A tool for scoring site visits

Shoppers have their own browsing habits when viewing third-party sites, but not all consumer activity on these portals has equal weight. Cox Automotive will address that this year with a new feature on its digital nGauge product.

Today, consumers visiting dealership sites run by Cox Automotive's Dealer.com get points based on their activities through nGauge's scoring system. If they view a vehicle display page or the "store hours" page, for example, they get points that put a value on their visits. The points identify people with the highest purchase intent. That helps dealerships know who to market to.

The nGauge tool knows if someone came to the dealership site from Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book, also owned by Cox, but doesn't score their behaviors on those sites -- yet. Cox Automotive's analysis shows that consumers who visited all three -- the dealership site, Autotrader and KBB -- tend to have the highest-quality scores. Dealers can capitalize on this knowledge by directing advertising to those consumers.

"We can integrate the nGauge score into advertising and it will target advertising to people that are producing higher quality scores," James Grace, senior director of product analytics at Cox Automotive, said during the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in January. "That's a way for advertising to be more effective."