Both are driving toward easier-to-measure incentives instead of an overall outcome. Dealers are going for leads, while news is going for subscriptions. I don't understand the news business well enough to know if there is a digital manager on a different pay plan influencing a lot of this, but obviously, dealership Internet departments are fully built around leads. We all love paywalls and lead gates!
The missing component in all of it is engagement. You can't sell a car without an engaged shopper. And I assume you can't sell a subscription on one article view.
Engagement = more time spent on content. More clicks. More return visits. An engaged shopper can turn into a lead once nurtured to that point.
I believe you can get more from your customers by making their entry smoother. There is no need to bombard people with pop-ups, chats, location verifications, and whatever else is driven for conversion. Simpler navigation paths, better merchandising, answering whether the car is in stock right away, and giving them the price/payments immediately will net more engagement. And a more engaged shopper will close far easier.
There is a balance between closing rates and website metrics, but at the moment the scale is leaning too far toward lead quantity.
