Check a budget against the average store.
The fields open on the NADA average itself, so every variance reads zero until a real figure replaces one. Total spend and units sold are enough on their own; the channel split is optional and is where the interesting part usually is.
Advertising cost per new vehicle sold
$739
on benchmark per vehicle, against the NADA Data 2025 average of $739.
- Index, cost per vehicle (100 = average)
- 100
- Index, total spend (100 = average)
- 100
- Total against the average store
- on benchmark against the average store
By channel, against the published shares
The four channel figures account for the whole budget.
At $9,527 a month this line sits near the $9,527 NADA average. The average is a description of what stores do, not evidence that it works, and this is the line least often asked to justify itself.
Allocated across the four lines: $586,246. Unallocated: $0. SEO and website, per month: $9,527.
The benchmarks, and what they are worth.
Every figure the tool compares against comes from NADA Data 2025, the annual financial profile of franchised new-car dealerships in the United States. They are printed here so the comparison can be checked rather than trusted.
- $586,246 total, $739 per new vehicle sold. The per-vehicle figure is the more portable of the two, because it survives a comparison between stores of different sizes. It is also the one most easily gamed, since a store can lower it by selling more units at less gross rather than by advertising more efficiently.
- Search engine marketing, $123,698, 21.1%. The largest single line. It produces from the first day and stops producing the day it stops being funded, which is the property that makes it easy to measure and easy to become dependent on.
- Third-party listing sites, $117,249, 20.0%. Rents an audience on a domain the store does not own. Whatever the arrangement is worth, none of it accrues to the store's own visibility, and it stops the moment the invoice does.
- SEO and website, $114,318, 19.5%. The one line that compounds, and the one nearly nobody can state without asking a vendor. This is the subject of the tool and the reason it exists.
- Everything else, $230,981, 39.4%. Broadcast, print, direct mail, events and sponsorships together take less than the three search lines.
One limitation to state plainly. NADA describes franchised new-vehicle dealerships, so an independent used car lot, a service-only business, a powersports or golf cart dealer should read this as directional rather than as a peer group. The shape of the split usually holds; the absolute figures do not.
How to read the result without drawing the wrong conclusion.
An average is a description of what stores do. It is not evidence that what they do works, and treating it as a target is the most common misuse of a benchmark like this one.
- Below average is not automatically efficient. A low cost per vehicle can mean disciplined spending, and it can equally mean the store bought volume with discount and moved the cost from the advertising ledger to the gross line. Read it against gross per unit or it says very little.
- Above average is not automatically wasteful. A market entry, a franchise change, a new rooftop or a recovery from a reputation problem all legitimately cost more than steady state. The direction of travel across three years is more informative than any single year against a national mean.
- An unallocated remainder is the most useful output here. When the four channel figures do not add up to the total, the gap is usually spend nobody at the store owns: a legacy contract, a vendor auto-renewing, a bundled line that predates the current management. Finding it is worth more than reallocating anything.
- The split matters more than the total. Two stores spending the same amount can own completely different assets at the end of the year. Money into search engine marketing and listing sites buys attention that ends with the invoice. Money into the site and its visibility buys something that keeps working, if it was spent on the site rather than on the platform hosting it. How that return gets calculated →
The SEO line is the one nobody can state. Find out what it is currently producing.
Get the baseline auditQuestions about dealership advertising budgets.
How much does the average car dealership spend on advertising?
$586,246 a year, or $739 per new vehicle sold, per NADA Data 2025. Inside that, search engine marketing takes $123,698 (21.1%), third-party listing sites $117,249 (20.0%), and SEO and website optimisation $114,318 (19.5%). Those three account for 60.6% of the budget, which means dealership advertising is now mostly a search budget with some broadcast attached.
What is a good advertising cost per vehicle sold?
The NADA average is $739, and that describes what dealerships do rather than what works. A store below it is not automatically efficient, because the figure says nothing about gross retained or how much volume was bought with discount. A store above it is not automatically wasteful. The useful reading is the direction of travel across several years against the store's own gross per unit.
How much of the budget should go to SEO?
The average store puts 19.5% into SEO and website optimisation, which is $114,318 a year or roughly $9,527 a month. Treating that as the correct share is a mistake in both directions, because the average is a description of behaviour rather than evidence of effectiveness. The sharper question is what share of it is an owned asset that survives a vendor change, and what share is rent on a platform. What the platform actually constrains →
Why can most dealerships not state their SEO spend?
Because it is bundled inside a website or platform contract rather than invoiced separately, so no document at the store shows it on its own. Nobody signs off on $9,527 a month; they sign off on a platform. Ask the vendor to state in writing what portion of the monthly fee is allocated to SEO, content and optimisation. A vendor unwilling to state it has answered the question.
Where does the benchmark data come from?
NADA Data 2025, the National Automobile Dealers Association's annual financial profile of franchised new-car dealerships in the United States. Every benchmark here is from that report and is printed on this page so it can be checked. Because it describes franchised new-vehicle stores, an independent lot, a service-only business or a powersports dealer should read the comparison as directional.
Does the tool store or send the numbers entered?
No. The arithmetic runs entirely in the browser, nothing is transmitted, and there is no email gate. The figures stay on the device and are gone when the tab closes. The SEO ROI calculator → works the same way.
One line in that budget is supposed to compound.
Search engine marketing and listing sites stop the day the invoice does. The site and its visibility are the only part a store owns at the end of the year. The baseline audit reports what that line is currently producing, and whether any engine names the store at all.