Cox Automotive, the world's largest automotive services and technology provider, announces new applications of the company's unique first-party data assets combined with the industry's only true omnichannel car buying experience. The result – car buyers can now search for vehicles, comparison shop inventory, determine what they can afford, and sign their deal all in one connected marketplace, creating a consistent path to every type of purchase.

Research reveals more buyers are moving towards an omnichannel shopping experience – a mix of in-person and online activities – that are seamless and keep deal terms consistent from search to signature. In September, Cox introduced the industry's only true omnichannel experience, Retail360, that for the first time seamlessly moves data across solutions from Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, vAuto, VinSolutions and Xtime.

New data insights expand audience reach and improve experience
Autotrader, with Kelley Blue Book and Dealer.com, creates an omnichannel automotive marketplace that attracted an impressive ~27,742,000 unique visitors in August 2024 according to ComScore Key Measures Report, August 2024. This is a significant 35 percent lead over its nearest competitor, which attracted 18,115,000 unique visitors in that same time. Combined, Cox Automotive's marketplace gets approximately 88 million online leads from consumers. Nearly 42 percent of the high-quality consumer leads include valuable personal deal data from the Kelley Blue Book^® My Wallet tool that can unlock important details to deal success. (Source: Cox Automotive Data July/August 2024)

Combining predictive insights into this consistent, powerful omnichannel marketplace in new ways can help dealers expand audience reach and speed up the sales cycle to improve car buying and selling experiences for consumers and for dealership staff alike. Dealers offering an omnichannel approach see their leads close with a 2X higher closing rate compared to other leads (from 8.9% to 22.2%). By introducing shoppers to F&l products earlier in the sales process, early adopters of Deal Central are seeing an increase in back-end gross profits of 10% compared to other leads. (Median Back Gross of $1,108) (Source: Cox Automotive Data 2024 from early adopters - excludes Bad leads, Service leads and Parts leads. VinSolutions dealers active on Deal Central 3/1/23-6/1/24 only.)

"Car buyers are very clear about the deal they want, and they are thrilled when their path to purchase and deal consistency never breaks, slows down or gets backed up," said Jessica Stafford, SVP of Consumer Solutions at Cox Automotive. "Cox Automotive is making that happen through the time savings and consistency inherent in Retail360, creating one supercharged marketplace, to extend audience reach and provide a more satisfying experience, just when dealers need it most to finish the year strong."

Intelligent Market Extension Matches Supply with Demand
Intelligent Market Extension uses Cox Automotive's proprietary first-party data to place a dealer's most relevant inventory automatically and dynamically in front of the right shoppers in the most favorable markets by matching the areas of strongest consumer demand area the dealer's listed supply. This gives dealers flexibility over how many vehicles to promote and provides individualized DMA recommendations based on inventory.

IME taps into new markets to reach more consumers and allows dealers to place their most relevant inventory automatically in front of the right shoppers in the right DMA at the right time. Dealer clients using an earlier iteration of Market Extension have seen a 79% increase in Vehicle Detail Page views per month on average. (Source: Cox Automotive Supply and Demand Power BI report, January - August 2023) Dealers using these types of distance retailing tools have also seen a 22 percent increase in closed leads. (Source: Cox Automotive Pixall Data: Jan - Dec 2023)

"Advances in data science have allowed us to use our popularity and resulting consumer data to enhance both the shopper experience and empower the dealership simultaneously," said Stafford. "Buyers can now explore inventory, access detailed information, and complete transactions with transparent pricing throughout each step—all within the same familiar marketplace they trust. This gives dealership staff real-time visibility into leads, performance metrics, and transaction status, so they can customize options and tailor their listings to optimize results."