook Journeys can only show friction points within a transactional journey, not the entirety of that journey. And that’s important.

The one quote from the F8 session which I find most impactful and relevant is as follows: “…smart, informed decision-making is what makes great product marketing. You really want to be able to see the whole customer experience and understand how customers are actually making their way through all of your experiences.”

Sadly, you can’t do that with Facebook Journeys.

Are you ever frustrated by the inaccurate sourcing of sales? I’m sure that most of you do everything in your power to track (as accurately as possible) the customer car buying journey from the beginning to the actual sale.

However, there are so many variables along the way that dealers often either get confused or simply give up and assign credit to the “auto mall” or “big giant gorilla,” (sarcasm intended). The sad fact is that, for the most part, the only way most dealers can measure what marketing sources are working, and which aren’t, is through the myriad of sometimes biased or incomplete reports provided by their vendors, which they must wade through; or the (incomplete) data contained within their CRM.

Well, help is on the horizon, as technology companies know about this pain point and have developed solutions that give marketers greater and more accurate insight into which marketing sources influence their consumers – and which do not.

Progressive dealers jumped on these solutions, along with the largest media company in the world – Google – who created a solution for dealers and other businesses. However, there is a BIG problem which is summed up in the phrase, “The largest media company in the world.” Do you really want the largest media company in the world telling you what is influencing your sales – can you be sure this data isn’t skewed in their favor? I bet you can’t guess who the main sales influencer will always be… GOOGLE!

Just as many dealers are cynical about the real results and credit each vendor and marketing source claims in their reports, they should also be cynical about Google. Why? Because Google takes more of your money than most other marketing solutions – whether that’s directly or indirectly through a marketing partner.

I find dealers who try solutions to help clarify what is and is not working in their marketing realm – and who pay attention and act on that data -- no more guessing, more knowing -- realize they can extend that same marketing budget and, with the right data, achieve even greater results – without spending a penny more!

But, and here’s the danger; when the magic wears off and that comfort-zone of “I FINALLY know now” slips in, sometimes marketers decide that, while the data was great, and accurate, because they have taken the necessary steps to optimize their marketing, they no longer need the solution providing the visibility/knowledge.

Wait -- That makes no sense.

That’s like deciding to stop measuring a salesperson’s performance, or the dealership’s sales numbers, or service department’s RO revenue, or upsells, or even the BDC’s appointment to show ratio; simply because you did it for a few months, it improved and then you decided you no longer need to measure it. Makes no sense, right?

The effectiveness of various marketing activities changes on a monthly, sometimes even weekly or daily basis. Something that’s performing this month may take a nosedive in days, weeks or a couple of months. Sitting on your laurels simply because you measured, analyzed and acted on data for a few months isn’t going to keep you going forward. In fact, it could easily start moving you in reverse.

Monitoring activity relative to marketing and sales is something that every business needs to do, including your dealership.

With margin compression in mind, failing to understand that measurement, analyzing data and taking action based on data insights are an ongoing, never-ending necessity can easily take a dealership back to the beginning. Resolving marketing mysteries requires a new standard. Your business performance depends on it.

Nowadays, the competition for consumer attention is fierce. Many dealers focus on attempting to do a better job than their competition when it comes to ads. But, the truth is, you aren’t only competing with other dealerships, but with every retail business which does digital marketing.

Think about it. Those consumers you send your messages to aren’t in an exclusive automotive targeted group. No, the fact is consumers all have varying interests; from their hobbies, to their online and offline purchasing habits, to any other activities that interest them; and these interests place them straight in the crosshairs of a boatload of retailers.

So, realizing that those consumers you are attempting to deliver your message to are also being targeted by every other retail sector, how do you increase the likelihood that they will notice your digital ad AND act on it?

Here are four factors to consider when creating an ad that should help increase engagement and conversion:

1.    Be Relevant – Start by knowing who will view your digital ad. “Spray and pray” techniques no longer cut it. Ensure your message is relevant to those who see it. Don’t try to make one cookie-cutter ad that appeals to your whole audience. It won’t work.

