Built by someone who has sat in the chair.
DealerSignals exists because the automotive market needed a source of truth that answers to dealers — not to the vendors selling to them. No vendor relationships. No sponsored rankings. No agenda. Just honest data about what's actually happening in dealer technology.
Will Burke — 22 years in automotive, on both sides of the table.
Will's career spans virtually every corner of the automotive retail ecosystem — from selling cars on the lot to executive-level roles in automotive technology, dealer association relationships, conference speaking, auction, floorplan, and marketing. He has represented major automotive technology brands as the face of their dealer relationships and built trust networks across the independent dealer community.
That experience gave him an uncomfortable front-row seat to a persistent problem: the data that shapes how vendors price their products, build their pitches, and target dealers is almost entirely produced by the vendors themselves. Dealers are making million-dollar technology decisions based on vendor-funded research.
Will has walked away from roles when he felt the mission had shifted away from serving dealers. That conviction is what DealerSignals is built on.
"Dealers have been paying for data produced by the vendors who sell to them for too long. Market intelligence should serve the people making the decisions — not the people selling the solutions."
The map that the automotive technology market has been missing.
Thousands of dealerships. Hundreds of software vendors. Billions of dollars in technology spending. And until DealerSignals, no independent, structured, continuously updated source of truth on how that technology is actually being adopted across the market.
We built DealerSignals to change that — not as a vendor-aligned research firm, not as a dealer consulting practice, and not as a data broker. We scan dealer websites directly, detect the software signals embedded in their pages, and publish what we find — aggregated and anonymized — for anyone to access for free.
Our data has no agenda. It reflects what the market is doing — not what any vendor wishes it were doing.
Built for dealers. Useful to everyone in the ecosystem.
Independent dealers use DealerSignals to benchmark their tech stack, understand what competitors are running, and make more informed decisions before the next vendor sales call. That's who this was built for.
But the data is useful to anyone who needs an honest picture of the market — franchise dealers, dealer groups, automotive consultants, industry speakers, and researchers who want market intelligence that wasn't produced by a vendor.
Automotive SaaS vendors use DealerSignals too — for competitive intelligence and understanding real market penetration. We serve them honestly, with the same independent data. We just don't answer to them.
How we collect, normalize, and publish market intelligence.
Our methodology is transparent. We explain how data is collected at a level that establishes credibility without disclosing proprietary implementation details.
Signal Collection
We scan publicly accessible dealer websites using an automated headless browser — the same technology search engines use to index the web. We observe what software signals are detectable on each dealer's homepage, inventory pages, and vehicle detail pages. These are publicly observable characteristics that any visitor to those sites could see. We do not access private systems, internal databases, or any data that isn't publicly available.
Vendor Fingerprinting
Each scan runs against a library of 300+ vendor fingerprints — unique patterns in page source code, script URLs, iframe embeds, and JavaScript variables that identify specific software platforms. Fingerprints are continuously refined as vendors update their implementations. Each fingerprint carries a confidence level; low-confidence detections are excluded from published data.
Segment Classification
Every dealer in our dataset is classified into one of three segments: franchise (OEM-affiliated), independent, or buy-here-pay-here (BHPH). Classification is based on detectable signals — franchise OEM scripts, BHPH lender widgets, and other observable indicators. This segmentation allows the data to be filtered meaningfully — what franchise dealers run is genuinely different from what independent dealers run, and treating them as a single population produces misleading averages.
Anonymization & Aggregation
Detected signals are aggregated into anonymized market-level statistics before any data is published. Individual dealer records are never exposed in our product. Published data represents market patterns — not individual business behavior. This is an architectural decision, not a privacy setting. No subscriber at any level can access individual dealer data through DealerSignals.
Taxonomy & Classification
Detected vendors are assigned to one of 14 technology categories — from DMS and CRM to Paid Advertising and Trade-In tools. The taxonomy reflects how the independent dealer market actually uses technology, not how vendors prefer to categorize themselves. Categories are refined over time as the market evolves; SMS tools and service scheduling software were removed when scan data confirmed they produce no detectable signals on dealer websites.
Publication & Updates
State-level reports are published as scanner runs complete. Coverage expands alphabetically — dealers are added and re-scanned on a rolling basis. Data is updated with each new scan rather than on a fixed calendar cadence. The goal is the most current picture possible, not a snapshot that ages between quarterly updates.
14 technology categories. 300+ vendor signals.
