Carwow – Online Advertiser for New Cars 2026

12:33 pm, July 14, 2026

With ever-tightening ZEV Mandate challenges, not to mention the arrival of Chinese car brands en masse, the new car market is a challenging space to be in.

It’s for this reason alone that car dealers need the right online advertising partner, and in 2026, dealers picked out two firms for special mentions – Autotrader and Google, both of which take home highly commended awards.

But the winner for the fifth time in the last six years is Carwow, with dealers singling out the company for high levels of service and the quality of the leads it generates.

Will Jackson, director of retail at Carwow, said the award was very humbling as it shows how much dealers value Carwow’s offering.

‘The dealers continue to see and acknowledge Carwow from a new car standpoint and that’s a real validation for what we do.

‘We’ve got real plans to speed up rather than slow down.”

Over the past year, Carwow has focused heavily on improving its dealer service by delivering better-qualified leads and reducing the amount of work dealers have to do.

‘We’ve been really leaning into improving the retailer experience on new car, centred around operational efficiency as well as improving ROI,’ said Jackson.

‘We’re now doing things like qualifying the customer up front on behalf of the retailers, so getting their phone numbers, getting their PCP details, getting their part exchange details and feeding that into our partners so they have a much, much more qualified lead.’

The company has also introduced new ways of keeping customers engaged after an enquiry has been made.

‘We are now nudging the customer when they don’t respond in order to keep the conversations going so that the retailers don’t have to,’ he said.

‘They’re saving time and they’re also getting more sales off the back of it. So it’s a real win-win.’

Asked why dealers continue to vote Carwow number one, Jackson pointed to the quality of enquiries generated by the platform.

‘From a fairly basic standpoint, we’re able to provide a high volume of high-intent enquiries,’ he said.

‘We like to think those enquiries are getting more and more increasing in intent over time as we layer in things like OEM finance calculators, as we’re qualifying the customers up front, and we’re starting to take a lot of the legwork from the retailers.’

He added that, with the new car market remaining challenging, Carwow is helping retailers achieve their objectives.

‘We’re able to provide high volumes of high-intent enquiries into retailers each and every day to help them achieve their own objectives, whether that’s hitting volume targets or selling difficult stock units,’ he said.

Thanking dealers for their continued support, Jackson added: ‘We’re really, really thankful and grateful for our retail partners for voting for us each and every year that they do.

‘We absolutely love winning this award.’