The Dealer Playbook

Ep. 662 - AI, Accountability, and the $30 Leak in Your Marketing, with Matt VanDyke

• Michael Cirillo

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In this episode of The Dealer Playbook, I sit down with Matt VanDyke, President of Shift Digital, to unpack some of the most pressing—and overlooked—topics in automotive marketing right now. From mobile-first lead strategies to AI-powered insights, Matt brings a rare, high-altitude perspective that cuts through the fluff and actually makes sense of what’s happening in the trenches.

We talk about:

  • Why phone calls and text messaging are quietly dominating lead conversions
  • How to rethink click-to-call and ditch the outdated obsession with form submissions
  • The $30 out of every $100 you’re losing due to poor website performance (yes, it’s that bad)
  • The AI conversation everyone’s having—but few are applying correctly
  • Why accountability isn’t a buzzword—it’s the hidden driver of innovation

Matt also drops a sobering stat: fewer than 1% of dealer websites in North America pass Google’s Core Web Vitals. Which means most are unintentionally sabotaging their own ad budgets. If you’re tired of wasting money, or just want to know where the puck is really heading, this conversation is a must-listen.

Whether you're running a store, managing an OEM program, or working at an agency, there’s something in here that’ll shift how you think about performance.

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MC:

This episode is brought to you by FlexDealer. Hey auto industry, welcome to this episode of the Dealer Playbook. In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Matt Van Dyke. He's the president of Shift Digital and we're going to be talking about all of the different trends that are happening as it pertains to automotive marketing and performance tracking. Matt, thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook.

Matt:

Thanks, Michael. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

MC:

You have perspective that I don't think a lot of people have when it comes to the landscape of automotive marketing, of course, working in so many different OEM programs and I'll admit, a little nervous to be on this call with you because you are definitely an individual of influence but I'm curious, as you look across your portfolio, across the thousands of dealers that are in OEM programs, what are some of the things that you're noticing right now that are trends that you believe people really need to be paying attention to?

Matt:

Yeah, there's so much right now. It's a great question. A couple things. One I would say is is continuing to optimize lead handling. So we're shortly going to publish a new industry report kind of, on the state of the industry from 2024. We've started to do these in the last two years just kind of using our insights and data for kind of a force of goodwill in the industry.

Matt:

And you know, leads last year were up but the quality of those leads were down. So the industry in North America was up as a whole, but third-party leads and event leads and things where I would say shoppers were being chased as opposed to just organic intent, altered a little bit of the mix of what's happening in the industry. So with that, close rates were down because the quality of leads were down and there was a continued shift away from form lead submissions into click to calls. So that gets to my point. You know 70% plus of your website traffic is mobile and there's still an opportunity to really laser focus your website into mobile first call to actions. And if you are looking at your website and you're evaluating it on your desktop with your website platform partner, don't Pull out your phone and look at it the way most of your customers look at it and then make sure your vehicle detail page call to actions include click to call. So that's kind of number one. And then number two are you measuring your phone performance like you're measuring form, lead performance and things like that? So so that's one key thing I would say we're focused on right now is just kind of helping our clients with that focus and that process.

Matt:

A second area is kind of on media. So one of the other trends that we're going to report on is vehicle detail page views. In North America were up 39% last year and that's a mind-boggling number. Yeah, part of it is because of continued increased availability, but really by the end of 2023, availability for most brands was kind of back to fully stocked shelves. The bigger thing is that it's the medium mix of traffic that is going to vehicle detail page views.

Matt:

So one of the biggest things is PMAX has made shifts and it's kind of that black box approach of sending traffic somewhere, and they shifted, sending more and more of that traffic to vehicle detail page views and that's partially good, but there's a huge bounce rate and what I would say is, if I'm talking to dealers who are friends of mine. I'm like, hey, are you actually sending your traffic to the right places? If you're doing VIN, specific vehicle listing, advertising and promoting things that way, great, send them into the BDP page. But if you're doing a general campaign or kind of a general sales event message, you may be getting ahead of yourself by dropping somebody right on a page. So those are a couple of things that are happening. We're really looking at kind of the makeup of the advertising, what's working and, again, lead performance and handling are some key things.

