Vendor Accountability
One standardized metric to compare every vendor. No more apples-to-oranges. No more vendor spin. Just a clear answer to the question: "Which traffic sources are actually driving car shoppers?"
See Your Engagement ScoresThe Problem
Your SEO vendor reports "organic sessions." Your SEM agency reports "clicks." Your social vendor reports "reach" and "impressions." Your VLA provider reports "shoppers sent."
They all sound great. But you can't compare them. And that's not an accident—it's a feature. When everyone uses their own metrics, nobody can be held accountable.
The Engagement Score changes that. It measures what actually matters—actions that indicate real car shoppers—and applies the same standard to every traffic source hitting your website.
What they say:
"We drove 50,000 impressions!"
What you need to know:
"How many of those people looked at a vehicle and took action?"
Engagement Score answers the second question.
The Methodology
Built on the Automotive Standards Council specification. Trusted by 300+ dealerships.
We capture events that indicate a real car shopper: VDP views, form submissions, phone calls, chat initiations, time on site, and more. Not vanity metrics—buying signals.
A form submission is worth more than a VDP view. A phone call is worth more than a page view. We apply weights based on how strongly each action correlates with actual sales. You can customize these weights to match your priorities.
We calculate a score per session for each traffic source. This normalizes for volume—a vendor sending 1,000 highly-engaged visitors scores higher than one sending 10,000 bouncers.
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VDP Views
Vehicle Detail Page visits
📝
Form Submissions
Leads, quote requests
📞
Phone Calls
Click-to-call events
💬
Chat Initiations
Live chat starts
⏱️
Time on Site
Engaged session duration
📄
Pages per Session
Depth of engagement
🔧
Service Requests
Appointment scheduling
💰
Trade-In Requests
Value your trade forms
The Engagement Score is built on the ASC specification for measuring digital marketing effectiveness in automotive retail.
Dealer Insights is a founding member of the ASC.
Industry Standard
The Automotive Standards Council was created to bring transparency and standardization to automotive digital marketing. We helped write the specification that defines how engagement should be measured.
This isn't a proprietary black box. It's an industry-standard methodology that vendors can't argue with—because they helped define it too.
Your Priorities
Not every dealership values every action the same way. Make the Engagement Score reflect your business.
If phone calls are your bread and butter, weight them higher. If you want to emphasize form submissions over VDP views, adjust the ratio. The Engagement Score adapts to how you do business.
Example Weight Configuration
Define what "good" looks like for your stores. Get alerted when a vendor drops below your threshold, or when performance changes significantly period-over-period.
Example Thresholds
In Practice
"Your engagement score dropped 40% last month. What happened?" Now you have data to back up the conversation—and leverage to demand better performance or renegotiate rates.
Real leverage in vendor meetings
Stop guessing where to spend. If SEM has a 33 engagement score and Meta has a 5.9, the math is clear. Shift budget to what's working, cut what isn't.
Data-driven budget decisions
Same vendor, different stores, different results. Engagement Score shows you which locations are getting value and which aren't—so you can fix it or ask why.
Group-wide visibility
Find out which vendors are actually driving car shoppers—and which are just driving traffic.