From the Top

Welcome everyone to this latest edition of Traction. This is my first opportunity to address you all as the Managing Director of the combined Gumtree, CarsGuide and Autotrader Group.

Q2 started off with the promise of greater normalcy in the wake of Covid-19 and we enjoyed seeing more and more of our staff returning to our offices. The year took a very sharp turn, however, and in New South Wales and Victoria we now find ourselves in a long, drawn-out lockdown.

Happily, the challenges of lockdown have not held us back from our plans.

Our highly anticipated Autotrader consumer campaign went live in the first few days of July and has had a mountain of exposure thanks to media placements across Free to Air, Outdoor, and Video On Demand. We are getting a lot of feedback from across the market with people telling us they have seen our ads - always something that is great to hear. Accompanying this is some new research that looks at consumer confidence in the marketplace; the key findings from that research can be found within.

The Autotrader Group is going from strength to strength. At last count we had 500 dealers on the joint platform enjoying all of the benefits of a low cost subscription model and an open platform where consumers can walk in and dealers can promote key information about their dealerships. Its success is validating our belief that a combined model is the best way forward for dealers looking to secure sales in the current market. CarsGuide Editorial continues to lead the pack in terms of audience numbers. Inside this edition we’ll take you behind the scenes of a world first: an exclusive hydrogen fuelcell vehicle test by our EVGuide team. This along with the development happening on the EVGuide is testament to the team’s innovation in this space.

Our Audience Engine product has now gone live. It provides advertisers a unique opportunity to leverage the strength of our new network proposition, combining the scale that Gumtree provides with over 1.5 million monthly logged-in users and all of their triggers. All that, plus CarsGuide’s rich in-market audiences. Our new Audience Engine product is data and insight-led to help you reach the right audience, with the right message, at the right time in their journey.

Lastly, we are now officially part of the global Adevinta family. With its acquisition of eBay Classifieds Group, Adevinta is now the world’s largest online classifieds group, operating in 16 countries with over three billion monthly visits and 40 digital products and websites. This includes a number of Motors platforms including Mobile.de, the leading auto classifieds site in Germany. Adevinta has a strong ethos of investing in innovation which we look forward to leveraging in the future.

As I write this we are hearing good news about restrictions beginning to lift once again. As our days return to normal I am confident we will also see a big boost to consumer confidence.

All the best Mark Kehoe Managing Director - Autotrader, CarsGuide, Gumtree