Posts Tagged ‘autotrader.com’

Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News and owner of Philly.com, just signed with AutoTrader.com for its auto listings and a print / online advertising package for private sellers. An online-only ad option will link users directly back to the AutoTrader.com site.

When online visitors access the Autos section of Philly.com they’ll find local and national new, used and certified-pre-owned vehicle listings for sale by both dealers and private owners. They’ll be able as well to research cars, compare vehicle prices, read reviews of specific models of interest, and learn about other auto-related topics. Read the rest of this entry »

Hertz Rent2Buy, the online place to buy former Hertz rental vehicles,  has teamed up with AutoTrader.com, to list Hertz for-sale vehicles on the auto site.

Phase one of the team-up will place on AutoTrader.com 3000 or more vehicles from 2500 Hertz locations in 20 U.S. states.

It’s not just another car sale, though. Hertz is offering a 3-day test rental of its rentals-turned-sales. Consumers who are considering a specific vehicle can pay to rent it, drive it around, get it inspected, and then either opt out of the buy or get their rental fee waived when they buy the car, truck, or SUV from the Rent2Buy site.

Hertz’s Rent2Buy program provides a unique option for consumers searching for a previously-owned car, truck or SUV,” said Chip Perry, AutoTrader.com President and CEO, in the announcement. “By partnering with AutoTrader.com, Hertz will be able to reach the largest nationwide audience of in-market car buyers anywhere in the US.”

Hertz Rent2Buy vehicles have been driven no more than 50,000 miles with many still under original factory warranty.

With the launch of its multimedia Heart & Mind brand campaign, and a resurge of the U.S. auto market, AutoTrader.com reached a record 1.02 million unique visitors on Tuesday, May 18, one day prior to its twelfth anniversary. The site launched May 19, 1998 as Autoconnect.com

“AutoTrader.com has built a brand that people know as a top on-line destination for car shopping,” said AutoTrader.com President and CEO Chip Perry, in the announcement.  “AutoTrader.com has continued to grow our traffic as more and more consumers go on-line to do their research, compare models, review pricing and specials and find dealers.  With the economy picking up and the auto industry recovering, we expect to continue growing our influence and our site traffic even more.  I believe surpassing 1 million unique monthly visitors in a day as we did last Tuesday is just the beginning.”

Four distinct marketing campaigns are credited for the jump in visitors. These include the Heart & Mind broadcast, digital and social media ad campaign; AutoTrader.com sponsorships on TNT of the NBA and several Major League Baseball teams; numerous auto show exhibits; and ongoing collaborations to power automotive classifieds for traditional media in various U.S. regions.

AutoTrader.com regularly surpasses 15 million monthly visitors.

Cox Enterprises, Inc. just announced an agreement with Providence Equity Partners, giving Providence 25 percent equity interest in AutoTrader.com.  Cox will maintain majority ownership and operating control of AutoTrader.com. Providence will have two seats on AutoTrader.com’s board but will not impact day to day operations of the automotive site.

“All of us at AutoTrader.com are excited to see Providence Equity invest in our company,” said Chip Perry, CEO and president, AutoTrader.com, in the announcement. “Their support will enable us to pursue the many organic growth opportunities, as well as strategic acquisitions, that will help improve the products and services we offer our customers.”

Cox Enterprises and Providence Equity have signed a stock purchase agreement, though agreement terms have not been disclosed.

Providence Equity Partners, a Rhode Island-based global private equity firm,  specializes in equity investments in media, entertainment, communications and information services companies around the world.

AutoTrader.com, learning that 45 percent of car shoppers start their search with both new and used cars, and that this search includes both the heart and mind, launched its new Heart & Mind ad campaign, including broadcast, Internet and social media elements.

“A key finding in our research for this campaign is that having a large inventory by itself is less important to consumers than it was in the past,” Mark Scott, senior manager, media relations for AutoTrader.com told us by e-mail. “What consumers really want is information and choices, and this is a result of the prolonged economic downturn which has made all purchases – especially big ticket ones like cars – subject to a lot of thinking and second guessing among consumers.  So while most people now know that AutoTrader.com has millions of cars listed for sale, we want a key takeaway from this campaign to be that in addition to lots of cars, AutoTrader.com has the information, articles, special price deals and research & compare functionality so that when you do finally decide on a car, you’ll just know and feel that it’s the right one.

