RefreshClassifieds

Trader Corporation, owner of the Autotrader brand in Canada, has announced an exclusive partnership with the Canadian International Autoshow.  The Canadian International Autoshow is held annually in Toronto and the largest Canadian Automotive show.

Typically attendees of the Autoshow are consumer that are looking for a new automobile.  Attendence for the week long event typically exceeds 300,000 and the show occupies 800,000 squarefeet in the convention center and the skydome.

This looks like a good partnership for both parties as Autotrader seeks to reach customer looking for an automobile and encourage them to consider a used vehicle as part of their search.  The Autoshow typically benefits from increased exposure on the Autotrader publications and Autotrader.ca.

The relationship seems to be focused exclusively on the Toronto show.  There is no mention of the regional shows in other Canadian markets.

Homenet Inc and Gumiyo have announced a partnership to leverage the Gumiyo’s mobile platform with the Homenet dealer inventory management tools.  The Homenet Inventory Online service is used by over 12,000 dealers primarily in the US and processes 2.5 million vehicles daily.

A key requirement in the US automotive industry are window stickers which are required in most states and need to be very accurate.  As a result most dealers outsource the inventory management process to third-parties, like Homenet.

Gumiyo provides the ability to view classified information on mobile devices.  Gumiyo users can view small brochures with the classified listings.  Gumiyo can support a variety of classified services but the Homenet service would be focused on the Automotive business.

This looks like a great relationship for both companies, the dealers they service and ultimately classified users.  With increasing pressure from free classified provides its good to see innovative approaches and partnerships.

Autotrader.ca has launched a New Car search and Autotrader New Car publication. Autotrader.ca is the number one automotive site in Canada with 2 million unique monthly visitors and it makes sense that they would expand into the New Car category. The Autotrader New Car magazine will be distributed in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Montreal with 230,000 copies in circulation.

Autotrader Canada has traditionally been a used car source and the brand took over the automotive classified advertising space in many Canadian markets. Newspapers and other media outlets have been forced focus on New Car advertising revenue, and done fairly well off the automotive manufactures.

The Autotrader.ca New Car offering appears to be positioned at giving automotive manufactures more choice with regards to advising. Currently the New Car search is separated from Used Cars but its not clear that consumers make a hard distinction between New and Used when they start searching. In most cases the price point of new cars puts them out of reach but with some incentive programs the cost for a new car is very close. In the future it new and used advertising may share more of the media outlets.

Disclosure: Colin Smillie worked with Trader Corporation in 2007, which owns Autotrader.ca.

Just this past weekend I accompanied my brother to the dealership to pick up his new car and having just bought a new car myself two years ago, I assumed it would be as uneventful now as it was then. Surprisingly, what I experienced this time was nothing like the last, as I ventured down the path of Dealership Nouveau (that’s what I like to call it). While sitting with my brothers sales rep, here are a few of the things I found positively interesting, hence my need to blog about them:

Great Idea #1

You may or may not know this, but dealerships make their greatest margin from the service side of the business, and then used car sales and lastly new car sales. Recognizing this, this dealership invited my brother to come back to a ‘how to care for your vehicle’ workshop, hosted by none other than the dealerships service team. What a neat way to get you to feel valued by the dealership. That evening will also give the customer a chance to get to know the service team. We all agree that once you meet someone and they feed you, your affinity to that person increases. The event in its entirety, between staff OT and food for the guests, will probably cost that dealership less than $200. (One customers Type B maintenance on their car will more than pay for that.)

Source: NADA

Great Idea #2

The other thing that impressed me about this dealership was that they offered free WiFi to their customers. No more feeling as if you are missing those important emails at the office, while waiting for your car to have its oil changed. And, if your laptop is not WiFi enabled, no worries, the dealership also has Ethernet cables that will get you online.

Aside from the car clinic and free WiFi, the dealership was clean, bright and nicely furnished. The sales people were friendly and attentive – while we were waiting for our sales rep, we must have had three people ask if they could get us anything in the meantime.

All of this to say that this is what a dealership should be like. Providing a positive customer experience breeds further referral traffic. If your publishing product services auto dealers, a great idea would be to hold a dealer-training session covering lead sources, customer retention and the customer experience. If training is difficult to do because of the geography of your dealers, then create a white paper that is circulated to your dealers. Perhaps it goes out with their invoices or is downloadable from your site. No matter how you deliver it, this value ad from you will show that you not only know the business of selling cars, but that you also care about your dealers (customers) business.

Autotrader in Canada has revamped their cover with the help of Lucie Lacava, a well known magazine designer. This is second major overall of the Autotrader magazine design since the Yellow Pages Group purchased the brand in 2006. The cover maintains the Autotrader signature red masthead and continues with the ‘Come meet your match’ tag line that was introduce last year. The new design can be seen here, with the press release here.

While the new cover looks create in the design mock-up its not clear how it will work on the street. Most of the Autotrader magazines generated significant revenue from selling the cover as a premium ad unit and this might the sleek design in competition with revenue. The announcement did not include details on which regions have already deployed the new magazine design or if the design would also apply to the Hebdo line of magazines in Quebec.

Disclosure: I worked for the Yellow Pages Group from Feb 2006 to Jun, 2007.

In a response to increased driving and parking fees in the London core,  the Sun UK Newspaper has expanded its classified section to focus on parking services.  An excellent example of a classified provider seeing a market need and adapting quickly to provide service for the category.  The service is also providing some pricing guidelines to help both the renter and the landlord decide on appropriate rates for the parking spot.

