Cars.com Profile
Cars.com Inc., doing business as Cars Commerce Inc., an audience-driven technology company that provides solutions for the automotive industry in the United States.
The company simplifies everything about car buying and selling with powerful products, solutions and AI-driven technologies that span pretail, retail and post-sale activities - enabling more efficient and profitable retail operations. The Cars Commerce platform is organized around four industry-leading brands: the flagship automotive marketplace and dealer reputation site Cars.com, award-winning digital retail technology and marketing services from Dealer Inspire, essential trade-in and appraisal technology from AccuTrade, and exclusive in-market media solutions from the Cars Commerce Media Network.
The company's premier automotive marketplace, Cars.com enables dealerships and OEMs with innovative solutions and data-driven intelligence to better reach and influence its 26 million average monthly ready-to-buy shoppers, ultimately increasing inventory turn. The company has further invested in building innovative products and solutions that helps future-proof dealerships with more efficient operations, a faster and easier car buying process, and connected digital experiences that sell and service more vehicles. The company provides a full suite of integrated platform capabilities that drive ready-to-buy car shoppers to the dealership.
The strength of the company's products and solutions has attracted over 19,500 franchise and independent dealer customers across the U.S. and Canada to its platform. The majority of the company's dealer customers subscribe to the Cars.com marketplace and increasingly, they are leveraging more of its platform to power their local retail operations.
For Consumers: Buying a car is one of life's most significant and researched decisions. Consumers are challenged with makes, models and trim-levels and opaque, yet negotiable prices, and gaps in the online-to-offline shopping experience, adding complexity to an often overwhelming decision-making process. Shoppers are seeking a more streamlined, simplified automotive retail experience. Cars Commerce helps car shoppers cut through the clutter with products designed to reduce friction from search to signature.
The company is known for the depth and scale of its listings and reviews, with over 2.5 million vehicle listings and over 13 million consumer reviews as of December 31, 2023. In addition, the company's expert editorial reviews and news and research publications aid shoppers in their purchase journey.
For Customers: The company's platform offers local dealers, OEMs, dealer groups and auto-adjacent companies a variety of products and solutions. Dealers and OEMs value its marketplace for the opportunity to connect with its in-market audience of 26 million average monthly users in 2023, and to improve their marketing and operational efficiency with its suite of solutions. The company complements its marketplace products with digital solutions, including websites and trade-in and appraisal technology, and media offerings powered by its exclusive in-market media network. Internal analysis from 2023 has shown that increasing adoption of the Cars Commerce platform has allowed dealers to improve their vehicle turn time by up to 20%.
Products
The company's interconnected platform is organized around four core capabilities: Marketplace, Digital Experience, Trade & Appraisal and Media.
Marketplace: Central to the company's platform is Cars.com, the most recognized marketplace brand. The marketplace is critical to the pretail experience, allowing OEMs and dealers to merchandise their inventory to the company's 26 million average shoppers each month in 2023. Importantly, over 60% of the company's traffic comes to it organically, allowing it to provide its customers with a truly complementary and unduplicated audience. The company's marketplace packages include reputation management technology and digital financing tools, such as Instant Finance. Customers using the company's upper-tier packages experienced a double-digit improvement in inventory turn time. For subscribing dealers, AccuTrade's Instant Offer is directly integrated into the marketplace experience, giving them access to in-market consumers who are ready to trade-in their vehicle for a new one. More recently, the company has added the Your Garage feature to Cars.com, allowing consumers to add and save vehicles to their virtual Garage and track the Cars.com Market Value of their current vehicle. Cars.com Market Value leverages the company's Marketplace retail demand data to help consumers identify the best time to sell or trade-in their vehicle.
Digital Experience: The Cars.com marketplace audience is often driven directly into the retail experience through the company's platform's websites and solutions. The company's industry-leading brand Dealer Inspire is a preferred provider with nearly every OEM in the United States. Dealer Inspire websites and technology include integrated reviews, AI-powered chat tools, instant financing and vehicle acquisition technology. Key products include:
Website Creation and Platform Hosting: The company's Dealer Inspire website hosting and related solutions make automotive retail faster, easier and smarter from search to signature. Built on a customizable platform and designed with user behavior data, the company's websites are set apart by the advanced technologies that drive modern consumers toward purchase decisions. The company hosts the digital storefronts for approximately 7,300 dealers in the U.S. and Canada.
