Index
Why portal performance varies and why it is not always your fault
Coches.net: national reach, high cost, medium-high quality leads
AutoScout24 and Autocasión: European profile, better-informed buyer
Wallapop: high volume, cooler leads
Milanuncios: for budget stock and local buyers
How to calculate the real CPL of each portal for your dealership
Seasonality vs actual problem: how to tell them apart
When it makes sense to downgrade or cancel a portal
Dealcar and performance tracking by channel
Frequently asked questions
Why portal performance varies and why it is not always your fault
Car portals experience traffic fluctuations that do not depend on what the dealership does. Changes in the Google algorithm that ranks the portal's pages, seasonal variations in demand (August is the slowest month, March and September are the highest), updates to the portal's interface that affect how ads are displayed, and the entry of more competitors in the same area are factors that affect the number of incoming leads regardless of stock quality or published prices.
That being said, the dealership also influences ad performance in ways that are sometimes not obvious: photo quality, listing completeness, pricing in relation to the current market, and response speed to incoming enquiries.
Read also how to improve ad quality with AI.
Separating these two types of causes is key to making the right decisions: if the problem lies with the portal, complaining to the account manager makes sense. If the problem is with ad quality, the solution lies within the dealership.
Coches.net: national reach, high cost, medium-high quality leads
Coches.net is the portal with the highest traffic volume in Spain for the used vehicle market. Its strength lies in its national reach and the depth of its user base, making it the highest visibility channel for a dealership looking to reach buyers across Spain and not just in their local area.
Its cost is the highest on the market among generalist portals. Plans for professionals start at around 200 to 300 euros per month for basic listings and can go up to 800 euros or more for plans with featured options and preferred positioning. Prices have risen significantly over the last two years, creating tension with many dealerships that do not see a proportional increase in performance.
Check how to use dynamic pricing to improve your ads' positioning.
The type of lead that comes from coches.net is usually a buyer who is already actively looking and who has compared several options before getting in touch. The lead's intent is medium-high, which translates into higher conversion rates than portals with a more passive audience. The price of cars that perform best on coches.net is between 5,000 and 30,000 euros.
The performance of coches.net varies significantly depending on the geographical area. In large cities and metropolitan areas, competition is high and the visibility of an ad without a featured upgrade can be very low. In medium or small towns, competition is lower and basic ads enjoy more relative visibility.
AutoScout24 and Autocasión: European profile, better-informed buyer
AutoScout24, which operates in Spain under the Autocasión brand, holds an intermediate position in traffic volume but with a differentiating feature: a significant portion of its users are buyers who also search in other European markets or who are willing to buy outside their area for a specific vehicle.
This makes it particularly useful for dealerships with import stock or niche vehicles with low supply in the Spanish market, where the buyer's willingness to travel or import expands the potential buyer base.
The cost is slightly lower than coches.net for equivalent plans. The leads it generates have one characteristic: the AutoScout24 buyer has usually researched more before getting in touch and compared more options. This can mean they negotiate more, but also that they are clearer about what they want and, if the car fits, the sale is closed faster.
For high-end or import vehicles, AutoScout24 can be more cost-effective than coches.net, where competition in those segments is usually higher.
Wallapop: high volume, cooler leads
Wallapop has the highest volume of visits of any marketplace in Spain, but its audience has a different profile from specialized car portals. A significant share of Wallapop users browse cars more casually, just as they search for any other second-hand item. This generates a high volume of enquiries but with lower buying intent than specialized portals.
The practical consequence is that the CPL (cost per lead) on Wallapop can be low, but the cost per closed sale is not necessarily so, because the lead-to-sale conversion rate is lower. A Wallapop lead requires more sales effort to turn into a purchase than a coches.net lead.
Where Wallapop works particularly well is in the low-price segment, between 2,000 and 8,000 euros, where the buyer is looking for bargains and competition on specialized portals is lower in terms of free organic visibility. For this segment, Wallapop's business plan can offer a competitive CPL.
For vehicles over 15,000 or 20,000 euros, Wallapop has a less qualified audience and the incoming leads have a lower conversion rate than on specialized portals.
Milanuncios: for budget stock and local buyers
Milanuncios has an audience highly oriented towards the local market and low prices. It is the portal with the highest proportion of buyers looking for cars under 5,000 euros who prefer sellers close to their geographical area. For this specific segment, it can generate leads at a very low cost.
Its limitation is clear: for mid-range or high-end stock, the Milanuncios audience is not the typical buyer. Listing a 20,000-euro car on Milanuncios generates few qualified leads. For cars under 6,000 or 7,000 euros with local buyers, it can be a low-cost complementary channel.
