The Avoid List

That's a smart move, Scott. Knowing who to avoid saves more money than knowing who to hire. Let me dig into the agencies that have reputations for the opposite of what you're looking for.

Scott, I want to be straight with you on this one. I'm not going to fabricate negative reviews or pile on companies without evidence. What I can do, which is more useful, is identify the types of agencies and specific names where there are documented structural problems that run directly counter to your four criteria. Some of these are big names that dealers default to because the OEM told them to, not because the results justified it.1

Here's the "do not call" list, and more importantly, the why behind each one.

1. The "OEM Approved Vendor" Trap — Generally

Before I name names, you need to understand the game. Steve Stauning, a well-known voice on DealerRefresh, posted a thread arguing that the waste and fraud in OEM digital co-op programs is "a feature, not a bug." He described these programs as profit centers for the OEM, where those running them don't care if any metal is moved as long as they score their bonuses. He went further: Much of the waste he sees is the direct result of either nefarious or inattentive digital marketing vendors, calling this also "a feature, not a bug," because truly managing a dealer's marketing budget to maximize ROI doesn't always come with high margins if you have to hire competent people and provide full transparency.

This isn't conspiracy theory. It's the business model. When an agency gets paid by the OEM to manage co-op spend, their client is the manufacturer, not you. You're the product, not the customer. Any agency whose primary revenue stream comes from being an OEM-certified digital provider should be scrutinized harder than anyone else on your vendor list.2

2. Dealer.comdealer.comCited · 2 queries (Cox Automotive)

This is the elephant in the room for most franchise dealers. Dealer.comdealer.comCited · 2 queries is part of the Cox Automotive ecosystem (alongside VinSolutions, Autotrader, and Kelley Blue Book). They bundle website hosting with digital marketing services, and that's where the problem starts.

The structural issues for a dealer in your position: They operate as a closed ecosystem. Your website, your inventory feed, your advertising, and your analytics all live inside their walled garden. Their platform, like most major dealer website platforms, renders inventory through JavaScript, and AI crawlers cannot reliably parse that. Inventory visibility in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity will be structurally limited unless you layer schema injection on top. That's a growing problem given where search is heading, and it's one you're already ahead of with Tower Tools and GEO Page Builder.

More practically: their pricing is not transparent, contracts tend to be long-term, and when you try to leave, your data stays behind. That violates your "honest" and "affordable" criteria on day one. And the people managing your campaigns are typically junior staff running templated strategies across hundreds of accounts. Your two rooftops don't get individual attention. They get a playbook.

Why to avoid: Locked ecosystem, opaque pricing, long contracts, template strategies, data hostage model. The opposite of everything you want.

3. Force Marketing

Force Marketing is a large, Atlanta-based automotive advertising agency that works across paid search, display, and social. They're big enough to have real technology and scale, but that scale is exactly the problem for a two-store operator.

Force Marketing positions itself around dynamic capabilities and campaigns like Performance Max and Vehicle Ads shopping campaigns. They serve large dealer groups and OEM programs. For a three-rooftop independent group, you're going to be a small fish in a very big pond.

The DealerRefresh community has consistently flagged agencies of this size for a specific failure mode: vendors that run scripts to increase keyword CPCs 100-150% in the last three to four days of the month to spend out the budget, then brag about impression share even though campaigns go dark by 1 to 2 PM. That thread documented vendors regularly extending geographic targeting in the last 10 days of the month just to burn through ad spend, with dealers in Tennessee seeing ads for dealerships in Philadelphia. Force isn't the only agency this applies to, but their business model (large volume, OEM-aligned) creates the conditions where this kind of negligence thrives.3

Why to avoid: Too big, OEM-aligned incentive structure, your account size won't justify senior-level attention.

4. Team Velocity

Team Velocity markets their "Apollo" platform as an all-in-one customer experience solution: websites, paid media, service marketing, digital retailing, and marketing automation bundled together. It sounds impressive on a demo.4

The problem is documented. On DealerRefresh, dealers seeking feedback on Team Velocity shared mixed and cautious results, with one dealer reporting negative ROI across two markets and questionable attribution practices. The consensus indicated that potential clients should be skeptical of their metrics and expect early "low-hanging fruit" gains that may not sustain long-term value. One poster noted that they had seen Team Velocity's paid search perform really well "through a hacked attribution system."