Broadcast spots will run on ABC, ESPN, TNT, MTV, VH1, Spike, Lifetime and HGTV. Web ads will be shown on NASCAR.com, Slate, YouTube, Yahoo Sports, Facebook and several others.

AutoTrader.com will also soon launch its “Decide My Ride” Facebook application. Consumers will be able to choose up to four cars they’re considering to buy and ask their friends to help them choose.

Prior to this launch AutoTrader.com has been hinting at the campaign on Twitter and Facebook. Here’s some of what the social world is now saying about the campaign.

Early this morning another online source reported an AutoTrader.com 30 percent year over year revenue loss. We went right to AutoTrader.com to learn about that and were told the figures were inaccurate. The actual earnings – revenue of $629 million – were reported by Cox Enterprises online as well.

Calling the AutoTrader.com 2009 activities a “dramatic outperformance of the automotive advertising market overall, which declined 15-20 percent,” Chip Perry, president and CEO of AutoTrader.com pointed out several statistics of the Cox auto site:

* Increased dealer satisfaction by 15 points and reduced dealer churn by two-thirds. Consultative selling was credited for this record low churn

* Monthly uniques were up 5 percent on average, to 14.8 million in 2009

* Hit the 156 million uniques record-breaker in March 2009

* Named most useful automotive site by J.D. Powers and Associates for sixth straight year

“Our revenue was actually up year over year by 1 percent because of the extra revenue we got from consolidating the Auto Trader print businesses into AutoTrader.com,” Mark Scott, AutoTrader.com senior manager, media relations told us by e-mail. “Even without that consolidation, AutoTrader.com’s revenues would have been down only 3 percent.”

Despite the economy and industry downturn, AutoTrader has launched numerous projects, such as AutoTrader Access, its behavioral targeting-enabled ad network; the revamp of AutoTraderClassics.com, its Online Automotive Marketing Certification program, its mobile expansions, fraud prevention implementation, and its New Car Adviser. The only slightly negative report we’re hearing in 2010 is a drop from fifth to sixth place in the delivery of search rankings for auto dealers. Sixth place is still very very good, however.

AutoTrader.com has 2.8 million vehicle listings, serves 31,000 auto dealers on average each month, and lists approximately 74,000 privately-owned vehicles.

Northwood University, with campuses in Michigan, Florida and Texas, is working with AutoTrader.com to create the Northwood / AutoTrader.com Online Automotive Marketing Certification. The program is designed to provide students with skills for dealership online advertising and merchandising.

“Northwood takes great pride in our many partnership programs with corporations such as AutoTrader.com, as they provide our students access to the very organizations where they may be employed upon graduation,” Dr. Keith A. Pretty, president and CEO of Northwood University, told the Midland (MI) Daily News.  “By blending real-world experience with traditional academic offerings such as textbook case studies, our graduates leave Northwood exceptionally well-prepared for tomorrow’s careers in the automotive industry.”

Training in the online certification program includes merchandise inventory, and tracking of marketing and advertising results. In December, 2009, 17 Northwood University students on its Midland campus completed the pilot certification program  In upcoming semesters the West Palm Beach, Fla. and Cedar Hill, Texas, campuses will offer the program.

Here’s the full Midland Daily News article.

AutoTrader.com, a major U.S. automotive marketplace, will expand its mobile shopping capabilities in March, offering easy access to AutoTrader.com’s Find a Car and Find a Dealer shopping features, as well as My AutoTrader functions like retrieval of past searches.   Find A Dealer is a handy feature for both consumer and dealer, as it not only provides dealer contact information and mapping for the shopper but also lets the dealer know the phone and e-mail address of the shopper.

“Our goal with a mobile auto shopping platform was to come out with the right experience at the right time,” said AutoTrader.com President and CEO Chip Perry, in the announcement. “By studying the behavior of our site visitors, carefully reviewing the mobile shopping environment and consumer needs and taking a look at the expanded smart phone options out there, we believe now is the right time and this is the solution that will best meet our consumers’ needs.  This expansion builds on the success we’ve had with our iPhone optimized site, launched in 2008, and our AutoTrader Latino mobile offering, launched in 2009.”

AutoTrader.com is now generating about half-a-million unique monthly visitors via mobile devices, representing 2-3 percent of the site’s 15 million unique monthly visitors, the impetus behind the product expansion. As other mobile site owners have also noted, mobile traffic to AutoTrader.com was far stronger on weekends, with auto shoppers using their smart phones to find vehicles and dealership while they were out shopping, and to compare prices at alternative dealerships while they were on a dealer’s lot.

