In an industry long plagued by guesswork around media effectiveness, Clarivoy is offering auto advertisers something they’ve craved for years: proof that their ads are working—down to the visit.
The automotive attribution specialist has launched a new metric, Marketplace Visit Attribution (MVA), a tool designed to deterministically link ad exposure—whether on linear TV, connected TV (CTV), video, or display—to actual consumer visits on key automotive marketplaces like Autotrader, Cars.com, CarGurus, and Edmunds.
If you’ve ever wondered whether that big TV campaign actually moved the needle, Clarivoy now has the receipts.
Cracking the Attribution Code in Auto Marketing
Auto marketers have long struggled to connect the dots between media spend and actual shopping behavior. MVA aims to change that by bridging the gap between ad exposure and online consumer activity, using anonymized, aggregated data from both marketplace partners and Comcast Advertising’s set-top box viewership insights.
“Clarivoy is unlocking a completely new dimension in automotive advertising measurement,” said Steve White, CEO of Clarivoy. “This isn’t model-based guesswork—we’re deterministically showing how ad impressions translate into marketplace visits and dealership interest.”
The significance? Marketers now have a full-funnel view—not just clicks and impressions, but proof that media dollars are driving people to shop for cars.
What MVA Measures: From Screens to Showrooms
Clarivoy’s MVA tracks the following core metrics:
- Marketplace Visits Attributed to Specific Channels: Linear TV, CTV, digital video, and display
- Deterministic Dealership Website Visits: Who showed up and why
- Direct Leads and Sales Attributions: Yes, it goes all the way to the sale
With this kind of transparency, auto advertisers can now see which campaigns, channels, and formats are delivering real-world behavior changes—not just engagement.
Why It Matters: CTV and Linear TV Now Get Credit Where It’s Due
As automotive marketers shift more dollars into CTV and video, attribution has lagged behind, often defaulting to simplistic last-click logic or black-box modeling. Clarivoy’s new metric offers privacy-compliant, deterministic tracking that proves, for example, whether that spot during Monday Night Football actually led to a spike in visits to CarGurus or a local dealer website.
For marketplace partners, it’s a win, too. They can now quantify the lift from their own ad inventory and co-branded campaigns, giving them a new layer of performance data to bring to OEMs and local dealers.
“This collaboration redefines the gold standard for measurement in automotive advertising,” said Anthony Jingoli, Head of Local Automotive Strategy at Comcast Advertising. “Advertisers can now understand—and act on—the real ROI of their media investment.”
The Bigger Picture: Measurement That’s Finally Built for Modern Car Buyers
Clarivoy reports over 160 million automotive shopping sessions every month, and now it’s turning that scale into attribution gold. As car buyers juggle between dealer websites, review platforms, and marketplace listings, knowing where and how media touches drive behavior is becoming essential.
MVA doesn’t just improve campaign planning—it fundamentally shifts how marketers value media channels, prioritize budgets, and justify results to leadership. In a fragmented media landscape, this kind of signal clarity is rare—and potentially transformative.
For a vertical increasingly driven by data but hampered by measurement lag, Clarivoy’s MVA could be the most impactful dashboard addition since the CRM.
