According to Ian MacDonald, head of consumer marketing at Auto Trader: “The social web makes the traditional ‘peer opinion’, as an influence on peoples’ buying behavior, more important than ever. Auto Trader’s Facebook integration enables people to quickly canvas the opinion of their friends, discover new cars, and make their Timelines even more reflective of their lives and ambitions. We will have a real-time indication of how in-demand a particular car is via the volume of people indicating that they ‘want’ that car. We’re delighted to be making buying new cars a more social activity via our New Cars website.”

Future plans include “own” buttons in the Timeline so that users can map out what cars they owned at what point in their lives.

Mobile.de is judged by many to be Germany’s biggest auto platform, with AutoScout24.de in close pursuit. It is an EBay company.

In an interview with the magazine Automobilwoche Mobile.de managing director Malte Krüger said a much smaller number of the 36,000 auto dealers registered with the portal defected to competitors than had been anticipated (article in German).

At the time, many dealers protested the hefty price hike and accused Mobile.de of “misusing its strong position in the market”. In fact, the German market is dominated by the two biggest players – Mobile.de and AutoScout24.de.

“We expected to lose up to 7 percent of the 36,000 dealers with the hike. In the end the defection rate was much lower,” Krüger told the magazine.

Back then Krüger justified the hike with the argument that Mobile.de’s reach stretched continuously over the past years, to the benefit of dealers, but listing prices were left unchanged.

Despite the muted fall-out, Mobile.de felt it was time to “give something back to the dealers” and today announced the launch of a big media campaign on Jan. 15 to increase the platform’s reach still further.

„We increased our marketing budget by 60 percent for this campaign,” said Krüger.

The campaign will be anchored by TV spots produced in the Moroccan desert, and supported by online ads, and longer versions of the TV spot on Facebook and YouTube.

“We expect the campaign to grow our traffic and increase enquiries at our dealers,” Krüger said.

Today is the close of Toyota’s Shareathon,  a ten-day social media event rewarding new car buyers and those who use social media to promote the Toyota brand.  Everyone who buys a Toyota during this event and tweets about it earns a prepaid $500 debit card. With each retweet the car buyer earns another $50, up to $1000. The followers who do the retweeting are each entered into a drawing for a new Prius.

Will it help sell Toyotas? Who knows yet. But it certainly helps promote the brand. It’s an interesting concept that just about any product or publisher could emulate.

In order of most social-media-shared, they are:

1. Volkswagen: The Force: Volkswagen Commercial  – 47.5 million views, 4,813,984 shares (32,618 comments)
2. DC Shoes: Ken Block’s Gymkhana Four; The Hollywood Megamercial – 13.1 million views, 2,111,150 shares (19,115 comments)
3. Kia: Party Rock Anthem-Kia Soul Hamster Commercial – 10.7 million views, 1,556,221 shares (12,748 comments)
4. Nissan: Pôneis Malditos – 13.9 million views, 968,124 shares (25,827 comments)
5. DC Shoes: Ken Block’s Gymkhana Three; The Ultimate Playground – 733,112 shares
6. Chrysler Eminem Super Bowl Commercial – Imported From Detroit – 15.4 million views, 436,016 shares (28,241 comments)
7. BMW 1M – Walls – MPowered Performance Part 1 – 3.0 million views, 407,505 shares (1,922 comments)
8. DC Shoes: Ken Block’s Gymkhana Two; The Infomercial – 341,980 shares
9. Team Hot Wheels – The Yellow Driver’s World Record Jump – 8.1 million views, 294,046 shares (4,177 comments)
10. Volkswagen: Black Beetle – 6.3 million views, 212,290 shares (2,371 comments)

Locanto is run by Yalwa, a German start-up, that operates 38 business directory sites around the world, including the U.S. The look and feel to Yalwa is nearly identical to Locanto.

Every year the daily’s financial analysts evaluate and honor companies which have delivered top financial performances. Among the information considered by the analysts, are the financial statements filed with the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the most recent three years. This year the period 2007 to 2010 was under the spotlight.

In the section for companies with annual revenue below €100 million, AutoScout24.it ended up among the top for sales growth, margins and cash flow.

Adicio’s recruitment, automotive and real estate Web platforms are already optimized for mobile. With the new service, Adicio clients can now offer advertisers their own branded mobile classified presence, with custom content, vanity URLS, flexible color themes, instant alerts and more.

Sony's recruitment mini-site in behalf of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The mini-sites maintain the functionality of Adicio’s full-blown mobile platforms. Job-seekers can use them to see an employer’s latest listings and apply for jobs. Home buyers can view properties and contact Realtors for showings. Auto buyers can see an auto dealer’s inventory and schedule test drives.

“Adicio’s Mobile Mini Sites put job seekers, home shoppers, and car buyers in touch with online classifieds from their mobile phones,” CEO Rick Miller said in a release. “With almost 80 percent of the nation’s population using mobile phones and 71 percent of smartphone users searching for products and services after seeing an ad, this solution merges the power of mobile with the power of advertising to customers on the go.”

It’s a premium service to Adicio clients. Price depends on volume, Chief Alliance Officer Tony Lee told us, and whether the request includes a “wrap” – Adicio parlance for indexing listings from specific advertisers’ sites. “It depends on the number of mobile mini-sites we create for advertisers on behalf of the client,” he said. “Some clients will want a few just for their top advertisers, while others we’ve spoken to anticipate selling hundreds of them each month.”

Adicio’s full release is here.