How to calculate the real CPL of each portal for your dealership
A portal's CPL (cost per lead) is the monthly cost of that portal divided by the number of qualified leads it generated that month. A qualified lead is any contact that showed real interest: a call, a WhatsApp message, or a completed form. It does not include an ad view or a price question that went nowhere.
The basic calculation: if you pay 400 euros per month for a coches.net plan and received 32 qualified leads from that portal during the month, your coches.net CPL for that month is 12.5 euros.
Read also how to reduce CPL in a car dealership.
CPL only makes sense when compared with the conversion rate of those leads into sales. If out of those 32 coches.net leads you closed 4 sales, the cost per sale attributable to that portal is 100 euros (400 euros divided by 4 sales). If you pay 150 euros on Wallapop and receive 40 leads but only close 1 sale, the cost per sale is 150 euros—which is higher, even though the CPL is lower.
To perform this calculation correctly, the source of each lead must be registered in the CRM. Without this data, portal analysis is impossible.
See also which portals perform best depending on stock type and location.
Seasonality vs actual problem: how to tell them apart
Used car market seasonality follows a fairly predictable pattern in Spain. The peak months of activity are March, April, May, September, and October. The slowest months are August, January, and part of February. July is intermediate.
Read also what stock to buy in summer and how to manage seasonality.
If leads from a portal drop in August, it is likely seasonality. If leads drop in October compared to October of the previous year, it could be a real problem.
The easiest way to tell the two apart is to compare with the same period of the previous year, not with the previous month. A 30% drop in leads in August compared to July is seasonal and expected. A 30% drop in October compared to October last year warrants investigation.
Factors that may indicate an actual portal issue beyond seasonality include: a recent change in prices or plan conditions (which may have reduced the level of service), a change in the portal's search algorithm (which may have lowered your ads' position), or a significant increase in competition in your area on that portal (more ads from other dealerships competing for the same audience).
The first step when facing a suspicious drop in leads is to check the position of your ads on the portal, searching with the same criteria a buyer would use (location, vehicle type, price range) to verify whether your ads appear in top positions or have dropped significantly.
When it makes sense to downgrade or cancel a portal
Cancelling a portal is a decision with consequences that go beyond the month in which you cancel. The visibility you had on that portal disappears immediately, and if the portal was generating a volume of leads that you are not replacing through another channel, sales can drop.
It makes sense to downgrade or cancel a portal when the cost per sale attributable to that portal is consistently higher than the cost per sale of other available channels, when the plan you have contracted no longer corresponds to your active stock volume, or when the portal has increased its price without a proportional increase in performance.
What is not a sufficient reason to cancel is an isolated bad month. A single month of low performance can be due to seasonality, a one-off portal issue, or simply normal variance. The decision to cancel should be based on at least three or four months of data.
Before cancelling, exploring whether there is a lower-tier plan with lower costs that maintains a minimal presence is often better than leaving the portal entirely.
Check how to sell cars with Google VLA as an alternative to portals.
Dealcar and performance tracking by channel
To calculate the CPL and cost per sale for each portal, every incoming lead needs to have its source channel registered. Dealcar centralizes leads from all portals into a single dashboard with the source registered from the very first contact, allowing you to calculate performance by channel without having to cross-reference data from multiple sources manually.
This visibility allows you to make portal budget decisions based on real data from your dealership, rather than industry averages or the opinion of the portal's account manager.
Centralize your listings at dealcar.io/stock-coches-multipublicacion or request a demo at dealcar.io.
Frequently asked questions
Is it compulsory to be on all major portals to avoid losing sales?
No. Many dealerships generate a sufficient volume of leads with two well-optimized portals plus Google VLA and their own channels. Being on all portals with basic plans is usually less effective than being on two or three with plans that guarantee actual visibility. Scattering your budget across too many portals can lead to a higher CPL than concentrating on the ones that work best for your stock type and location.
What should I do when the portal account manager insists on upgrading the plan to improve performance?
Ask for specific data: how many views your ads are getting under the current plan, what the average position is in search results for your stock's relevant criteria, and how many views the upgraded plan would generate. Without this data, the proposal to upgrade the plan lacks an objective basis. If the manager cannot provide this data, the decision to upgrade is an act of faith, not analysis.
Does it make sense to publish the same car on several portals at the same time?
Yes, and it is standard industry practice. Publishing on multiple portals simultaneously expands your reach to different audiences. Multi-publishing with a single click from management software eliminates double work. The only risk is that if the car is sold through one channel, you must remove the ad from all others immediately to avoid leads for an already sold car.
Do portals penalize ads that are not updated?
Most portals have algorithms that give more visibility to recent or updated ads. An ad that has not been modified for weeks can lose its ranking in search results. Updating the price, refreshing photos, or modifying the description of cars that have been listed the longest helps recover visibility at no extra cost.
