An update from our CEO
I hope you enjoyed some time off with friends and family over the festive period and that the new year has started well for you. 2024 was a year of change and complexity in the automotive market. We met this head-on, launching innovative products and solutions to drive the performance of your business. This year promises to be equally eventful. I’d like to share how we’re thinking about 2025 at Auto Trader. Our priorities have been shaped by the feedback I’ve had from many of you over recent weeks about what will drive success in the coming year.
Encouraging start to the year
At the end of last year I shared details of our recent £25m investment in marketing to bring more engaged buyers to your adverts. I’m pleased to say that this activity has made a real impact, driving record audience numbers through 2024. We also enter 2025 with the expected seasonal uplift following Christmas, and pockets of strong consumer demand on Auto Trader. Vehicles continue to sell at record speed, and re stocking activity is a priority for many retailers to meet this demand.
Despite this, the market remains complex and data-led decisions on a vehicle-by-vehicle level are needed to drive the best possible performance. I would urge you to use the data to understand the supply and demand dynamics and pricing trends to support your retail strategy and look for opportunity. Retailers are still offering incredible value to consumers. Our latest data shows that desirable stock with a price position of less than 98% of the market valuation currently has £29 million of margin opportunity. So using the data solutions available to you is key to optimising profit.
Setting you up for success in 2025
This year we’re investing in the products and solutions that we know so many of you rely on to drive your performance.
Co-Driver - your new AI toolkit
We’ve got a long history of investing in our AI capability at Auto Trader, beginning over 10 years ago with our Valuations model. The focus has always been to work with retailers and consumers to understand their biggest challenges, and to find AI powered solutions to fix these. This was the foundation of our brand new AI powered toolkit, Co-Driver, which we launched just before Christmas. Designed to work with you, to do the heavy-lifting for you, it accesses millions of data points in an instant to help your vehicles really stand out on our marketplace. Smart Image Management is live in Portal right now and is available for our technology partners to integrate with. It’s already being used by over 6,000 retailers to drive performance.
Over the coming weeks we’ll be launching the next two tools within Co-Driver. AI Generated Descriptions will create accurate, detailed advert descriptions at the touch of a button. These use our vehicle data and consumer insight to showcase the aspects of your vehicle that consumers really care about.
And Vehicle Highlights will launch around the same time, to bring to life the unique and in-demand characteristics of your vehicle to ensure your advert stands out and performs
Powerful vehicle insights to fuel decision-making
Our role is to make the complex, simple. Whether that’s a compelling and seamless consumer experience, or simple tools to unlock the power of our unparalleled automotive data to inform retailer decision-making.
Our automotive data is made powerful by the sheer scale of our observations of both stock and consumer behaviour. We observe 450,000 vehicles daily and 80 million visits each month which is analysed by our teams of data scientists and turned into easily actionable insight for retailers to use to drive profitability.
Our data covers three primary use cases:
Our Vehicle Data providing an accurate view of a vehicle’s taxonomy, optional spec and history leading to more accurate adverts, an improved consumer experience and better profit per vehicle.
Our Valuations provide a powerful view of a vehicles value on the live retail market so you can price accurately. Valuations now including historic and future trends to know how a vehicle has moved and is likely to move in value.
Finally, our Retail Metrics such as Retail Rating give insight into the supply and demand dynamics of each vehicle instantly to know how well it will sell in your market.
We’re always looking for ways to make our data easy to use and actionable. Given the current market challenges around pricing and retailer opportunity we can clearly see in the data, we’ve recently launched a new pricing page in Portal, so you can instantly see how that vehicle is priced vs the market, and vs your pricing strategy and how consumers will view that vehicle in the market of competing vehicles. The aim is to highlight margin opportunity so you can make more informed pricing decisions, faster.
This year we’ll continue to explore how we can help you use data to supplement your own knowledge and experience and specifically where AI via Co-Driver can help you get to better decisions, faster. With you still in the driving seat.
Deal Builder
Our Deal Builder product also continues to go from strength to strength with both Consumers and Retailers. We now have 65,000 adverts on Auto Trader available for consumers to reserve, arrange a part-exchange or add finance to the deal. Feedback from retailers is positive with excellent conversion rates due to high consumer intent – we see that once consumers submit a deal, 84% don’t submit another lead or deal for 3 days. Feedback from retailers and consumers cements our commitment to this growing omni-channel trend, with exciting plans to invest further in connecting online to offline journeys, improving retailer performance and offering consumers the flexibility to shop in the way that best suits them. To find out more about the product and our introductory offer so you can try it for yourself, contact your Account Manager.
Stock Boost
And finally, this week we announced our package review for 2025 alongside a 3-month Stock Boost. In this market, it’s more important than ever to ensure your stock is on the platform that works hardest for your budget and gives you the maximum return on your investment. For every £100 you spend on another car-buying marketplace, £71 of that is effectively wasted as buyers on that platform are also on Auto Trader.
If stock isn’t on Auto Trader then it’s not for sale. This is why, as we head towards the peak months for car buying, we’re providing you with additional positions at no additional cost. You’ll receive details of the 3-month Stock Boost next week. As always, please reach out to your Account Manager to find out how to make the most of this opportunity to unlock your forecourt, including advice on sourcing to stock up during this period.
2025 will mark another year of investment for Auto Trader. We will continue to invest in our partnership – continue to invest in innovative products, unparalleled data and insight solutions and to ensure we are the place the UK finds their next car
As we enter the new year, I would encourage you to embrace the tools, insights and solutions we offer, which are unique to Auto Trader.Whether it’s our fortnightly webinars, our in-person clinics or our online learning platform, they are there for you.
We offer guidance through our 300-strong account team, who can help you to drive your sales performance and provide insight on your local market through our Sales Insight tool. And all of this sits alongside the data tools and products that you have at your fingertips either in Portal or in your own system via Auto Trader Connect.
Everyone here at Auto Trader is invested in your success. If you haven’t spoken to us for a while, need help navigating the upcoming year or feel we could be working harder for you, please get in touch so we can help you reach your goals for 2025.