2.    Know Your Audience – Sometimes the group you think is your audience really isn’t. A classic example is a jewelry store that caters to female fashion. This jewelry store may think its targeted audience is females… and females could certainly be in there. But what about the males who so often gift jewelry to their spouses or significant others? They would also be a relevant audience.

However, you can’t have a single ad that will appeal to both demographics. The purchase motivation is very different between the two groups. The same goes for car buyers. An inexpensive economy car could have a ton of audiences, including those with modest incomes, young buyers, buyers looking for fuel economy and parents looking to buy a first car for their kids. Every one of these groups has different motivations and a boilerplate ad could never appeal to all of them. Vary your ad creative by audience and you’ll find your customer’s paying closer attention.

3.    Outside-the-Box Creativity – Most of us really don’t like seeing ads. That’s why we fast forward through commercials, toss mail in the trash without opening it and flip through magazines to the next article. Yet, there is one time per year that households huddle together in front of the television and, many times, watch simply to see the commercials – the Super Bowl! Super Bowl commercials are so appealing because they are made to be engaging, fun and entertaining. Brands bring in the big guns when it comes to creativity -- and, considering the cost of a Super Bowl ad, rightfully so.

Just because you’re not creating a Super Bowl ad doesn’t mean you can’t add some creativity into it. Don’t be afraid to be funny or outside-the-box. You’ll find that consumers respond better when your ad is different.

4.    Leverage Emotions – Engaging with your audience in a way that moves them emotionally is what can make your ad a smashing success. The basic human emotions often tapped by many of the great ad agencies are happiness, sadness, surprise and anger. Emotions are also exactly what motivates consumers to act. If you can make your audience FEEL, you have their attention, but also a better chance to earn their business. Make them laugh. Show them how your product can make them happy. Illustrate product features by tying them into real-life. People will relate, understand your message better and connect with your brand.

The key to making a digital ad that your customers love is centered around all these factors. If your message is relevant and delivered at the right time; the messaging and images targeted to the proper demographic; if it is creative and taps into your customer’s emotions; you may find that not only do they love THIS ad but start anticipating your future ones.

Marketing is an incredibly complicated and convoluted field which involves everything from direct marketing, to brand management, customer communications, social media, public relations and on and on. Whether you call the person responsible for your digital marketing efforts the “CMO,” or delegate these tasks to an Internet Manager at your dealership, the fact remains that many of you are setting them up to fail.

According to an article on CEOWorld.biz, the average lifespan of a CMO in a consumer-facing business has dropped to 3.6 years. Sadly, – at least for our industry – many probably think 3.6 years is actually pretty good.

The article’s theory is that a CMO’s job performance rating (and hence their priorities) are typically tied to a company’s growth, while their actual job responsibilities are tied mainly to marketing communications. This, then, poses two interesting possibilities: CMOs get tired of doing a set of tasks for which their performance is not judged. Or, their manager decides they are not doing a good job and lets them go.

While branding, figuring out the correct positioning for the company, and communications tasks are important to a dealership’s well-being, they tend to be extremely time consuming, leaving little room for your marketing team to focus on activities that directly drive sales.

If you're going to judge the performance of your marketing staff based on sales, make sure they have the time to focus on activities which directly drive sales. Some of these activities, such as analyzing campaign results and digging into data, may not be immediately visible to you, but are extremely important in optimizing your marketing mix to drive more sale

While most dealerships (with the exception of larger auto groups) don’t have actual CMOs, those same responsibilities still exist, as they do for any size company. In the automotive world those responsibilities often rest on an individual with a pay plan that is based on sales – which presents the same problems as above. For example, an Internet Manager tasked with many of these same marketing responsibilities, yet judged solely on their sales performance. They are sure to be chastised when these extra tasks aren’t adequately accomplished.

Take a look at your marketing and the staff to whom you have assigned various marketing responsibilities. Consider reevaluating if their pay plans are aligned with the priorities you’ve set for them.

This can help you achieve more effective marketing performance as well as increased employee engagement and performance. While the data you need to increase your marketing performance and grow your business may be there at your disposal, if nobody is focusing on it, the dealership will continuously be scrambling to keep up while losing revenue.

