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Autotrader.com Annual Sales Meeting 2009 - Another Side of AutoTrader?

Like it or not, it's the age of the internet. And from the venom spilled here by a some crying sour grapes because the price they paid ten years ago to be on ATC was one tenth what they probably pay for ATC today. Yet the amount of unique buyers that visit ATC monthly are 10 times what they were back in the day.
ATC is the big dog on the block, with Cars.com at a distant second, yet a formidable foe. So if your angst is about the price of the top level, don't buy it. Thats why there is a middle level. After working in newspapers for years, the dealers would moan about the price of a full page ad and would buy a quarter page instead. Did they sell as many cars? Probably not, but they usually sold enough to easily pay for the ad.

So if you compare ATC to buying cheaper plastic spoons, maybe your customers can only afford cheaper spoons and its time to expand your customer base to include those that can afford the better quality spoon. If you dislike a company because of bad experiences in the past, you should be elated that an internet giant like ATC is reaching out to it's customer base and it's lost customers that have left them to try to right the ship. If your venom for ATC is so strong that you would never give them a second chance, you should at least consider Cars.com.
People were angry at the newspapers because there was always somebody else buying the full page ads that they couldn't afford, or wouldn't. Some people here have a hate for ATC because other dealers pay the price for a service that works for them and the sales generated by ATC justifies their cost.
 
Before you guys spend big money with ATC or Cars.com, make sure you are tracking the ACTUAL independent leads generated from these guys and DO NOT RELY on the reports that they send you with crap like web clicks, etc.

I saved my dealership $5000/mth because my salespeople were telling me we had sold 20 vehicles off of ATC that month, but my call tracking only registered 20 calls MTD -- off of a 5000 spend! That averaged to $250 per car lead??? Anyway, I cancelled right away, and have noticed no drop in my units sold through.
 
Mike,

Keep spewing that nonsense about "a limited number of Partnerships available in a DMA". You drank the Kool-aid.

A District Manager can (and will) approve any number of AT Partnerships in a given DMA. True, there are a set number of guidelines per make, but the District Manager does not need to follow them. Also, AT will zone out a DMA (by Zip Code) in some DMAs. This means that a dealer, although they are paying Premium, may not have all the zip codes in their own DMA. And don't get me started on the Conquest package that allows dealers in other DMAs to buy into your DMA!

The truth is that if the dealers stopped paying for the Premium space, they would still all be on the site. The ones that are still paying for Premium (foolishly) are competing against themselves when the other dealers in their make figure this out.

Save the money and you will do as well in the Featured section of AT. If you see worse results (I doubt it), AT will always take more money from you if you decide to go back to Premium listings.
 
Jim,

I liked your comments however Cars.com is not a "distant second" in reality. Here's why...

AT likes to use traffic sites like Alexa.com and Compete.com to compare themselves to Cars.com. These sites only count "organic searches" (the consumer typed in a specific internet site on their browser). It does not take into account Site Traffic as a result of Cars.com (and AT for that matter's) site Partnerships.

Cars.com Partnered to provide dealer inventories to Yahoo in December 2007. Since then, the site traffic has more than almost tripled. The growth is not just because of Yahoo, but Yahoo grew it significantly.

Do you ever wonder why you can not see your history data on AT's Dealer Center prior to January 1, 2008? (They must not want you to be able to compare what happened after they lost Yahoo to Cars.com.) What a crock!
 
John B...Let's see...Cars.com averaged 8 million unique visitors per month in 2007. Leap forward to 2009 and according to the latest reports by commscore. Cars.com is down over 2008. However, Cars.com is around 10 million uniques per month. Where does the 3X increase come in? ATC on the other hand, had 14 million unique visitors in Feb 2007. Feb 2009 ATC had 15.8 million unique visitors. All ATC did in Dec 2007 was trade yahoo for KBB.com. It looks brilliant now doesn't it? BTW...I won't mention any names, but ATC's head honcho was at a conference with Cars.com's head honcho a couple of months ago and you know what Cars.com's guy said? I quote "We are 5 years behind you guys"! In the internet world, 5 years is an eternity.
 
Kool-aid,

Obviously, based on your comments you do not know how the Comscore data is generated. You are exactly the problem with AT -- you think you know everything and the dealers know nothing. Too bad.

You think the KBB trade for Yahoo was "brilliant"? I rest my case.