“What we see with our site traffic is that car shoppers research and compare vehicles, review inventory and specials and build their consideration set during the week from their home or work computer,” said Perry.  “Then, they use their mobile devices for quick checks and comparisons while they’re on a dealer lot.  By making access to the ‘My AutoTrader’ functionality a key component of our mobile environment, we give shoppers the ability to easily store their information on the cars they want while researching from a home or office computer and then shoppers can quickly access their searches via their mobile device while on the ground shopping.”

Altanta TV station CW 69′s AutoScoop show airs Friday morning and Saturday afternoon on TV, and 24/7 on YouTube. Sort of. We see the show as an example of what media groups can offer auto dealers and other local industry companies as well as consumers, while marketing themselves and making some money. We don’t see it as the perfect case study, but we have suggestions to make it so.

John Pedevilla, local sales manager for CW69, told AIM Group that the show actually began seven years ago, on a sister radio station, moving to TV in 2007.

“We brainstormed how to service local dealers looking for better ways to sell cars – ways different from the then-60-second spot,” Pedevilla told us. “And, consumers needed answers to questions about buying and selling cars. People buy what makes them feel good. We felt that if we provided consumers with good thoughts of what to do they would come in to the auto dealerships more educated. Dealers love that.”

AutoScoop has local auto dealers as guests every week. Additionally, dealer associations, finance specialists, and manufacturer executives have appeared. The show has also traveled to Detroit and Washington, DC, to broadcast from the auto shows there. “We have a great relationship with MADA (Metro Atlanta Dealership Association),” said Pedevilla. “Dealers wait in line to get on the show. Two weeks ago we had Team Nissan and Toys for Tots on the program. Mazda has a relationship with the U.S. Marines for toy-giving, and our station is the exclusive toy drop off.”

AutoScoop is dealer agnostic, though Pedevilla is still choosy about who gets on the show. If he doesn’t know the dealer is reputable, he or she isn’t invited. Sometimes the show does a remote from the dealership; often it’s in the studio.

“[AutoScoop] absolutely works to our advertising advantage,” Pedevilla said. “ Because we’ve had it on for so long, we have great integrity. We only allow dealers to come on every 6-8 months. DOT [state department of transportation] was on, talking about what to do if in an accident. Attorneys come on and talk about accidents, doctors talk about rehabilitation, the Keep Georgia Safe initiative talks about things like children riding in back seats.

The audience is evenly split between male and female, and while he didn’t share audience numbers Pedevilla admitted it wasn’t massive. “However, people who watch it are 100 percent looking to buy a car,” he said. “And every week dealers who’ve been on the show say that they’ve had an outstanding week because of their presence on AutoScoop.”

Mark Ford, GM of Jim Ellis Chevrolet in Atlanta, has been on the AutoScoop show several times, including an on-the-floor interview from the 2009 Atlanta Auto Show. “We do a lot of TV – NPR, CNN, Fox News, and so forth,” he said.  He and owner Jim Ellis have also been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s all part of the impression mix,” Ford told us. It all comes together to put us top of mind. We also do a lot of community services. According to Scarborough, Jim Ellis is the most recognized local dealership group. We were number 12 just five years ago.” The Ellis appearance on NPR was to discuss the GM bankruptcy and the Cash for Clunkers program.

Ford said that people walk in “all the time” to one of the twelve local Ellis dealerships and say, “I saw you on AutoScoop.”

“The public wants to know how to buy a car,” said Ford. “They trust those [AutoScoop] people. They don’t trust me, the car salesman, or the manufacturer, but they do trust the advocate. It’s that final warm and fuzzy push.”

Ford said that show host Adam Goldfein only includes reputable dealers on the show. “I wasn’t his biggest advertiser but he had me on a lot because he knew I’d be honest and that if [buyers] came here they’d be treated well.”

While we applaud the AutoScoop idea and suggest it to media groups as emulatable, we see some missed opportunities here. Its presence on YouTube is what Pedevilla basically described as if and when the station gets around to uploading the video there. We found several shows there, including two presentations by AutoTrader.com’s Lifestyle editor Keely Funkhouser discussing fraud in classified auto listings, and the ins and outs of writing effective auto ads. All shows should be on YouTube, almost immediately after they air on TV. They should also be prominently accessible from the station’s Web site.