MC:

This is huge for me, I mean, especially being in the marketing field myself. To key in on something you said, I feel like it was I don't know five, maybe even 10 years ago. People would say things like phone calls, outperform, web form submissions by like five to one. And now here we are, 2025. And you're saying, hey, like if you're not paying attention to phone process now, when are you going to do it? And I think it's just such a valuable thing that the dealers that are paying attention to phone process and understanding where the customer is coming through through that click to call conversion, are the ones I feel like are going to really have a leg up as compared to those that are just waiting for a form submission. Especially I'd be curious your take on this for those that are starting to say do we even want to put forms on our website anymore? Like there's a lot of chat conversions. I mean, what's your take on that?

Matt:

Yeah, I mean I would still. I would keep the general form submissions, but I would follow what you just said, which is pay so much attention to the phone calls. I mean what you just said, which is pay so much attention to the phone calls. I mean first back to the volume thing, like when we look at the aggregated data and we see data across 16,000 dealer websites in North America. So the sample is good. The reality is the click to calls outweigh form submissions, plus chat, plus trade-in, plus DR all combined. So again, don't not look at that Focus there for start.

Matt:

And then the second thing I was going to say is I think text is as important as calls, and so one make sure you understand your local TCPA regulatory rules and regulations on do you have permission to text somebody and work with your provider, especially your advertising providers or your website providers, so that on you know, on submissions, you're getting the right permission to text people. But more and more people they want that text. Now I think our best practice would be text them, call them, email them. But so many people I mean think about you know your dentist or your it's Valentine's day. Do you have dinner reservations tonight? Do you don't want to be interrupted right now with them calling you to find out if you're going to show up at the store. But if you get a text from them that says are we going to see you at 7 o'clock tonight, check, thumbs up, I'm in. So we're all just used to it in our day-to-day lives.

MC:

Wow, I just can't help but think the level of intent that somebody is making behind a text or a phone call and how that might differ from any other type of conversion. To wrap our minds around, hey, this person went out of their way to not only divulge their phone number to you, but also to share, like put their thumbs on a keyboard and share an important message with you. Put their thumbs on a keyboard and share an important message with you. It's almost to me like a given that this person is near the bottom of the funnel in some regard, in some way, shape or form.

Matt:

Yeah, so take the time for a quality response, right? I mean, if they're looking for pricing, give them pricing. Even better, give them monthly payments, since that's what most shoppers and buyers are. But I think that quality engagement with phone and mobile is a difference maker right now.

MC:

I don't ask controversial questions, but obviously I know from your vantage point the AI conversation is being had right when. I mean, we were just at NADA and my joke was that people would say AI more than hello. Where do you see things going as far as AI? We talk about quality response. We know that there are some you know response tools out there that claim to be powered by AI. Is there a place for it? Is it something that we should be paying attention to and, if so, how should we be paying attention to it?

Matt:

Yeah, I mean absolutely and I totally hear you about NADA, right, you know, nobody didn't have AI all over their advertising products. I mean, it's almost laughable. There's companies that have AI in their name that don't use AI, I think. But look, I think there is a steady progression. And look at Shift we have over 225 different digital dealer providers in our programs with over 30 different automotive brands in the US and Canada and we end up seeing a lot of innovation because it's either quarterly business reviews with existing partners or it's up and coming partners who want to get access to scale programs. And I would say last year was definitely kind of a turning point of just seeing, you know chat providers that had gone to natural language processing and generative AI, to more sophisticated marketing automation platforms that were, you know, scraping your CRM, identifying customers like to be in the market, then automating outbound messaging in order to, you know, nurture people and get them warm along the hook on you know merchandise inventory, specific VINs and then kind of handing that over to the right people in dealerships in order to create a connection. So we're absolutely seeing marketing automation providers make advances and do good things. I think it's also a neat tool on the service drive. More and more service lane technology companies are scanning products for trade-in, for dings and dashes, and helping create tools in order to do vehicle trade-in appraisals. There's unique and neat advancements in other vehicle merchandising providers that are taking your VDPs and they're highlighting why-bys customer features, enhancing the creative by scraping and putting your dealership name on a license plate or in the background of the car to make sure customers know that certain inventories on their lots.

Matt:

Really, I think the sky's the limit. There's a lot of good technology. I think everybody still is scared of stories from 15 months ago where you know a chat tool sold a Tahoe to a customer for a dollar and things like that. And yeah, I mean I'm sure that there's probably you know legal things that prevented that. But I think companies are working through kind of the application of industrial AI and they're putting the right guardrails on it and creating proprietary AI solutions that are purpose-built for auto. So I think it's definitely something to pay attention to. I think you know one of the things I hear is like, hey, is my job going to be replaced by a robot? And I think the best advice I've heard is, if you're asking that question, the answer is your job probably isn't going to be replaced by AI, but if you don't figure out how to use it and make your job function better, you're going to be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI.

