Google Store Visits Attribution Now Available in Google ANALYTICS!

[Alexander Lau]

They aren't adding "every single website traffic source / medium (organic, bing, facebook, etc)" into the Store Visits metric. as @reverson said in the original post?

I think, down the road, this could give some valuable insights. But, just as Google Attribution isn't really helping any dealers today, this is just a way for a vendor (Google -- they are the biggest vendor) to justify their value. In three years, maybe it will give some usable insight -- if it is improved on dramatically.

Google Attribution as a standalone product might not yet be heavily implemented in auto, but it will be. The streamlined and seamless nature of data flow from Google Ads, Analytics, etc. will make it vital for dealers. Who the hell wants to use an expensive 3rd party attribution tool that provides tertiary / pretty much non-actionable data and hacks the entire data pull down from Google Analytics / Ads and can't scale their offerings, 3rd party integrations and reports delivery? Especially since Google is going to block (or is blocking) their IDs from being used by those 3rd party attribution groups. I will still stick with my original claim, a sales attribution tool is great to figure out what might be working versus not, but you only need it for a few months at a time, not every month.

Also, Google Analytics has plenty of hidden attribution gems for web traffic attribution. It's not sales attribution, but still it can provide much insight to what's working. Create custom auto channel groupings, inject budgets and determine your Cost Per Acquisition against auto channels.

 

[ed.brooks]

Jenga!

 

[Alexander Lau]

Attribution modeling requires data on every user exposure to ads before a conversion occurs.

While such touch point records in the form of web cookies used to be readily available for many digital ads in the early days of online marketing, touch point data from traditional channels, such as TV, out-of-home, radio and print, has always been harder to access.

Beacon technology for mobile phones and TV set boxes create new opportunities to track individuals, but they require complex integrations to link lots of different identifiers into one meaningful list. While this is technically feasible, it creates extra costs and is rarely done well.

In any case, a complete user touch point recovery across competing vendors that tend to avoid supporting each other is not the only challenge for advertisers. Google is not alone in its decision to exclude cookie IDs in downloadable files in the name of privacy: Other advertising powerhouses, such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, don’t share any of their identifiers either.

Hence, it is fair to say that clients that leverage several of the leading online platforms will always have some key touch point data missing in their attribution models.

Jenga!
View attachment 3927

Nah... I'm talking about Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter pulling out their identifiers / blocks that causes the Jenga stack to crash non-holistically.

 

[C Dorman]

They aren't adding "every single website traffic source / medium (organic, bing, facebook, etc)" into the Store Visits metric. as @reverson said in the original post?

I think, down the road, this could give some valuable insights. But, just as Google Attribution isn't really helping any dealers today, this is just a way for a vendor (Google -- they are the biggest vendor) to justify their value. In three years, maybe it will give some usable insight -- if it is improved on dramatically.

Ed, what part of this report showing how many store visits for every source of website traffic don't you understand? It's obvious you have no idea about this report, the technology involved or how it works. If you don't think knowing how many visits a website source creates for a dealer is valuable, right now, today, then you are hopeless.

 

[C Dorman]

Jenga!
View attachment 3927

That depends. You can't take something like attribution and try to dumb it down to simple memes. You have to actually understand what you're talking about and look at the data from several different perspectives, First Touch, Last Touch, Time Decay, Linear, etc. But the bottom line is still the bottom line. DID IT SELL CARS AND SERVICE! Once you understand that, it's easy to see that vendors that suck in one model, generally don't suddenly start to look good in another. The people who hate and fight against this are the vendors who deliver no real value, so they attempt to confuse dealers with BS metrics and concepts in an attempt to keep sucking at their teat. Their days are numbered...

 

[C Dorman]

This is good, but extremely dangerous data, especially the attribution of a store visit to SEO and SEM channels. I see those vendors miss representing this data and stores misusing this store visit data with dealer brand campaigns or searches.

Random thoughts on data's reliability.
1. Mobile traffic is around 55% of a site's traffic. We will only seeing store visits for just over half of a site's traffic. Multi-device customers really screw this up as usual with GA.
2. Service, parts, bodyshop, car wash, etc customers getting counted. Most dealerships will try and use this store visit data for sales attribution.
3. Service customers will get counted twice - drop off and pickup.
4. Be-backs are duplicate store visits
5. Husband/wife who are both on site getting counted twice
6. What is the reset time of a store visit? If it's short enough, test drives can be multiple visits

About the only thing these store visits can be used for:
1. Proper UTM parameters on advertising (AdWords by Campaign/AdGroup, Email Campaigns, Facebook Ads)
2. Referral traffic from 3rd party listing sites

1. Actually mobile traffic accounts for about 66% of most dealers traffic now, at least those with a proper marketing strategy. And this is why you have to have Google Signals activated in Google Analytics to make this work. It's possible to link cross device traffic with identity resolution, it's not entirely one to one.
2. Dealers should count service customers! That's at least half, and often more, of a lot of dealers profits. It's not hard to separate service from sales if you know what you're doing.
3. They are not going to count service customers twice. Google knows how to filter dupes. They do it the same way they filter employees.
4. Be-Backs will be filtered like all other dupes.
5. It's possible, but Google has the ability to minimize this with identity resolution that can filter at the household level.
6. Test drives are not going to be counted as multiple visits for all of the reasons mentioned previously.