Digital Retailing Solutions: The company's digital retailing product suite is focused on bringing omnichannel commerce to the automotive industry at scale by simplifying the online to in-store process for dealers and buyers. The company's Conversations product is built to connect in-market car buyers with sellers - wherever, whenever and however they want to shop. Conversations turns chats into customers by leveraging AI technology, live video chat capabilities and 24/7 managed chat support to instantly respond to all incoming messages. The company's Online Shopper solution enables e-commerce transactions for dealers. This feature also allows shoppers to add finance and insurance products and aftermarket accessories, and to checkout, for delivery or pick-up in just three easy steps. Instant Finance enables shoppers to digitally secure instant vehicle financing, while its dealer customers are empowered with the ability to utilize the lenders of their choice at no cost to the dealer.
Trade and Appraisal: AccuTrade is a powerful data and technology solution that is integrated into both the Cars.com marketplace and Dealer Inspire websites. Leveraging wholesale and retail data sources, AccuTrade provides dealers with vehicle valuation and appraisal technology to efficiently identify and source the exact vehicles they require. AccuTrade leverages onboard diagnostic (OBD) data to automatically adjust vehicle value based on the specific vehicle being analyzed and quickly delivers a tailored, consumer-facing condition report. It provides transparency to consumers while saving dealers an average of over $600 per vehicle on internal vehicle repairs. Additionally, through AccuTrade Instant Offer, consumers can obtain instant and transparent cash offers for their specific VINs via the company's dealer websites, as well as Cars.com. And if ready to sell or trade-in, consumers can find the best buyer for their vehicle.
Cars Commerce Media Network: A commerce media network created exclusively for automotive, Cars Commerce Media Network allows local and national customers alike to reach proven in-market and in-context consumers to accelerate the path to purchase. The company's newest media product, VIN Performance Media, resulted in approximately 80% more users to a dealer site from Cars.com and over a 60% increase in dealer site conversions. In addition, when OEMs advertise with Cars Commerce Media Network, it sees impact throughout the consumer digital shopping experience. When one of its OEM partners purchased a prominent advertising sponsorship, the company observed increased consumer engagement on Cars.com (searches and vehicle page views), traffic to their dealers' websites, and a double digit lift in conversions on those dealer websites during the sponsorship period.
Display Advertising: The company's display advertising products enable dealers and OEMs to extend their reach and efficiently access its large audience of in-market car shoppers. The geographically targeted advertising served on the company's Cars.com website and mobile app enables its customers to increase brand awareness and promote inventory.
In-Market Video: In-Market Video provides OEMs and dealers with the opportunity to pinpoint serious, ready-to-buy shoppers geographically across Cars.com's in-market car shopping audience of over 26 million average monthly shoppers on their screen of choice via social media platforms, streaming apps and connected TV. This targeted approach drives high advertising efficiency for customers and compares favorably to the high-cost broadcast television solutions that dealers and OEMs have historically relied on.
Social Selling: The company is pioneer in the use of social media platforms to sell cars by launching multiple solutions to target and connect with in-market car shoppers on social media platforms, expanding their opportunity to sell more cars. Cars Social allows dealers and OEMs to target and serve native advertisements displaying real-time inventory to in-market car shoppers on Facebook and Instagram by leveraging its valuable audience data.
Digital Advertising Services
The company offers programs that manage dealer search engine optimization, as well as paid media spend beyond the Cars.com platform. These products are seamlessly connected to the company's website experience allowing dealers to convert traffic to paying customers. The company's data analytics and insights ensure dealers' investments are deployed in the most efficient manner possible.
The company's Cars Commerce suite of brands includes integrated marketplace, retailing and media solutions that define its platform strategy and make it essential to the automotive industry.
In 2023, the company had 26 million average monthly unique visitors that visited its marketplace a total of over 600 million times. The company generates the majority of its traffic organically as a trusted resource for customers through its high-quality content, including editorial and consumer reviews and suite of easy-to-use consumer facing tools such as Best Match.
Long-Term Growth Strategy
The company has five primary drivers to grow its business: continue to create the most engaged in-market audience, grow its dealer customers, unlock the cross-sell, transform its OEM relationships and create platform advantages. The key elements of the company's strategy are to grow the industry's most engaged shopping audience; grow its network of dealer customers; expand its relationship with dealers through greater adoption of its platform; transform its OEM relationships; and create platform advantages.
Competition
The company's direct competitors are online automotive marketplaces, such as CarGurus, AutoTrader and TrueCar. The company also competes with other automotive websites, such as CARFAX, Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book.
Regulatory Matter
The company's business is directly subject to laws, regulations and standards regarding marketing and advertising activities conducted by telephone, email, mobile devices and the internet, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the CAN-SPAM Act and similar state consumer protection laws. The company is subject to numerous federal, national, state and local laws and regulations in the United States and internationally regarding privacy and the collection, processing, storage, sharing, disclosure, use and protection of personal information and other data, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act or the California Consumer Privacy Act or the California Privacy Rights Act.
History
Cars.com Inc. was founded in 1998. The company was incorporated in 2016.
