The reason for BOB is an answer to the results that Craigslist (CL) brings to dealers. As you can see in the screen shot, 9 times the traffic.
In the past it was in Autotrader's (ATC) interest to keep the custoemr as long as possible in their website. That just meant more clicks, traffic, phone calls, emails, etc. ATC doesn't measure how many cars you sell but how many calls they bring, therefore a customer that goes to ATC, finds a car, makes one call, and buys it, is a bad customer. The more research and grind they can produce the better is for their numbers.
CL changed that, and specially those banners that Joe Pistell didn't like, have created huge traffic for dealers. It has to be noted that we believed that the best customer is the one in your website (can't see anyone else's cars!) so we focused on driving traffic away from CL and into the dealer's website to capture that customer. It has worked pretty well since the phone call volume straight from CL didn't become less than without banners.
So ATC now offers a direct link from their website to the dealer's site, which is a very positive move. Note that the bounce rate on ATC is the best out of the entire list though. CL takes the volume.
This being exposed, means that while ATC still a very valid place to advertise, CL bought a perfect solution for car dealers: New ideas, new ways to connect customers, with the dealer, competitiveness, and if anything, price hikes checks.
As soon as BOB gets implemented in WA for a few months I will try to share info on the changes. Out of WA we mainly do CL for large dealer groups (Autonation, etc) and I don't have access to their analytics.
[ATTACH]454[/ATTACH]
