What you can ask

Ask your store a question.

These are the questions dealers ask Insights IQ, word for word, and the kind of answer that comes back. The same questions work in Claude and ChatGPT. Scroll to the bottom for a complete report built from a single question.

The question library

In a dealer's words.

Every one of these is answered from your store's real data. Every answer states the store, the exact dates, and whether the numbers are new, used, or both.

Advertising

“How's my ad budget pacing this month? Search ads and vehicle listing ads separately.” “Which campaigns raised spend while lead conversions fell?” “What share of my search budget is buying my own name?” “Compare Performance Max and Shopping. Which one sends visitors who actually shop?” “Which models am I advertising that I barely have on the lot?” “How did Meta do last month, and did any of it turn into a sale?” “What should I ask whoever runs my ads before Friday's call?”

Vendors

“Which vendor sends shoppers who actually engage?” “Give me three months on my third-party listing vendor: what I paid, what they drove, what sold.” “Which vendors' spend went up while engagement went down? Draft the email.” “Which of my sold units trace back to a vendor, and at what cost per sale?”

Inventory

“Are any of my vehicles missing from my vehicle ads entirely? List them by stock number.” “Which cars are getting plenty of attention but still aren't selling?” “Which aging units are shoppers barely seeing?” “How many vehicles are missing photos across all my stores?” “Which models do shoppers want that I'm not stocking?”

Website & lead conversions

“Where did last week's lead conversions come from, and what moved?” “How much of my traffic last week was bots?” “Which forms do people start and abandon?” “Is my conversion tracking actually working?” “How fast is my site compared to the dealers down the road?”

Reports & what's broken

“Pull my monthly report and give me the three things my GM needs to see.” “What alerts are open right now, and which one costs me the most?” “Is my inventory feed importing? Is anything broken?” “What changed since I last checked?”

Dealer groups

“Every store, last week vs. the week before. Who slipped?” “Rank my stores by what needs my attention first.” “Which store has the worst vehicle-ad coverage?” “Build the month-end scorecard for the whole group as a one-page report.”

Your own files

“Compare the appointment log I uploaded to last month's lead conversions by source.” “What did the agency's budget sheet say we'd spend on vehicle listing ads, and what did we actually spend?”

Built-in briefings

Built-in reports, one tap each.

These are waiting in Insights IQ, and in Claude or ChatGPT once Dealer Insights is added. Pick one, pick a store, done. Each gives you a phone-length version first and offers a shareable one-page report.

Every morning

Daily Marketing Pulse

Yesterday: website activity and lead conversions vs. the day before, new alerts, and whether the ad budget is on pace.

Weekly

Weekly Performance Summary

Last full week vs. the week before: traffic, lead conversions, vendors, budget pace, and alerts. The two or three changes that matter and what drove them.

Monthly

Month-End Scorecard

The full report card for the most recent completed month: findings, highlights, spend vs. budget, and the one thing to fix.

Any time

Vehicle Ad Check-Up

Cars missing from your vehicle ads, cars getting attention but not selling, aging cars shoppers never see, and how fast new arrivals start showing.

Before the vendor call

Vendor Accountability Report

One vendor, three months: what you paid, the traffic and engagement they drove, lead conversions, which vehicles they promoted, and any sold units traced back. Facts you could read to the vendor on the call.

Any time

Performance Max vs. Shopping

Both vehicle-ad types get clicks. This compares what the visitors do next, per visit, on mobile and desktop, and where they drop off.

Any time

How's my ad budget pacing?

On pace, over, or under, in dollars and percent, search ads and vehicle listing ads separately.

Weekly

Where did my lead conversions come from?

Last week's lead conversions traced to the sources that drove them, compared to the week before, with anything that moved a lot flagged.

When something feels off

Is my tracking and inventory feed healthy?

A plumbing check: is the inventory feed importing, is conversion tracking working, what's affected, and who you'd call to fix it.

Groups · weekly

Group Weekly Summary

Every store, last week vs. the week before. Who improved most, who slipped most, alerts by store, ranked by what needs attention first.

Groups · monthly

Group Month-End Scorecard

The month, store by store: traffic, lead conversions, vendor highlights, spend vs. budget. Strongest, weakest, biggest problems.

Then keep going

Every answer ends with the next question

Two or three follow-ups in your voice, computed from what it just found. Tap one.

One question, the whole report

This came back from a single sentence.

A dealer asked: “Compare my Performance Max and Shopping campaigns. Which one sends visitors who actually shop?” Here is the report, condensed. Store name withheld. Numbers real.

Built by the dealer's AI from Dealer Insights data · Sep 11, 2026

A Hyundai store in Texas · Vehicle listing ads · New + used

Performance Max vs. Shopping: which one sends visitors who actually shop?

Aug 13 – Sep 9, 2026 (28 days), compared with Jul 16 – Aug 12. Website behavior from GA4 sessions tagged to each Google Ads campaign; spend, impressions, and clicks are net Google Ads figures.

