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joe.pistell · Wednesday at 6:40 PM

shoppers are saints and they never lie.

"buyers are liars"

joe.pistell · Wednesday at 6:38 PM

the harder the question, the more AI hallucinates.

Viracocha · Tuesday at 2:23 PM

joe.pistell said:
Ahh, Viracocha is displaying excellent JTBD software design. JBTD is Job To Be Done. Google it, it's powerful and so simple.

Yes, auto data providers have highly structured, VIN specific data. Infact, it comes in 'levels' of perfection (or completeness). The more you spend, the more complete is the record.

In your example (2018 vs 2025 F150 XLT), AI can do a OEM YMMT based 'generic' comparison (you'll need AI to be real time) This is helpful in high level research and is seen in SEO landing pages.

Using the JTBD model, the shopper is on the 2025 CrewCab XLT F150 VDP likes what they see and NOW they want a simple way to compare the car they own vs the car they want to buy. This task/solution 'should be' the websites responsibility, but, the JTBD philosophy is alien to these ppl, so, they can't see it.

That being said, this is a perfect JTBD by an intelligent chat bot on the dealer's site. THe bot would need to be aware of the page the shopper is on (Carvana's bot does this) and if the bot has this info, the bot could ask the shopper the YMMT the shopper has. The bot could ask the shopper if they'd give the bot the VIN or Plate#, they'd have the build sheet data for that specific car and it would improve the quality of the comparison (p.s. tradein forms harvest this data and chat bots should have this info if provided).

Viracocha, nice rabbit hole you've found! Very helpful for shopper knowledge. Too bad 99.9% of the software ppl in autoare chasing lead gen

Thanks Joe! I actually have less than zero interest in website chatbots, I was considering this for a more personalized targeted loyalty approach. As with most things, the idea was born from my own needs - i was looking at the 2025 tremor and noticed that it is no longer a series or pep but a full trim now in the F-150 line up. I was thinking it would be nice to have a concise list of changes that someone like a salesperson would actually respond with, rather than a specifications dump that you get from the big data sets. If I was able to get that, then i could proactively use it in an outreach approach to engage drivers of older models to start thinking about newer models. We are a loyalty marketing company so we could bake it into our existing approach

Gary Hopkins · Tuesday at 12:37 PM

joe.pistell said:
CASE IN POINT.
I just completed a ChatGPT study into a technical problem in our space.

GPT's opening message:

Research completed in 7m · 13 sources · 90 searches

***DealerRefresh was cited 15 times in this study***

That report would have taken me DAYS to complete. Now, flip this scenario over to car shopping.

Were the results correct? I've found repeatedly that LLMs can be confidently authoritative and dead wrong.

Viracocha · Monday at 11:09 AM

I am creating a MVP product and could use a consultant that has advanced knowledge of PBS Data structures for reporting. Accounting, service, parts, sales - all files. Anyone here have this experience or know someone who does?

Alex Snyder · Monday at 9:36 AM

The reasoning behind it, "to protect consumers from deceptive dealer practices and ensure transparent, standardized vehicle pricing," being something that was a problem in 1959, isn't surprising to me. However, what surprised me was learning how long our industry has been seen as deceptive by consumers. Even late in my automotive career, I still had not connected the historical dots to a time when our "wheels" ate hay.

Horsetrading was the original car sales. "Trade that old nag on a young mustang, fella!" Think about selling with a six-shooter on your hip in the Old West. Or a curved sword in the desert of the Middle East before those bearded men in armor came campaigning for Jerusalem.

You are part of one of the oldest professions in human history! And some of you may practice it in a way that rivals THE oldest profession :poke:

Chris Cachor · Oct 18, 2025

KellyKman said:
All dealership websites are built on Wordpress which is lethargic and provides very low UE scores for Google which means most dealers pay 4-$5.00 per click and their CPAs are inflated. By far the best solution (nothing is even close) is an AI SEO perfect classified site network that utilizes reproducing dealer sites on each site on that network of 50 sites. Each site has hundreds of thousands or research and Q&A pages as well as millions of backlinks. Each domain in this network of classifieds is an exact match for the 20 top long term search phrases spoken into all of the AI search mechanisms which means that each site is created as an AI citation in itself and is considered a major authority site. Dealers on tnhe net are paying $1.00 to $2.00 per click and are seeing 2-4X organic first generation leads. The guy who created this has 1500 of these domains!

That game is over.