Our taxonomy covers the software categories that matter for independent, franchise, and BHPH dealers — refined based on what's actually detectable in the market, not what vendors wish we tracked.
Website Platforms
Dealership website providers and CMS platforms.
DMS Platforms
Dealer management systems — the operational core.
CRM Platforms
Sales and customer relationship management tools.
Online Deal Tools
Payment calculators, deal starters, and online financing tools.
Inventory Management
Pricing, merchandising, and inventory intelligence platforms.
F&I Platforms
Finance and insurance tools, credit apps, and lender embeds.
Reputation Management
Review generation, monitoring, and response platforms.
Chat & Messaging
Live chat, AI chat, and customer messaging tools.
Data & Analytics
Tag managers, analytics platforms, and BI tools.
Paid Advertising
Ad pixels, call tracking, retargeting, and automotive ad platforms.
Trade-In & Valuation
Trade-in widgets, instant offer tools, and valuation embeds.
In-House Finance
BHPH lender widgets and in-house financing tools.
Franchise OEM
OEM-certified scripts and franchise-specific platform signals.
Listing Platforms
Third-party listing and marketplace integrations.
Taxonomy note: Categories are included only when they produce meaningful, detectable signals across our dealer dataset. Service scheduling and SMS categories were removed after scan data confirmed near-zero detection rates — those tools operate as backend systems with no web-detectable footprint. We report what we can actually measure.
The problem with automotive tech data before DealerSignals.
The automotive technology market is large, growing, and strategically important — and until DealerSignals, almost all of its market data came from the vendors competing within it. That is a structural problem that produces predictable distortions.
Vendor-supplied market data is not neutral data.
When a vendor publishes a market share figure, they are publishing a commercial claim. The denominator is chosen to maximize the number, the numerator is defined to include as many installations as possible, and the methodology is rarely disclosed because it would not survive scrutiny. This is not unique to automotive — it is standard operating procedure for B2B SaaS market communication everywhere.
The downstream consequences are real. Dealers evaluate technology alternatives using market context that has been filtered through the commercial interests of the vendors providing it. They sit across the table from salespeople armed with market share claims that have no independent verification.
DealerSignals gives dealers the same kind of independent market context that institutional buyers in other industries take for granted — data that wasn't produced by the people trying to sell them something.
Survey-based research has its own limitations.
The alternative to vendor-supplied data has historically been survey-based industry research. This approach has genuine value for capturing dealer sentiment and experience. For measuring technology adoption at the market level, it has well-documented limitations.
Response bias is the most persistent problem — dealers who respond to technology surveys are disproportionately technology-engaged. Self-reported software usage conflates contracted, implemented, and actively-used platforms. Sample sizes are rarely sufficient for confident state or segment-level analysis. And surveys are expensive to run at the frequency needed to capture a market that moves monthly.
Signal-based measurement produces more accurate, more current, and more methodologically defensible adoption data than survey research for the specific question of what software dealerships are actually running. It doesn't replace qualitative research — it complements it with a ground truth layer that has been missing.
The independence commitment.
DealerSignals does not take advertising. We do not accept sponsored content or paid placements. We do not have commercial relationships with any automotive software vendor that influence our data. We do not represent any dealer association or buying group that creates obligations to particular vendors.
This independence is structural — built into the business model, not maintained by individual discretion. A market intelligence platform that takes vendor advertising cannot publish data that harms its advertisers. We have structured DealerSignals to eliminate those conflicts rather than manage them. That is the only way the data stays trustworthy.
How we handle data responsibly.
🔒 No Individual Dealer Data Published
DealerSignals does not publish individual dealership data at any access level. Anonymization happens before data enters the product layer. This is architectural, not configurable — no feature or subscription tier exposes individual dealer records.
📋 Publicly Observable Sources Only
All signals we collect are from publicly accessible dealer websites. We do not access private systems, require dealer credentials, or collect data through any means other than observing what is publicly visible on dealer web pages — the same information any shopper or competitor could see.
✅ Methodology Transparency
We document how data is collected, classified, and published. Known limitations in coverage are acknowledged openly. We do not interpolate missing data or publish figures below confidence thresholds. If we don't have enough data to say something confidently, we don't say it.
🔄 No Retroactive Changes
Published data is not retroactively modified. If methodology updates change how we calculate a metric, the change is applied to new data going forward and documented. Historical data retains its original values so trend comparisons remain valid over time.
Questions about our methodology?
We believe in transparency. If you have questions about how we collect or publish data, we want to answer them.