Performance Max · 3 campaigns
29.4
lead conversions per 1,000 visits · 2,484 visits · $6,039 spend · $82.72 per lead conversion
Shopping · 2 active campaigns
16.6
lead conversions per 1,000 visits · 1,148 visits · $2,525 spend · $132.92 per lead conversion

The short version

Performance Max wins, and it wins on the click and after it. It earns the click at a higher rate and a lower cost, its visitors browse the lot instead of looking at one car, and they raise their hand about 1.8× as often per visit. Shopping visitors are not bad traffic. They engage at a similar rate and look harder at the specific car they clicked. But they land on that one vehicle page, look at its photos, and leave without searching inventory. The drop-off is between the landing page and the first form or call, not inside the form: Shopping visitors who do start a form finish it more often.

Read the visit-based numbers with one caveat. Dealer Insights' site-wide check flags 85% of all sessions Aug 13 – Sep 9 as automated, up from 48% the period before. The figures here are limited to sessions tagged to these five campaigns, and their click-to-visit ratios look normal, which is a good sign the bot traffic is hitting the site through other doors. Still, treat per-visit rates as directional until the bot source is identified.

Top to bottom, side by side

MetricPerf. MaxShopping
1 · Did shoppers show up?
Click-through rate5.99%0.90%
Cost per click$1.70$1.81
Clicks that became a website visit70%82%
2 · Did they shop once they landed?
Engagement rate78.5%74.3%
Time engaged per visit116 s71 s
Pages per visit4.622.07
Inventory searches per visit2.930.47
Vehicle pages per visit0.821.38
Photo views per visit9.4611.90
3 · Did they raise their hand?
Form starts per 1,000 visits55.633.1
Form finish rate25.4%36.8%
Lead conversions per 1,000 visits29.416.6
Click-to-calls per 1,000 visits20.15.2
Cost per lead conversion$82.72$132.92

Click-through rate isn't apples to apples: Shopping ads render as product tiles on Google Search and rack up impressions Performance Max never sees. Cost per click and everything below the click are the fair comparison.

Where Shopping visitors drop off

Shopping wins exactly two things after the click: vehicle pages per visit and photo views. That is the profile of a visitor who lands directly on the car in the ad, studies it, and stops. They run an inventory search one-sixth as often, see less than half as many pages, and stay 45 seconds less. Because they never move from the one car to the rest of the lot, they start a form 40% less often and tap to call one-quarter as often.

Performance Max has its own leak, concentrated in one campaign: the New-vehicle Performance Max campaign logged 31 form starts and 1 submission (3.2% finish), against 44.4% for the Focus campaign and 22.6% for Used. That single campaign is where most of Performance Max's finish-rate deficit comes from.

Does the gap hold on mobile and desktop?

Yes on both, though desktop narrows it. Mobile is where the money is (73–86% of visits) and mobile is where Shopping loses hardest: Performance Max mobile visitors convert 1.8× as often and call 4× as often. On desktop the two are closer, but Shopping's desktop figure rests on 5 lead conversions from 147 visits and is not a number to plan around.

How this compares with Jul 16 – Aug 12

Both improved, and the reasons are visible in the campaign list. The Performance Max Focus campaign went from $94 to $1,105 in spend and is now the best converter of the five, with the lowest cost per click. The Shopping Focus campaign, which spent $805 last period for zero lead conversions, is effectively gone, and Used Shopping was scaled up. That is real progress, but it moved Shopping from “not working” to “half as good as Performance Max per visit.”

What to ask whoever runs the ads

  1. New Performance Max: 31 form starts, 1 submission. Which landing page and which form is that campaign driving to, and can they reproduce the form on a phone?
  2. Desktop Performance Max form starts. 116 starts per 1,000 visits on desktop against 35 on mobile, with 17.6% finished, same shape last period. Is the form-start event firing on something that isn't a form?
  3. Shopping landing pages. Where does a Shopping click land, and what does the path from that vehicle page to “similar vehicles” look like on mobile?
  4. Zero click-to-calls on New Shopping (561 visits). Are call assets and click-to-call tracking present on that landing experience?
  5. Confirm the Shopping Focus campaign is paused and where its budget went.
  6. Can the Performance Max Focus campaign take more? What limits it: asset group, inventory count, budget cap?
  7. Bot traffic. 85% of site sessions this period were automated. Ask for the invalid-click report for these dates.

Source: Dealer Insights, Google Ads campaign performance (shopper engagement view, vehicle listing ads network) and GA4 session behavior tagged by campaign, Aug 13 – Sep 9, 2026 and Jul 16 – Aug 12, 2026. Lead conversions = form + chat + voice + video submissions; click-to-calls counted separately. Spend is net of agency fees. Condensed for this page; the dealer's copy includes the full device tables and campaign-level detail.

Seven questions for the agency, a caveat the dealer needed to know, and a verdict they can act on. Nobody built a pivot table. It took about ninety seconds.

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