Automotive News, Press Releases, and Events

Jeff Kershner promotes an upcoming live webcast hosted by HookLogic featuring Dataium, focused on how Big Data can provide deeper visibility into online consumer vehicle shopping behavior. The session explores Dataium's potential to transform automotive digital marketing and CRM strategies. The thread serves primarily as an announcement encouraging DealerRefresh members to attend the Friday webinar.

Jeff Kershner congratulates DealerRefresh community member Christine Knowles for landing the cover of DrivingSales Dealer Innovation magazine, highlighting her six-year rise through the ranks at the Checkered Flag dealer group. The thread is largely celebratory, with brief comments from community members praising Christine, plus a humorous aside from one commenter joking about threatening Jeff with a lawsuit to get a site fix done. Christine herself appears in the replies, expressing excitement after finding the post via a Google Alert.

The thread introduces AutoCon 2012, a new fall automotive conference created by Ralph Paglia, Chris Saraceno, and Mike Myers under Automotive Media Partners LLC, produced with help from Brian Pasch's First Class Educators. Paglia responds to highlight that more conference options benefit the industry by increasing dealer participation and promises AutoCon is designed to improve upon existing events. The key takeaway is that AutoCon positions itself as a quality alternative for dealers already navigating a crowded fall conference calendar.

Jeff Kershner announced 10 free tickets available for the Digital Edge Summit on July 10th at the Hilton Baltimore North in Pikesville, targeting dealers in Maryland, Northern VA, and Southern PA. The event ran from a 9:30am seminar through a 5pm cocktail reception. Replies were brief, with community members wishing Jeff success or expressing regret at being unable to attend due to prior vacation plans.

Bill Playford of DealerKnows writes a guest post examining how misinformation and cherry-picked statistics mislead automotive dealers into making poor decisions. The discussion highlights how vendor claims and industry benchmarks are often distorted, outdated, or stripped of context — for example, lead close rates presented as universal truths when they vary wildly by market and circumstance. Commenters largely agree, adding that even accurate data can mislead if misapplied, and that a handful of high-performing dealers prove better results are possible but rarely discussed publicly.

The thread covers Autotrader.com's IPO filing with the SEC, examining the financial details revealed in their 250-page S-1 document, including revenue, expenses, and acquisition costs such as a reported $134 million paid for VIN Solutions despite only $12.8 million in revenue. Commenters questioned the valuation multiples, criticized Autotrader's management culture, and broadened the discussion to note that vendors like Dealer.com appear to generate enormous dealer-funded revenue while underdelivering on product innovation, especially in CRM technology.

DealerRater has partnered with Contact At Once to allow Certified DealerRater dealers to embed the Contact At Once live chat application directly on their dealer ratings pages. The announcement highlights Contact At Once's growing network of automotive website integrations. Community reaction was positive, with congratulations directed at the CAO team for expanding their platform reach.

The thread covers AutoTrader.com's May 2011 acquisition of VinSolutions, a dealer technology platform offering CRM, ILM, inventory management, websites, and desking tools. A follow-up post reveals post-acquisition leadership changes, including VinSolutions president Mike Dullea moving to an AutoTrader product innovation team and Brian Skutta stepping in as VP and general manager. The deal signals AutoTrader's push to consolidate dealer-facing software under its umbrella alongside existing holdings like vAuto.

DrivingSales announced that Tom White, Jr., former General Manager of Suzuki of Wichita — the #1 highest volume Suzuki retailer in the US — has joined the company as Head of Dealer Services. The hire signals DrivingSales' push to expand its dealer-facing services by leveraging White's reputation as an innovative, digitally-driven operator. The thread is essentially a press release with no notable discussion or debate.

Jeff Kershner announces the 2012 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference and shares that he will be speaking on behalf of HookLogic alongside Tom White Jr., focusing on conversion, lead scoring, and incentivizing in-market customers to improve Lead to Show rates at his Nissan dealership. The thread offers little substantive discussion beyond the announcement, with subsequent replies being generic spam comments about digital marketing and website quality. Dealers considering the conference would find the agenda link and speaker details useful, but the thread itself adds minimal insight beyond the original post.

Kevin Frye shares a detailed recap of Digital Dealer 12, covering peer networking roundtables, key industry concerns like rising SEM costs and mobile technology adoption, and session highlights. Commenters praised Frye's thorough, journalistic-quality write-ups while noting the conference felt slightly lacking in fresh content compared to previous years, with anticipation building for the next event in Las Vegas.