MC:

That might be the most practical response that I've heard to that question. I've often thought if you're the one that's worried about your job being replaced, then that means you've made yourself incredibly replaceable.

Matt:

Don't be that guy. Yeah, don't be that guy.

MC:

I mean gosh, george Jetson pushed buttons that made sprockets, but before that somebody had to make those sprockets by hand. You know what I mean. Somebody's job got replaced and diluted down to pushing a button.

Matt:

Figure out where the value creation is and make sure that you know you're not just a middleman, that you're adding value.

MC:

The undertone to what I'm hearing here is that, while AI is definitely something to pay attention to, we still need to get a job done and we need performance to be there, and almost and this is the way I read into it is, if you're the individual that thinks you just need the tool and it's going to do the thing for you, then that's probably the misaligned position to be in. We're still talking about real humans having to do real work in order to sell vehicles, sell more and fixed, improve F&I operations and processes. What's your take? Hey, does your marketing agency suck? Listen, before we hop back into this episode, I know you know me as the host of the Dealer Playbook, but did you also know that I'm the CEO of FlexDealer, an agency that's helping dealers capture better quality leads from local SEO and hyper-targeted ads that convert? So if you want to sell more cars and finally have a partner that's in it with you that doesn't suck, visit FlexDealercom. Let's hop back into this episode.

Matt:

Yeah, I mean absolutely. I mean there is no complete easy button that says you know, this is just going to do it for you and you're going to replace the practitioners, I mean. I think another really interesting application, though, is use it to improve your marketing effectiveness and efficiency. You know, I think one of the holy grails of marketing forever has been let's get the right message to the right customer at the right time, and increasingly, the AI tools are helping and we're using them as a company to score customer propensity to purchase.

Matt:

Focus on the right customer who's sending the signals of being in market whether it be, you know, gobbling up all the data and figuring out how many vehicle detail page views of a certain model someone's looked at on your website. Using these systems to create the right audiences for targeting. And again, you can use it to help automate the messaging. But that is one area where you know first party data platforms, where you know first party data platforms, cdps. That was kind of like before. Ai was cool at NADA, but these systems are using AI, disparate data feeds, putting them together and make your marketing more efficient. So I would really encourage dealers to be exploring that, experimenting with that, get capability presentations from suppliers, who will show you how they're making your marketing more efficient using that.

MC:

This kind of ties into what I think is the core mission of what you do with Shift Digital is that you get to serve as the continuity factor across the board, like you said, thousands of auto dealer websites that you're looking at, and what was it 230? What was the number 230?

Matt:

Yeah, over 225 different digital dealer suppliers. Everything from. You know trade in tools, dr tools, chat tools. You know service scheduling.

MC:

You name it. The goal isn't to make anyone's life difficult. It's actually to enhance the experience all around, not just for the car dealer, but also for the customer, the end user, the customer.

Matt:

Yeah, I think absolutely Like. Our focus is helping brands and dealers improve their marketing effectiveness and efficiency and make the customer experience better by putting the right tools together. And so our philosophy is choice is a winner and choice breeds competition. And our role in the ecosystem is to help dealers enable or help brands enable that for dealers. And also independent measurement, reporting and analytics right, because everybody kind of wants to come into a dealership and say turn on our platform for $3.99 a month or $15.99 a month and your business is going to go up and to the right and then they'll come in and they'll show you why they're creating value for you. But the reality is you know that independent measurement that's saying this is who's winning and how, is really invaluable for dealers and dealer networks. And that's our goal. You know we want there to be choice. We want really all the suppliers to succeed, but some are more innovative, some catch, you know, trends earlier than others and we help highlight those in our programs.

MC:

The accountability of this is incredible to me. You know, I often say when we work with our client partners that we're not afraid of accountability. Accountability is the thing that I think. It's a key component of partnership, and so the ability that you have to hold a line of accountability across an ecosystem and especially across that many different programs the way you do it, I think is nothing short of miraculous. But in a 2025 world, what's your opinion on the importance of accountability in the automotive ecosystem?

Matt:

Boy. I mean you know, I just think it's fundamental. I think, ultimately, what I would say advice to a friend is measure everything and make sure you're measuring the right things, but then evaluate all those choices you make. You know dealers spend a ton of money on demand creation and conversion and you know making sure you have your GA4 tags configured and doing things so that you understand what's actually happening is critical.