Tallcool1 · Oct 17, 2025

Brad Burlingham · Oct 10, 2025

following. elead reports are the worst. i have to constantly export info and/or manually input the data into my own reports. and no trend reports at all. ugh

Alex Snyder · Oct 8, 2025

Brian Michael West said:
We've been loving Opus Clip!

gobrien · Oct 7, 2025

kevinfrye said:
I kept pressing for where they were getting the data from the "3rd party anonymous sites". It appeared to just be retargeting. Curious is someone us using it and looking closely at the behavior on their website (with goals and conversions) as it clicks through. If it is just retargeting, you already paid once to generate the VDP (eg. they looked at that specific car on AutoTrader) and then XVin is just retargeting that specific car wherever the shopper goes. Am I incorrect?

XVIN is just a run-of-the-mill VDP retargeting tactic. We used to call it dynamic inventory ads...the industry now calls it DCO (dynamic creative optimization). DCO is actually a bit of a broader term that includes all manner of dynamic personalization product not just product-level retargeting.

How it works...

Someone goes to your website, gets to a VDP (where xvin has a retargeting pixel) and the retargeting pixel captures which VDP they looked at.

XVIN (or whomever) connects the dots between the viewer and the VDP they looked at and then targets them with an ad that has that same vehicle in the ad in an effort to get the user to re-engage. There's nothing exclusive about it...most auto ad vendors can do the same thing.

From a tech standpoint it's not terribly difficult to do. XVIN has to manage a product catalog with all the info from all the VIN's in it and then the ad tag tells them which vehicle should be displayed in the ad to any given user (past visitor). Could be they built their own product catalog software (it's not hard) or could be they are licensing it from one of scores of DCO tech companies (Smartly, Innovid, Bannerflow, etc.)

From a "how cool is it?" standpoint it's no big deal. My old company was one of the first out with it and that was 2009. The tech hasn't progressed since then. The real issue though is that XVIN (and all DCO vendors) require cookies to track your site visitors and cookies just aren't as prevalent as they used to be. All browsers other than Google's Chrome no longer allow cookies by default and I don't think many people go to the trouble of changing their browser settings so that folks like us can track them across the Internet. Between mobile and desktop that's about 40% of users that cannot be tracked. Then you've increased usage of VPN's and Proxy servers which disallow tracking. And most recently nearly every dealer website has pop-up "Consent Banners" that allow the visitor to be able to allow or disallow tracking. If they "reject cookies" or fall into any of the other groups mentioned, they cannot be tracked and ad vendors cannot do retargeting of any kind.

So...meh. It's still a good thing to do but the ad budgets (if being done properly) associated with this kind of thing should be very, very low.

Tallcool1 · Oct 6, 2025

superveloce said:
Correct. Upload into an app, Pick the Scene you want, CarShots takes care of it, you download and post on to your site.

There's an iOS app and a website for desktop usage.

I would be a liar if I told you that this isn't really impressive. I showed this to a couple people that work here and we all agree.

We have really upped our photo game in the past 60 days. It is really hard because the guys that take the photos are working in a 25 minute window to get the exact lighting that they want. Their pictures are honestly about as good as I have seen considering there is absolutely zero editing. Your photos are every bit as good.

I am assuming that you will help us with the "scene" part.

I will send you a PM.

Thanks

Tallcool1 · Oct 6, 2025

superveloce said:
Ahh, I get it. For every "raw photo" a dealer gives us of the car, we create reference photos and metadata that allow us to place them into a scene. It's not just removing a background, noting details about the car/photo, but also removing things like glare, sunlight, etc.

Attaching some samples from the SUV above. You can see that the system can handle all different aspect ratios (super wide, normal wide, square, portrait for social media stories, etc.). I tried a bunch of different scenes including the in motion twilight one, dark ones, bright ones, etc. and you can see how it adapts to each one. Specific details like the license plate holder are there too. Anything can be tweaked after, but this is what was done in under a minute. Hope this helps!

View attachment 9614
View attachment 9615
View attachment 9616
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View attachment 9618

View attachment 9619

Ok, so I take the photos. I send them to you. You enhance them and send them back to me and I post them on my website?

Is that pretty close to how it works or do I just upload them into an app and the new photos come out?

Tallcool1 · Oct 4, 2025

superveloce said:
Took a few minutes today to generate a few shots from this photo. Took under a minute. Also created a "custom showroom" for you with the clocktower logo. Also added an action roller shot.

I get it, but you took an already FANTASTIC picture and edited it. Can you create that Twilight Effect with this broad daylight photo?

ggarvin · Oct 2, 2025

superveloce said:
It's still using the original car image. In simplified terms - We extract out the car and clean it up from that original image, then we make use of it in each scene.