Jeff Kershner shares a Constant Contact infographic on email marketing stats, linking it to several ongoing DealerRefresh discussions on the topic. A key pushback emerges immediately: the infographic assumes permission-based email opt-ins, which a commenter notes virtually no dealership actually uses, undermining the relevance of its data. The thread is brief and largely superficial, closing with an unrelated spam reply about Twitter followers.

A sponsored contest by Contact At Once challenges DealerRefresh community members to share their best tips for converting website chat prospects into appointments or sales, with entries due by November 21st. The key insight that emerged is to treat chat prospects exactly like phone-ups: take control with questions, inject personality and humor, and escalate toward contact information and a phone call. Participants were encouraged to include real chat transcripts demonstrating their techniques.

PureCars and HookLogic announced a partnership to help dealerships increase walk-in traffic by integrating HookLogic's Lead-to-Show incentive solution into PureCars' platform serving over 1,500 dealerships. The collaboration aims to bridge the gap between online automotive research and in-store visits by targeting car shoppers at key decision-making moments. The thread appears to be a press release announcement with no significant dealer discussion or debate recorded.

Dealers debate whether to block social media on workplace computers, with perspectives ranging from outright blocking (citing bandwidth concerns, productivity loss, and brand risk) to cautious openness (arguing employees access it via phones anyway and could be trained to sell cars through it). A key insight that emerged is that blocking social media addresses a symptom rather than the root problem — poor employee behavior and wasted time reflect leadership failures, not internet access policies.

Jeff Kershner announces that DealerRefresh, alongside Moore & Scarry Advertising, DealerOn, and Edmunds.com, will co-host a 3-day Digital Marketing Learning Conference at Google's Mountain View headquarters in May 2012. The event promises hands-on time with Google's product specialists and automotive industry experts. Replies are largely enthusiastic requests for invitations, with one vendor expressing regret at a scheduling conflict.

Dealers and industry professionals debate TrueCar's business model, focusing on how the platform uses dealership transactional data to benchmark and publicize pricing, ultimately pressuring margins while charging $300 per sold lead. A consumer commenter defends TrueCar as a necessary counterweight to dealership tactics like bait-and-switch pricing and add-on fees, illustrating the core tension: dealers see TrueCar as a profitability threat they inadvertently empowered by sharing DMS data, while consumers see it as rare protection against opaque sales practices. The key takeaway is a warning from Jeff Kershner that dealers must audit and restrict third-party DMS data access before these platforms gain further leverage.

Kijiji.ca announced API partnerships with Canadian automotive inventory companies — Boost Motor Group, eDealer.ca, Evolio, and Strathcom Media — to help dealers list vehicles and reach online buyers during a tough post-recession year. Dealers in the thread saw ROI potential but raised concerns about site quality, traffic claim accuracy, and the risk of becoming dependent on a classifieds platform rather than building an independent dealer portal.

The thread shares an infographic on the decline of traditional media — newspapers, magazines, DVDs, and physical retail — sparking a debate among automotive professionals about print's relevance in a digital world. Replies range from nostalgic affection for print to blunt acknowledgment that free online access and shifting generational habits have made traditional media obsolete. The consensus leans heavily toward digital as the irreversible future, with one commenter drawing a direct line from newspaper ad sales to a more profitable career in automotive internet sales.

A dealer digital marketing professional warns that BBB.org is gaining Google search visibility, urging dealers to pay attention to their ratings before shoppers do. The conversation pivots when participants share evidence that the BBB operates as a pay-to-play scam, with ABC News investigation clips showing businesses receiving better ratings in exchange for membership fees. The key takeaway is split: while BBB rankings are rising in search results and could influence car buyers, the organization's credibility is deeply compromised — leaving dealers in an awkward position.

The thread announces a free webinar on lead scoring, a topic that had been generating recurring discussion in the DealerRefresh community. It references a concurrent thread where dealers were asking whether anyone was actively using lead scoring, and highlights Polk as an early pioneer of the technology, which combines lead data, geography, and demographics to prioritize prospects. The post appears to be driving awareness and sign-ups for the webinar as a practical next step for dealers curious about implementing lead scoring to improve lead-to-show rates.