That phrase should stop you cold. If an agency's results look amazing because of how they measure, not because of what they deliver, you're paying for a magic show, not marketing.

Team Velocity is best understood as a dealership customer-experience and marketing platform that can also support search and paid media inside a connected retail environment, meaning paid search isn't their core competency. It's a bolt-on inside a bigger platform play. For a dealer who specifically wants competent, focused paid search and paid social management, Team Velocity is trying to sell you a whole house when you need a roof.

Why to avoid: Bundled platform play where PPC is a side dish, documented attribution concerns, complexity that exceeds what a two-store operator needs.

5. Generic PPC Agencies Claiming "Automotive Expertise"

This is the category that will waste the most time in your search. Browse any agency directory (DesignRush, Clutch, G2) and you'll find hundreds of agencies listed under "Automotive PPC" that have never set foot on a dealership floor. They're web shops in Hyderabad, Dubai, or Eastern Europe charging $25-$49/hour with nice case studies from completely unrelated industries.

The most popular hourly rate among automotive PPC companies listed on SuperbCompanies is $25-$49/hour, with 68 companies (nearly 42%) offering services in that range. That price point tells you everything. At $25-$49/hour, you're getting someone who has never heard of co-op compliance, doesn't know what a VDP is, has no idea how to structure Vehicle Listing Ads around your actual inventory feed, and will run the same generic Google Ads playbook they'd run for a plumber or a dentist.

Names to watch out for specifically: any agency on those directory sites whose case studies are all e-commerce, SaaS, or "local services" with no dealership-specific work. If they can't show you a live dealer account they're managing right now, with dealership-specific KPIs (cost per lead by department, VDP views, phone calls, walk-ins), walk away.

Why to avoid: No automotive knowledge, template strategies, can't handle OEM compliance, co-op, or inventory-specific campaigns.

6. PureCars (Conditional)

PureCars isn't a bad company. They work directly with top OEMs including GM, Stellantis, Kia, and Honda, so they know your brands. But they fail your criteria for a specific reason: they're not really a PPC agency. They're a Customer Data Platform with advertising services attached.

PureCars produces the most value for dealers who have internal marketing capacity to actually use the platform. A single-rooftop dealer without a marketing manager will get less out of it than a mid-sized or enterprise group with a dedicated team. Their pricing is custom, quote-based, and not published, which already puts a ding on "affordable" and "honest." And the real value requires you to have someone in-house who can interpret the data and act on it daily. For a two-store group where you're the DP, building Tower Tools, managing operations, and developing your team, you don't have that bandwidth right now.

PureCars is the kind of partner that makes sense when you have a full-time digital marketing director on payroll. Until then, they'll oversell you on capabilities you can't fully leverage, and you'll pay premium prices for 40% of the value.

Why to avoid (for now): Overbuilt for your current team size, opaque pricing, requires dedicated internal marketing staff to extract full value.5

Summary: The Five Red Flags That Apply Across All of These

When you're vetting anyone, the moment you hear any of these, end the conversation:

"We own the ad accounts." Your data, your accounts. Period. If they won't give you admin access to Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, and GA4, they're building a hostage situation, not a partnership.

"Here's our standard automotive package." Standard means template. Template means your Kia store in Joliet and your Hyundai store in Matteson get the same playbook as a Toyota store in Tampa. That's lazy.

Long-term contracts with no performance exit clause. If they're good, they don't need to lock you in. If they need 12 months guaranteed, it's because they know you'll value out before then.

They report on impressions and clicks, not leads and cost-per-lead by department. Vanity metrics are how bad agencies hide. A good partner reports on calls, form submissions, and walk-in attribution, by department (sales, service, parts), not just "you got 50,000 impressions this month."

They can't name their account manager for your store before you sign. If you don't know who's touching your campaigns, you're a number, not a client.