Think of it sort of like Photoshop where someone removes the car from the original image and then places it into another photo. To make it look right, there's a lot of work that person has to do to properly place it into the scene.

Hope this explains it!

I understand how that is setup but that action roller shot has wheels turned and you can see a hand on the steering wheel plus the license plate brackets are gone as well. Are you adding a driver plus those other changes?

ggarvin · Oct 2, 2025

superveloce said:
Took a few minutes today to generate a few shots from this photo. Took under a minute. Also created a "custom showroom" for you with the clocktower logo. Also added an action roller shot.

On the "action roller" shot - this isn't the original image, so how are you creating that?

joe.pistell · Oct 1, 2025

Coming soon: AI Content = SPAM

Much like 'banner blindness', its logical that AI gen content will become so... everywhere, that'll the only wow factor will be real ppl creating real ppl content.

Alex Snyder · Oct 1, 2025

Super cool seeing all the activity! We knew we'd pull some customers who didn't hit the equity thresholds out, and that is absolutely happening. Seeing those deals close blows me away at how much negative equity some customers will roll into a new vehicle :eek3:

Kevin McKillop · Sep 29, 2025

Brad Burlingham said:
In talking with them i dont think they understood how much we use GA4 to optimize our campaigns. Not to mention the fact that GA4 will lose all attribution as soon as they exit our site and go to tier 1. a good visit would be classified as a bounce in that case.

Set up GTM to fire a GA4 event on outbound clicks to audiusa.com. You'll lose attribution afterwards, but you can start measuring how much traffic is headed for Tier 1, vs. just 'gone'.

Tallcool1 · Sep 26, 2025

carshopper said:
I've talked to them several times, in person too. Explanation is
"yes, attached insurance product and financing contract is in the agreement, but it does not apply, because we are not financing".
- Then should we strike it out if it doesn't apply?
"No, we dont modify agreements".

What they say to me doesnt make sense.

If you don't trust them then find another dealer.

To me, the story you are getting is 100% bullshit, "We don't modify agreements"? That document shouldn't exist.

Just move on to a dealer that you can trust. This sounds like too much brain damage.

Tallcool1 · Sep 26, 2025

carshopper said:
I'd love to, but will I get a chance to pay and get the receipt? The way it is on paper, I could very well get "you dont owe us cash, wait for terms of financing".

Please don't take this the wrong way, there is just no other way for me to say this.

Why are you asking this question in a forum rather than calling the dealership and asking them? Every dealership and computer system handled things differently. Unless someone from THAT dealership sees this post then there is no way anyone here can have your answer.

If you are concerned about it then call the dealership and ask them.

Tallcool1 · Sep 26, 2025

I have such mixed emotions about the AI Photos. On one hand, it is so convenient. However, what I have found while playing around is that it is really hard to compete with a natural photo taken in good lighting conditions.

I am attaching a photo that was taken a couple days ago with an iPhone 14 that is 4 years old and absolutely no filtering or editing. If I could create this photo using AI rather than shooting photos in a 30 minute window of perfect lighting, I would consider it.

joe.pistell · Sep 26, 2025

This is the dawn of a new era in Creative Merchandising.
Login to view embedded media Domain experts in auto will create a portfolio of new car shopping UX's. Still-to-video is the tip of the iceberg.

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joe.pistell · Sep 26, 2025

superveloce said:
why doesn't their VDP page have all of this?

Because Dealers DEMANDED leads, leads and more leads. Any vendor that cannot deliver MORE LEADS got defunded.

WHY did Dealers demand more leads?
1. The internet began as a separate department (that SHOPPERS forced them to create).
2. The variable ops payplan shifts store performance down to the sales rep. All a manager has to do is GET MORE LEADS.

THis is why the entire auto retail industry has low to no innovation and it's tech is many years behind.

Carvana's CEO sales grew +40% YoY and did it with less leads and more sales per rep.

It's that simple.

jscole86 · Sep 25, 2025

carshopper said:
I am buying car (new sedan) with cash in full. Price is very good. Large dealership, certified for major brands.
Asked to review draft of full paperwork before signing.

In agreement OTD price is on the line "total to finance"

Nothing to the effect "paid in full"

Agreement refs "conditional delivery agreement", which says I am entering "finance agreement" (not in paperwork, at least yet) and "purchase is not finalized", "transaction is conditional on final approval"

Why is this in cash deal? They say "standard language", refused to alter. I walked out.
Am I overreacting?

Yes, you are overreacting. Go buy the car you want. Get a receipt for the cash you paid. It's that simple.

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