Jupiter noted that 70 percent of the online auto sites do not allow consumers to check the inventory of a particular dealer. New York City-based Jupiter acknowledged that there has been some progress in automotive sites working together. On average, consumers spend more time at automotive research sites than at the automaker sites themselves, the report said. Jupiter also found that the average visit to an automotive research site was 19 minutes per month, compared to 11 minutes per month for automaker sites. The report also found that automotive research services drive only 18 percent of their traffic to automaker sites or third-party buying services.
Portals are the single largest source of traffic for automaker and third-party sites.
Automaker sites receive 36 percent of their traffic from portals and third-party sites garner 47 percent of their traffic from them. Chaotic Marketing Jupiter is not the first research firm to question the auto industry's online methods. A report issued in February by Forrester Research criticized automakers for using chaotic marketing techniques online. Forrester urged carmakers to unify online and offline marketing efforts, as television and the Web begin to overlap more often.