 New software for auto dealers, vendors and marketing agencies uses “Any-Touch” attribution to ensure correct marketing source receives credit in the customer’s purchase journey

Columbus, OH, March 12, 2018-- Clarivoy, the auto industry’s most trusted source for truth in optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns, today announced the launch of its new software which uses “Any-Touch” attribution to ensure the correct marketing source(s) receive credit during the customer’s purchase journey. Whether first, last, or somewhere in the middle, Any-Touch attribution makes sure proper credit is attributed to those marketing sources which influenced the customer’s vehicle purchase.

According to Steve White, Clarivoy CEO, dealers and third-party auto vendors receive millions of unique web visitors per month and yet less than five percent identify themselves.  “Who are the other 95 percent, and did they purchase a vehicle?” said White. “In the eyes of a dealer, the value of a third-party auto vendor, marketing agency or website provider is reduced to one thing: Leads. Since most visitors to a dealer’s website or third-party site are unidentifiable, 95 percent of the value of that vendor or marketing partner is lost.”

Clarivoy’s software gives dealers, vendors and marketing agencies visibility into the total number of vehicles each vendor and marketing source are responsible for influencing monthly. It provides continuous confidence in the value of the vendor’s offering to the dealer through an independent, trusted voice.

“Unless you are the first or last touch in the CRM, you probably aren’t getting credit from the dealer. Even if you do get credit, it’s only for leads you delivered and NOT for anonymous shoppers that result in sales. What if you could show performance according to the amount of sold vehicles that had, say, Cars.com or Autotrader in the buyer’s purchase journey, instead of just being reliant on leads? Now you can with our new product: Attribution API. It encourages the optimal product mix while simultaneously mitigating churn. This allows vendors to consult with their dealers and continually prove their value,” said White.

Clarivoy’s identity graph fuels the new API technology and is created using proprietary technology that can match a person to multiple devices across multiple channels.

The new software delivers monthly attributable sales to dealers’ dashboards and is very simple to set up. All that is required is the installation of Clarivoy’s tracking code on all relevant website properties. Clarivoy then works with dealers to obtain sales data and deterministically matches the sales file with leads and vendor website traffic to show the vendors’ true impact on vehicle sales

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com, or drop by booth #763N at the 2018 NADA Show in Las Vegas, NV, March 23-25. Or pre-schedule a meeting by clicking here:

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About Clarivoy:

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns. Their measurement and identity solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline. Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com.

Columbus, OH, March 6, 2018-- Clarivoy, the auto industry’s most trusted source for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns, today announced that it has hired Jessica Ruth, formerly Digital Program Manager at Dominion Dealer Solutions, as VP of Product.

Commenting on the new hire, Steve White, Clarivoy CEO, stated, “Jessica is a vital addition to our leadership team where she will lead product creation and management for all current and new products. These responsibilities are critical to achieving Clarivoy's strategic goal: to provide dealers with a single complete view of how people buy cars and where to get their next sale. Her experience and background make her a perfect fit as VP of Product, where she will pioneer new product development, resulting in demonstrative revenue growth, increased market share and customer adoption.”

Jessica brings more than ten years of auto industry experience to Clarivoy, successfully managing, launching and leading large software development projects. Previously she served as Digital Program Manager at Dominion Dealer Solutions, where she created new processes, products and efficiencies that led to improved customer product delivery.

Prior to that she served as Brand Manager with DealerFire, a responsive website and Digital Marketing Company that was later acquired by DealerSocket. Jessica managed brand presence across all digital platforms and secured multiple company awards each year. Earlier in her career she served as Brand Manager for DealerRefresh, a leading online community for the auto industry.

Jessica graduated from the University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism - News/Editorial.

“As I considered my next opportunity, it was important for me to join an organization that is trustworthy, progressive and rooted in their industry objectives. Clarivoy’s mission of helping dealers as an unbiased third-party provider aligned with my personal beliefs and professional goals. They are truly a dealer partner whose only interest is helping dealers succeed. I’m extremely excited to join such a great team,” Jessica stated.

