// The online lane · written for dealers
Fieldnotes.
No listicles, no “ultimate guides”. What we learn running acquisition for independent lots — with the numbers behind it.
Your marketing budget is sorted by invoice size. Gross isn't.
Merchandising 313 units cost us $197.31 in compute — about 63 cents a car. It is the smallest line on the bill and it gates the most expensive asset you own.
Attribution doesn't fail at the ad. It fails at the stock number.
We checked 313 units in our own pipeline for a usable vehicle ID. Not one carried a VIN, and half sat under a placeholder — that is where attribution dies.
How fast should a dealer respond to a web lead
Most lots answer web leads in hours. The ones winning those deals answer in under five minutes — and the math behind why is brutal.
Your cars aren't waiting on photos. They're waiting on Thursday.
A full photo set now finishes in three and a half minutes. Cars still take days to go live, because merchandising happens in one burst a week.
Phone photos vs. catalog photos: what 2,231 edited units say about days on lot
We ran 2,231 used units through one photo pipeline across 13 lots. The redo rate pointed at something dealers rarely fix: the background, not the camera.
Why your VDP converts at 1%: the photo set answers one question out of three
We measured 223 photo sets across 15 lots. The median listing shipped nine photos and no interior frame at all — which is most of the conversion story.
What "cost per car sold" actually includes — and why your number is wrong
Ad spend divided by units is a comforting fraction, not a cost. Here is what belongs in the real number, and why it usually lands two to three times higher.
// Next step
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