Benoit Laforce, General Manager of AutoTrader Media
An online product developed by AutoTrader for automakers is giving them a tool to market their new cars with personalized, branded content, providing dealers with broader opportunities to retail inventory and helping consumers in their shopping experience.
Storefront, launched in June 2024, currently has Mitsubishi and Hyundai as partners. Polestar is slated to join in December. Benoit Laforce, General Manager of AutoTrader Media, told Canadian auto dealer the plan is to partner with two new OEMs a year. He said the company is in conversations with various OEMs but did not disclose which ones.
Laforce said Storefront is an evolution of a 2020 branded-content campaign called The Showroom, created as a virtual experience to help OEMs gain visibility during COVID.
In 2023, AutoTrader surveyed 6,000 people to understand how consumers were using the site to shop for a new car, research and compare models, or initiate a transaction or trade-in evaluation. The data showed many consumers were coming to the site early in their search because they already knew what they wanted. Benoit said this made AutoTrader — primarily known as a marketplace for used cars — realize there was an opportunity for OEMs to reach undecided new-car shoppers.
Laforce said AutoTrader has about 380,000 listings, about half of them new vehicles for sale by dealers. “Storefront improves the new-car shopping experience for consumers and gives OEMS full market coverage by ensuring every dealer is actively listing their new inventory and getting those vehicles in front of more undecided buyers,” he said.
Laforce added that consumers can use the Storefront configurator to build the vehicle they want, choosing trims, colours and features, and then move directly to vehicle detail pages. If the dealership is too far away or the exact vehicle isn’t available, consumers can submit a lead, which goes to the closest dealer that has the car.
He said OEMs are excited because Storefront gives them a clear, branded presence within AutoTrader while still benefiting from its reputation as a trusted, neutral destination.
“Some of the challenges consumers are facing when they shop for a new car is they need to go to all the OEM sites,” said Laforce. “They don’t have a centralized place where they get a consistent experience and every OEM site can be built differently. Storefront is a more guided, brand-led path that gets them to the right car faster.”
He compared it to the travel industry.
“If you’re a consumer you might end up thinking about Expedia being a platform you like shopping on,” said Benoit. “This is where AutoTrader provides a similar consistent experience to the consumer. Storefront keeps AutoTrader’s neutrality, but adds a richer OEM-branded experience that makes it easier for consumers to find the vehicle they actually want, not just a long list of similar ones.”
He said early results include a 90 per cent engagement rate, a 4.5-minute average session duration, an 80 per cent click-through rate from the 3D/AR configurator to live inventory, and a 57 per cent increase in new-car leads for Mitsubishi since launch, along with 92 per cent brand recall in a Nielsen study.
AutoTrader produces all augmented-reality technology through a partnership with Dynamix, an audio-video solutions provider.
