See You Later Autotrader!

[Jeff Kershner]

My company listens to 2000 calls a month from various dealers across the country and I can tell you that we are hearing AutoTrader an awful lot when salespeople ask, "how did you hear about us?" AutoTrader is second only to dealer website. Cars.com is 5th on the list. In my opinion, this will cost you sales. The question is can you generate them in other ways. We started tracking this data 2 months ago. Take a look at the graph below:

View attachment 912

Jerry, it would be interesting to see a heat map for the following..

1. Where your accounts are geographically (throughout the United States)
2. Answers in relation to area

 

[Alex Vetter]

2-3X UVs? So AT has 20+ MM UVs? If you include all the computer generated traffic (scrapers) and international.....I could buy that....or if your a domestic dealer with cars priced below 10K.

 

[Stefan]

Jerry, it would be interesting to see a heat map for the following..

1. Where your accounts are geographically (throughout the United States)
2. Answers in relation to area

Create Maps | BatchGeo

 

[Alex Snyder]

I think CL is in big part responsible for the loss of that perception. How can you fight free?
That sparked the buy outs last year of KBB, VIN, Hnet, VAUTO, etc.

I don't think I've ever met anyone with a bigger hard on for Craigslist than you.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

After a full year year review of Autotrader vs. Cars.com vs. my tier 1 digital advertising it was apparent that Autotrader was costing 2-3x more per opportunity (calls/leads) compared to Cars.com and our other tier 1 advertising. I do not and will not subscribe to the notion that Autotrader or any 3rd party site produces large amount of showroom traffic. I brought in the Autotrader reps under the condition that I would not go over anything but cost per opportunity. However they tried to convince me that this was a not a fair way to review their product and my review didn't include the showroom traffic. My rebuttal was that all things being equal Cars.com, Autotrader and our tier 1 ads would produce within a marginal variance a relatively similar amount of showroom traffic however I was spending 2-3x more per opportunity with them. Aka you are charging too much! (If anyone went to NADA and saw their booth you can see where the extra profits go. Not to mention all of their recent acquisitions, advertising etc.)

During the meetings they tried to call my bluff and said if you don't like it go ahead and submit your 30 day cancellation notification. One meeting they walked out after 5-10 minutes because I refused to buy in to the fluff. Keep in mind we are a 10 store account spending serious money with them. I called the Autotrader regions sales director who defended the reps and again wouldn't budge at all.

So I did what they advised and what I have wanted to do for years. I cancelled all 10 stores. I am reinvesting the money in tier 1 and very excited to see real results. I have been with Moore and Scarry since last year and have created a plan that should help me forget about Autotrader all together.

Never before have I seen a vendor that thinks we are here for them to the level I did over the last 2 months in dealing with them.

Jon,

I'm curious if you had your AT rep run your VDP views by Zip code and then overlay it with your sold data?

 

[yagoparamo]

I don't think I've ever met anyone with a bigger hard on for Craigslist than you.

I got stock.

 

[jon.berna]

Jon,

I'm curious if you had your AT rep run your VDP views by Zip code and then overlay it with your sold data?

I used Batch Geo with sales data(cool that Stafen uses it also) and compared to calls from AT and Calls by zip. Didn't think to use VDP.

 

[eddyshaf]

2-3X UVs? So AT has 20+ MM UVs? If you include all the computer generated traffic (scrapers) and international.....I could buy that....or if your a domestic dealer with cars priced below 10K.

the figures I have see suggest that they have an average of 15-16mm UV's monthly and that Cars.com has closer to 6-7mm

 

[LRED]

I also cut our spending by 50% on AT.com. One of the problems with many vendors is that they don't offer fair pricing for smaller stores. I fell in to the partnerplan trap for many years. I will see how it works over the next several months.

 

[ddavis]

One of (if not the) largest sales forces in the industry did this.

The problem is Autotrader is too high up in the purchase funnel to drive significant traffic toward a lead, phone call, or a visit to an easily trackable website. It also brings a lot of online "tire kickers."

At the end of the day two things caused all the dealers' frustrations:

1. The idea that they can charge newspaper money for digital
2. A massive sales staff on quotas

Pair these together and you have promises and perceptions that weren't accurate. The need for a sales staff to sell and to sell at higher prices than what others were charging for digital ads.

However, I have to give ATC credit for changing some of their ways. It wasn't that long ago we were fiercely debating them religiously on DealerRefresh:

AutoTrader.com Pricing???
Have you been blitzed by team AutoTrader yet?

Bottom line is the price. AutoTrader is very expensive. Just when my rep was handing me the last proposal, I asked her if this is when I get the Rohypnol. AT has always worked for me but as prices increase it negatively effects your ROI. It could reach a tipping point. It takes a lot of effort to make display advertising work. Most of the stores that I have seen abandon it, really made the right decision.