Proper UTM tagging will identify a source, but it still has to visit a dealer's website and their lot to count as a store visit. Store Visits will track referral sources from all referral sites, doesn't matter where they came from. Third party listing sites are going to hate this because it's going to show the dealers how effective they really are, or aren't... and it's going to force third party sites to prove their value beyond the BS they provide dealers now, and that's what they're going to really hate. This is one of the reasons third party sites do not want to send traffic to dealers sites, they suck at that. Third party sites want to BS dealers into thinking they are generating exposure that drives conversions. But now dealers are going to have a choice, spend their money with vendors that drive customers to their service drives and that buy cars, or exposure and hope it does something. Smart dealers are going to invest with vendors that they KNOW will sell cars and service.

 

[ed.brooks]

Third party listing sites are going to hate this because it's going to show the dealers how effective they really are, or aren't... and it's going to force third party sites to prove their value beyond the BS they provide dealers now, and that's what they're going to really hate. This is one of the reasons third party sites do not want to send traffic to dealers sites, they suck at that. Third party sites want to BS dealers into thinking they are generating exposure that drives conversions. But now dealers are going to have a choice, spend their money with vendors that drive customers to their service drives and that buy cars, or exposure and hope it does something. Smart dealers are going to invest with vendors that they KNOW will sell cars and service.

Chip,
I've worked for a few third-party sites, but I'm not speaking on their behalf, only on my own. Most reputable third-party sites welcome and encourage all possible tracking. They also utilize UTM tags and generally end up being some of the leading referrers to dealer websites. All I'm saying is the Google Analytics is helpful, but it shouldn't the only place you look for attribution. It is a vendor dashboard (Google is a vendor), needs to be seen for what it is and what it is not, and a dealer needs to recognize it generally tilts in Googles direction and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As of today, there are no Silver Bullets.

 

[Alexander Lau]

That depends. You can't take something like attribution and try to dumb it down to simple memes. You have to actually understand what you're talking about and look at the data from several different perspectives, First Touch, Last Touch, Time Decay, Linear, etc. But the bottom line is still the bottom line. DID IT SELL CARS AND SERVICE! Once you understand that, it's easy to see that vendors that suck in one model, generally don't suddenly start to look good in another. The people who hate and fight against this are the vendors who deliver no real value, so they attempt to confuse dealers with BS metrics and concepts in an attempt to keep sucking at their teat. Their days are numbered...

I couldn't agree more, which is why I like everything you post on LinkedIn. You should spend a lot more time in these waters.

 

[C Dorman]

Chip,
I've worked for a few third-party sites, but I'm not speaking on their behalf, only on my own. Most reputable third-party sites welcome and encourage all possible tracking. They also utilize UTM tags and generally end up being some of the leading referrers to dealer websites. All I'm saying is the Google Analytics is helpful, but it shouldn't the only place you look for attribution. It is a vendor dashboard (Google is a vendor), needs to be seen for what it is and what it is not, and a dealer needs to recognize it generally tilts in Googles direction and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As of today, there are no Silver Bullets.

Ed, third party sites are some of the worst offenders when it comes to providing transparency and tracking. They're right up there with OEMs and their vendor agencies for preventing dealers from seeing the truth and how bad they are really performing. And being one of the largest sources of referral traffic means absolutely nothing when referral traffic is such a small percentage of a dealers total traffic. Typically a dealer will only see 5% or less of their traffic coming from Referral sites. And in the case of OEM mandated sites, that includes traffic from the OEM. Which means that any one third party site is only going to be responsible for maybe 1% of a dealer's total traffic. That's nothing, and certainly not enough to justify their expense.

As to your assertion that Google Analytics is a vendor dashboard, you blew that out of your backside just like the majority of crap that you post. You have no idea how Google Analytics works, and no idea that there are so many competitors that force Google Analytics to be accurate. Yes, Google is a vendor, but to say that Google Analytics "generally tilts" in favor of Google is complete and utter bullshit, even for you.

Quite honestly Ed, your posts are a perfect example of what's wrong with vendors in automotive today. You're trying to sound like you know what you're talking about in a weak attempt to justify to your dealers that they should still be spending money with you. You make stuff up, take stuff out of context and try to reduce complex topics down to a sophomoric meme. You're not trying to help anybody but yourself and only serve to confuse dealers and waste everybody's time.

 

[C Dorman]

I couldn't agree more, which is why I like everything you post on LinkedIn. You should spend a lot more time in these waters.

Thanks, Alex, coming from you, that means a lot!