• by Karl Greenberg , August 13, 2007

Traditionally, when consumer automotive Web sites advertise, they are pitching to car buyers--not car sellers, since online car-marketing Web sites make money directing leads to dealerships. That is changing. Yahoo recently launched a campaign to woo consumers who want to sell their vehicles online.

Now, Cox Auto Trader's Web site, AutoTrader.com--a division of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises--is launching its first national campaign aimed at individual car sellers. The company, which has listed privately sold vehicles for several years, is promoting a new program, "Sell Your Car," that allows consumers to create their own online or print ads using a palette of Web-based choices and also run ads in Cox Auto Trader Publishing's array of local-market, classified-ad pubs.

The company is promoting with an eight-week ad push launched last week that includes TV spots touting a combined AutoTrader.com and AutoTrader magazine listing for one price. The spot, which concludes with a call-to-action for sellers to list their cars with AutoTrader, shows hundreds of clones reading newspapers. Voiceover says, "Want to sell your car? Don't list it in the newspaper." Then it explains that: "Sure, lots of people read the paper, but only a fraction is looking for a car."

The ads will run through mid-September on networks like USA, Comedy Central, VH1, A&E, Spike TV, MTV, MSNBC, FX, The History Channel, Discovery Channel, BET, E!, SciFi and ESPN.

Clark Wood, vice president of marketing for AutoTrader, says the company launched a separate campaign in April with a different objective than that for what it calls "Private Seller."

"The campaign we launched in April demonstrates AutoTrader.com as the best marketplace to shop for a car. In contrast, the newly developed ad illustrates AutoTrader as the best resource for private sellers to advertise their car, with exposure to over 12 million serious car buyers."

He says the seller-feature on AutoTrader.com does not directly compete with sites like eBay or Craigslist but is intended to make buyers and sellers less reticent to use the Web as a car-marketing platform.

"We're in the business of providing a highly effective and efficient environment for car sellers and buyers. ... generally speaking, an automobile is the second-most-expensive purchase a consumer will make, aside from purchasing a home.

"Overwhelmingly, consumers are hesitant to make such a high-stakes purchase online. People still want to buy cars from people. Prospective buyers still want to test-drive the car they're considering purchasing and 'kick the tires,' so to speak," he says.

With an AutoTrader.com online listing, sellers also have the opportunity to place a print version of their ad in one of the AutoTrader magazine publications.

AutoTrader's Private Seller function has ad-building, picture-loading and editing tools and prompts sellers to include various selling points about their vehicle in the copy of their ad, suggesting phrases like "Maintenance records available" and "Still under factory warranty."

Clark says the "Sell Your Car" feature isn't new in and of itself. "We redesigned the feature to make it more user-friendly and intuitive for private sellers to create their own ads." He says currently over 250,000 private owners have their vehicles listed for sale with AutoTrader.com.

Once the ad is listed on AutoTrader.com, sellers will also be given the opportunity to print a detailed "For Sale" sign to post in the window of their vehicles.