Matt:

And we play that kind of at that program manager level on behalf of brands for dealers and what we see and what we find is the vast majority of these dealer marketing suppliers, website companies, chat tools, trade and tools alike, digital advertising they are so interested in being able to see how they stack up against everyone else and when they're on a shift program, what we do is sit down with them, you know once a quarter, and say here's how you compare to everybody else on the program. And there are things like, you know, dr tools, for example. You can have dramatically different performance on appointment rates, on conversions, on things like that, and it's a lot of times based on you know, do you have a lead gate? What is the user experience? And these independent companies? They don't have a great source of understanding how they compare to somebody else, unless they're getting independent measurement, and so we're able to provide that, and we're able to see really smart companies innovate, change and get better for dealers based on the data we're able to provide them.

MC:

It makes all the sense in the world. To me, Accountability equals innovation. Innovation means move the heavy object forward, provide better experiences for the dealerships and the customers alike car buyers. It just makes perfect sense to me why it works, and I love how you're saying the comparison against, like you have something to cross-reference it against, not just a gut feeling or an intuition. It's like no, we've got hard data here that we can compare against.

Matt:

Yeah, that's right.

MC:

It just means it just makes the difference in the world. So I think that's tremendous. As we wind up here, I want to get your thoughts. I mean, we've talked about websites, what we need to be paying attention to, the click to call conversion type. We've talked about text messaging and the importance there, ai who knew you could, by the way, cram so much information into just a short period of time? But that's what we do on the Dealer Playbook. As you look into 2025, 2026, we know there's going to be more buzz. We know there's going to be things that we latch onto as an industry. We know there's political and legislative factors that everyone's worried about at time of recording. We've got tariffs and things of that nature. From your vantage point, what is the thing that, if we just made a small tweak in that area, would just make your day?

Matt:

Yeah, I think the one other thing, outside of all the things you listed, that we kind of touched on that I would say that is a really important conversation we're having right now is on overall website performance and we released an industry paper in December around basically Google core web vitals, and I think this is a under-talked-about issue and opportunity in the industry. Like less than 1% of dealer websites in North America pass Google core web vitals and there's like three main functions Does it load fast when you poke on it with your finger or on a mouse, does it respond quickly and does the layout shift because elements are loading. And getting those three things right and fast is an underreported opportunity. And here's the thing you can't just go to your website provider and say, speed up my website because they're going to say, well, the DR tool that's loading is really clunky or all these other widgets you've loaded on there, right, we've overcomplicated and loaded them up, and then we put huge images and videos and things like that. So it really takes dealer brand tool provider, web provider program manager working together to fix this.

Matt:

There's some interesting new technical SEO solutions that are helping, but I think focusing on how your website is performing is huge. The study we put out showed that of every $100 of advertising that's sending traffic to a dealer website traffic to a dealer website, $30 is basically paying for the leaky bucket of bad conversion bounce rates from customers being dissatisfied with the load time. So if I leave you with anything, it's this is something you should become familiar with Any any dealer listing, basically Google page, speedwebdev, and you'll get Google's tool. That is basically let you put any URL in mobile or desktop, the page you're on or the domain and find out how your website performs and then have the right conversation with your provider about how you can make things go faster, increase customer experience, increase conversion rank higher, better for organic search and just improve your performance by fixing that leaky bucket.

MC:

Wow, that's amazing, and I couldn't agree more. You at least have the choir of one right here, and I know that many more in the audience are saying yes. Thank you for saying that, because it is a widespread issue in our industry. For sure, matt, I can't thank you enough for joining me on the Dealer Playbook Podcast. How can those listening or watching connect with you?

Matt:

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn If you just look for my name, Matt Van Dyke, Shift Digital. You can find information about us at shiftdigitalcom and we're excited about the opportunities ahead this year. This is such a great business. It's such a fun business to be in the entrepreneurship of dealers. The innovation is just second to none in any other vertical, in any other industry, and it was a pleasure to talk to you today, Michael.

MC:

Thank you, sir. Thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook Podcast. Thank you, hey. Thanks for listening to the Dealer Playbook Podcast. If you enjoyed tuning in, please subscribe, share and hit that like button. You can also join us and the DPD community on social media. Check back next week for a new dealer playbook episode. Thanks so much for joining.

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Michael Cirillo

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