Clarivoy is the automotive industry’s recognized leader at helping auto dealers discover what is really driving sales. Clarivoy provides dealers with a single, complete view of how people buy cars and where to get their next sale. Their ability to identify more customer touchpoints through Anonymous Attribution and unbiased Multi-Touch Attribution measurement solutions gives their clients an unfair competitive advantage when making marketing decisions.

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com, drop by booth #763N at the 2018 NADA Show in Las Vegas, NV, March 23-25, or pre-schedule a meeting by clicking here:

About Clarivoy:

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns. Their measurement and identity solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline. Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com.

In the digital marketing world, only a couple of things are important – deliverability and tracking. Deliverability is simple: if the customer cannot see your display ad, it’s useless. Tracking, perhaps not quite so simple, is a cookie placed on the online shopper’s computer whenever they visit a website, enabling advertisers to retarget them with ads based on their browsing history.

We’ve all enjoyed this functionality -- but is it coming to an end?

Recent actions by a couple of companies that pretty much control the Internet have raised concerns that the all-important deliverability and tracking of consumers may be in peril. If an advertiser can no longer effectively deliver relevant ads to a targeted audience, income will be dramatically reduced. In fact, digital marketing will become the casualty of war. And believe me, there is a war going on.

On one side of the battlefield is Google.  Earlier this year it announced the upcoming native introduction of ad-blockers into the Chrome browser – the most popular browser in the world. Advertisers freaked out. However, as more details emerged, advertisers calmed down and began to support the initiative.

It turns out that Google wasn’t targeting advertisers as a whole, it was simply attempting to make the Internet less annoying to consumers by reducing the types of intrusive ads users were complaining about – namely pop-ups, auto-play videos with sound, and large sticky ads consumers couldn’t close.

Of course, these annoying ads led to high-bounce rates but, at the same time, provided websites with incredible income. With over 59 percent of market-share for browser use, advertisers had a right to be nervous.

The other side of the battlefield is manned by Google’s sworn enemy, Apple. Apple and Google don’t play well. They never have. But how is Apple even a threat when Google has almost 60 percent market share? The answer is simple, the iPhone. In fact, it is so popular, that over 50 percent of cell-phone users own an iPhone. When you consider the fact that over 52 percent of web pages are visited via a mobile device, the threat becomes clear: what web browser does the iPhone use? Apple’s own Safari!

But why is that important?

Google tracks everything everyone does online. Period. They may not share it with everyone, but that doesn’t erase the fact that it happens. Apple decided to throw a wrench in their operations by implementing what it has named, “Intelligent Tracking Prevention.” In a nutshell, it prevents advertisers from using third-party cookies to track clients past the 24-hour mark. This effectively handicaps effective digital marketing retargeting and measurement strategies. All in the name of consumer privacy.

With all this going on, how can you, as a digital marketer, avoid becoming a casualty of war?

First, it is important to understand the difference between first-party cookies, which are those from your own website, and third-party cookies, those from a marketing partner’s site.

When it comes to Apple, it doesn’t limit first-party cookies – those embedded on your own website – to the 24-hour time limit (they limit to 30 days). This allows you to continue your successful retargeting and attribution strategies.

However, in dealing with Google, be sure to abide by its advice on what types of ads are intrusive and which are not, for example, pop-ups, auto-play videos with sound, and large sticky ads. According to Google, these detract from the consumer’s web browsing experience.

Check that your digital marketing partners aren’t using third-party cookies, ensure that your site follows these new rules, and you shouldn’t have a problem. If you don’t, Google will warn you and, after a period of non-compliance, will simply block all your ads. Bad thing.

My advice? Have conversations with your digital marketing vendors and analyze your own website for ads that could raise red flags with Google. In addition, ask your vendors if they use first or third-party cookies.

Bottom line: Because the vast majority of the retargeting display advertising ecosystem utilizes third-party cookies, your results will be inaccurate unless you augment tracking with a first-party cookie tracking solution.