13 May 2013

Trader Media Group’s (TMG) decision to close its print division and move solely to digital products was probably the least unexpected move so far this year.

Nonetheless, it was nice of the company to acknowledge the role that Auto Trader magazine has played in its development – and in all our lives. TMG marketing director, Perran Moon, described it as an “emotional moment for us and the wider motor industry”.

Sure, Auto Trader’s pricing strategy and market dominance have not always made it popular. But nobody could deny the influence it has had. As Moon pointed out, there are many highly successful auto retailers who built businesses on the back of the publication.

Ironically, the announcement came as founding members of Trusted Dealers voted to gift a majority shareholding of the business to the NFDA.

Although the ‘franchised-only’ website is now apparently breaking even, I can’t imagine they’d be making that decision if they thought it was ever going to turn a profit. Whether they have got back their original stakes remains unclear.
As we all know, going digital is not cheap and websites need constant updating, swallowing huge chunks of development budget in the process.

But, as TMG were among the first to recognise, online is what the customer wants and theirs is a customer-driven change. And the pace of change is likely to accelerate as we move from static online product description, to video, to augmented reality (it’s already here, by the way).

This is an industry that likes to think it has changed and, in some ways, we are ahead of the game. But we’re still investing millions of pounds in ‘gin-palace’ showrooms and there are still some who think a sales lead from the internet is worth less than a walk-in.

When your digital forecourt has a lot more footfall than your physical forecourt, should you not be paying it more attention and giving it more investment?

In essence, that was the strategic decision that Auto Trader took back in 1996 when it launched its first online classified search. Have you done the same?

Rupert Saunders

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Tags: car finance. boom, Finance and Leasing Association, FLA, new car sales, private sales