Autotrader.com has announced today that they have launched a new ad taking system for their Autotrader.com website that provides 3 advertising options, including the option to publish your ad into the Autotrader magazine. The 2 of the available bundles now include print advertising, with the Deluxe bundle include the ad until sold in both print and online. Autotrader.com has traditionally been pushing itself as an online only classified advertiser and down playing the value of print advertising. With the new launch and online/print bundles they are well position to complete with free classified sites like Craigslist with do not have a print component to them.

The new ad taking system is very well design with minimal required fields but many of additional options. Users can choose to write their ad free form or have select from popular options to have their ad automatically created. The popular options include recent automotive features like GPS navigation and iPod accessories. The photo upload process was a little more time consuming with the user needing to select individual photos and with 18 possible photos this can be time consuming. Autotrader.com does provide a free photo taking service and photo taking centers for people that would rather avoid this process. Once the ad is built it provides a good preview of the both the Online and Print ads, with an option to select the best Autotrader magazine for the vehicle being sold.

Last month Autotrader.com launched a new dealer interface for dealers to quickly create ads online and now with the new private party ad taking system it would appear they are committed to maintaining their leadership position.

The Sun-Times News Group has just launched their free real estate site that enables Chicago users to search for homes in more than 10 counties, covering Northeastern Illinois and Northwest Indiana.

The launch of the residential site is the arrival of what is being called their ‘classified trio’. Via SearchChicago.com, browsers can look for cars, jobs and now homes. All the big elements normally found in an online classified entity.

The birth of SearchChicago.com came out of the original concept, to create a content heavy classified site that would attract both private users and commercial advertisers, and obviously allow Sun-Times to romp with the big boys, online. The smartest way for them to build the type of content necessary (fast and effectively), was to combine the classified listings in their regional publications (the Greater Chicago area), all on to one site.

“SearchChicago.com is one-stop shopping for people in Chicago and surrounding communities who are looking for necessities of life – jobs, homes and transportation,” said Cyrus F. Freidheim, Jr. , Chief Executive Officer of Sun-Times Media Group, Inc., the parent company for the Sun-Times News Group. “Users will have the advantages of our broad classifieds listings across the more than 90 newspaper titles that make up the Sun-Times News Group network and reach millions of readers each day.”

The SearchChicago Classified site has some distinguishing qualities that will allow it to differ itself from the rest. Mainly, the sites search capabilities are what stand out the most. The options and user tools to find information is extremely robust and user friendly. And just as impressive, the information served from a search, is delivered in a plethora of ways, allowing all viewer types to find items quickly.

When looking for a job, the sites advanced search allows a user to choose from 11 different criteria and at the end of the search form, the user has the option of receiving their job profiles in a long or short format view. This is extremely useful for those just wanting to browse. The newly launched homes vertical of the site, also has some interesting options to aid home buyers in making decisions. In addition to allowing browsers to search by community and home type, the site offers an interactive map search and video tours of homes. Another notable application on the homes site is their ‘School Report Card’ section. This allows browsers to review ratings of schools in a particular area they are thinking of moving to. This is key for all families with children and is usually information not found on a classified site – again promoting one stop shopping for site users.

Given that this is a fairly new venture for Sun-Times, I have excused some of the obvious fixes still required with the site. For example, while searching for autos you don’t have the option to hyper-link out to homes. If on either the auto or jobs section of the site, there is no easily navigated way to get back to the principal home page. Lastly, there is great content mix for both homes and jobs on the site, but auto results were somewhat light.

The one-stop shopping feel SearchChicago.com promotes, could be a real success for the Sun-Times News Group. However, ensuring the presence of healthy content that is easily found, will be the differentiator between success and heavy site traffic, versus being just another classified site attempt, by a group of newspapers, trying to compete against the online only elephants, in the publishing space.

SuperCarDirect.com has launched with free ads for both private sellers and dealers.  Automotive classifieds have traditionally been funded on the backs of dealers.  With consumers initially searching for a used car from a private seller but eventually buying from a dealer with more inventory.

The SuperCarDirect.com model is surprising in that it gives up the dealer revenue in the hope of getting revenue from banner ads and axillary advertising on the site.  The site intends to focus on advertising from racing teams, tracks and events across the USA.  There was no mention of the automotive manufactures or automotive service businesses as advertising targets but these would appear to be more likely advertising targets.

A quick search of the site did not reveal many ads and this may be a result of no partnerships with automotive capture services.  Across the USA, most dealers third-party capture services to capture their vehicle inventory and put the information and photos into advertising.   This is normally done in combination with state regulared window sticker creation and data capture.   Most of these services charge the advertising site for each vehicle listing so it will be interesting to see how SuperCarDirect.com can partner with them using a purely free model.

Autobytel has launched MyRide.com, a new Automotive with a more focused community experience. Car lovers can use video, audio, multiple pictures, message boards and even blogs to description their favourite cars. The site includes feature articles on popular automotive topics like Hot Rods and Classics but also includes more environmentally friendly topics like Driving Green.

By combining more social features into the site Autobytel hosts to create more of a meeting place for car enthusiasts. The site will be expanded shortly with feature car calendars and car club events. The site is built on the KickApps social media functionality.

The site still features new and use automotive classified ads and this is expected to be the primary revenue source. Its not clear how the site will connect the car fans with the classified listings though. Currently the functionality appears to be very separate so while the new features may drive traffic to the site it might not generate additional interest in the classified listings. The site is a good first attempt at bring social media to the Automotive classified space.