Advertising & Media

NADA puts average dealership advertising at $739 per new vehicle sold in 2025, or $586,246 per store. The biggest shares went to search engine marketing (21.1%), third-party listing sites (20.0%) and website and SEO work (19.5%), followed by social (14.2%), TV (10.5%) and radio (6.9%). Treat these as context, not a target: divide your full monthly spend, including listing sites and agency fees, by retail units sold, then track that number by channel over time.

Sources: nada.org

Dealers and agencies on forums report good VDP traffic from them, but results depend on a clean inventory feed. Vehicle ads show a car's photo, make, model, price and mileage and run from a vehicle feed in Merchant Center linked to your store locations; since May 2026 they can also run in Standard Shopping campaigns with manual budgets and bids, not only Performance Max. Since mid-April 2026 Merchant Center has flagged feed problems on its account issues page, and vehicles whose price, mileage, condition, VIN or availability does not match the VDP are disapproved. If you stay in Performance Max, ask for Google's channel performance report, which shows cost and results by channel and can be segmented to ads using your vehicle feed.

Sources: support.google.com, support.google.com, ppc.land

Listing sites took 20.0% of the average franchised dealer's 2025 ad budget, $117,249 per store, close to the 21.1% spent on search, per NADA. Google's vehicle ads policy also lets aggregators upload vehicles from licensed dealers, so a marketplace may be advertising your inventory in the same results as your own ads. Match each site's leads and calls to sold deals in your DMS and compare cost per sale by site each month, not cost per lead.

Sources: nada.org, support.google.com

Streaming reached 49.0% of US TV viewing in July 2026, so a TV plan built only on broadcast and cable misses a large share of viewing time. CTV seldom produces direct clicks, because the response usually happens later on a phone or laptop, and attribution depends on matching IP addresses or device IDs. The most convincing proof is a holdout: run CTV in some ZIP codes or weeks and not others, then compare leads, store visits and sales between the two.

Sources: nielsen.com, adexchanger.com

Under Media Rating Council definitions, CTV means ads on a TV screen, while OTT is a broader content label that can include phones and laptops, so an OTT line item may not be TV at all. Ask for impressions split by device type, the list of apps and channels, frequency per household, and invalid-traffic rates from an independent verification company. DoubleVerify's 2026 data showed fraud near 9% in unprotected CTV campaigns versus under 1% with controls, and it found bot traffic even in some direct deals.

Sources: adexchanger.com, doubleverify.com

Co-op funds are generally use-it-or-lose-it within each program period, and every OEM sets its own rules on pre-approval, eligible channels, approved vendors and claim paperwork, which change often. Dealers on forums say some programs only reimburse when ads point to OEM-approved sites or run through certified vendors, which can conflict with what performs best. Have one person reconcile accruals, claims and denials every month against your OEM's current guide, and weigh each reimbursement against the channel's cost per sale rather than chasing the credit alone.

Sources: coxautoinc.com, digitaldealer.com

Supply is rising: CDK data points to more than 300,000 EV lease returns in 2026, mostly two- to three-year-old cars with about 25,000 miles, many still under battery warranty. Cox Automotive reported 44,350 used EV sales in August 2026, up 14.7% from a year earlier, at an average listing price of $37,441, with days' supply at 42, even with gas vehicles. The federal used EV credit ended for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025, so the VDP has to sell value on its own: show battery and warranty details, price to your local market, and train staff to answer charging questions.

Sources: cbtnews.com, cbtnews.com, irs.gov

Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2026 found 81% of Americans 12 and older listened to online audio in the past month, and monthly listening among those 55 and older rose from 52% in 2024 to 70% in 2026. Radio still took 6.9% of the average dealer's 2025 ad budget, per NADA. Test streaming audio with its own call tracking number or landing page, run it long enough to compare cost per sold unit against your radio buy, and include a pause period to see what changes when it stops.

Sources: edisonresearch.com, nada.org