There’s also missed advertising opportunity here. While the station has sold a pre-roll ad, there are many other video ad methods available that would allow for multiple advertisers on the online video portion of the show. Nor is the show marketed socially. While it’s good to keep it branded to the station, it could use its own landing page – www.autoscoop.com, for example – with consumer conversation around it. If you access that URL now you’re redirected to V-103, the sister radio station that used to carry the show. That makes no sense.

We suggest show reviews, contests, quizzes and polls.  It’s a good idea that would have a lot of appeal for auto dealers and industry vendors, but the innovation is in the online and even mobile accessiblity – not in the TV programming itself.

AutoTrader.com, one of the major U.S. automotive marketplaces, just announced it will begin carrying a live feed of all Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) Hyundai automobiles currently available at more than 790 Hyundai retailers across the United States.

All Hyundai CPO vehicles will be imported into the AutoTrader.com database and will be placed in the standard listings section of the site, displaying in any used or certified search results. Hyundai CPO banner ads will appear throughout the site.

Online searches for certified pre-owned vehicles have doubled in the last three years, with 2009 sales comparable to 2008 in spite of the poor economy. Nearly half of all CPO buyers return to the same dealer for their next purchase, which makes these consumers good new-car sales prospects when the economy recovers. 

“Thanks to our impressive line-up of vehicles and a CPO program recognized as one of the industry’s best, Hyundai has seen impressive growth in the CPO sector in 2009, with sales for the first ten months of the year up 79 percent over 2008,” said Dave Zuchowski, VP of Sales at Hyundai Motor America, in the announcment. “In partnering with AutoTrader.com, we will be able to significantly increase our market share in the CPO segment by reaching the millions of car buyers who visit the site each month.”

To qualify for CPO, the Hyundai vehicle can be no older than 2006, with fewer than 60,000 miles, and pass a rigorous 150-point inspection. A 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain protection is included, along with roadside assistance, rental car, towing and travel breakdown coverage in case of an emergency.

The Hyundai live feed will begin appearing immediately on AutoTrader.com. 

In an arrangement that just makes sense given their mutual ownership by Cox Enterprises, AutoTrader.com has expanded the reach and audience of its auto classifieds through a partnership with Cox Media Group and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The agreement covers not only vehicle listings but automotive content as well.

Under the Cox agreement, AutoTrader.com will power new and used online automobile classified listings on 73 of Cox’s radio Web sites, including stations in major markets such as Atlanta; Miami; Honolulu; Tampa and Orlando, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; and Long Island, N.Y.  In total, the 73 stations cover 18 market areas across the country, many of them with more than one Cox station. Visitors to the Journal-Constitution’s auto section, formerly known as AJCcars.com, will be redirected to AutoTrader.com, where readers will have access to local and national inventory of vehicles for sale, as well as AutoTrader.com’s  automotive content, research, comparisons, and consumer reviews.  The AJCcars print section will still be published Fridays and Saturdays, with content managed by AJC. 

A program similar to this AJC deal launched in 2008 with The Palm Beach (FL) Post, the Austin (TX) American-Statesman and the Dayton (OH) Daily News, all Cox papers.

“This partnership with our colleagues at Cox Media Group and the AJC is another example of companies in the Cox portfolio coming together to offer more value for our audiences,” said Chip Perry, AutoTrader.com president and CEO, in the announcement.   “By making our auto listings available on Cox radio stations’ and the AJC’s Web sites, we dramatically increase the audience of in-market car shoppers viewing cars listed for sale on our site. Fans of the stations and readers of AJC.com get more functionality and information, making the sites even more valuable and building listener and reader loyalty.”

AIM has even more info on recent AutoTrader.com collaborations.

YuMe, a dedicated video ad network headed by former Freedom Interactive CEO Michael Mathieu provides a video ad management platform called ACE. YuMe Networks today announced a partnership with AutoTrader.com Access, AutoTrader.com’s automotive advertising network based on revenue-share publisher partnerships. The YuMe/Access collaboration will offer behavioral targeting across YuMe’s network of premium video content, enhancing the qualified audiences and campaign ROI AutoTrader.com Access offers to advertisers. AutoTrader.com will be the endemic automotive site and reseller of behavioral targeting across YuMe’s premium video ad network.

“The marriage of our in-market data with YuMe’s video ad network will help us deliver more value to those advertisers who want to reach qualified audiences and maximize their campaign ROI,” said Anne Steinhauer, AutoTrader.com VP of national accounts, in the announcement.

For recent updates on AutoTrader.com statistics and projects read CIR 10.07, April 8.