COLUMBUS, Ohio — Clarivoy has released the results of a lead attribution study that was announced in March and ultimately included more than 100 Cars.com dealer customers. According to the initial findings, dealers using Google Analytics are now able to accurately attribute the value of third-party sites.

The study was essentially a trial run of Clarivoy’s Multi-Touch Attribution solution, which was designed to help dealers understand how all their digital marketing investment efforts — not just the last click or interaction — influence the car-buying journey.

The initial use of Clarivoy’s solution revealed that Google Analytics misses the cost-effective conversion value of sites such as Cars.com. For instance, on average, dealers who implemented the multitouch attribution solution saw conversions on their sites attributed to Cars.com increase by 37% with a 20% decrease in cost after two months in the trial.

The results were even more dramatic when dealers considered the conversions that occurred directly on Cars.com. The addition of Cars.com data — Cars.com leads, vehicle description pages (VDPs), and trackable walk-ins — to this multitouch attribution model allowed one dealer to identify 11,390 conversion events that happened on the Cars.com site in addition to the original 103 reported by Google Analytics.

According to Clarivoy CEO Steve White, auto dealers typically rely on Google Analytics to help them understand the impact of their advertising. However, the true value of a third-party auto site doesn’t show up in Google Analytics as it is by default set up to give all of the credit to the last click.

“Typically, what we see is a lot of third-party websites do not get the credit they deserve because in most cases the last engagement that occurs with the dealer’s website is either branded search, organic or direct traffic,” said White. “As a result, sites such as Cars.com become invisible to Google Analytics when trying to evaluate performance. Dealers needed a solution that helps them see the actual impact a partner like Cars.com really brings and the ability to compare that to their other marketing channels in one dashboard.”

To read the complete results of the Clarivoy/Cars.com study, click here.