Co-Driver: How does it really work? Your FAQs answered
We recently launched AI Generated Descriptions and Vehicle Highlights as part of Co-Driver’s AI advertising toolkit.
These features are already being actively used by many retailers in Portal, and some tech partners are starting to complete integrations with their 3rd party systems via Auto Trader Connect.
We’ve received resoundingly positive feedback from retailers about these new tools alongside some questions about how these AI tools work. So, we wanted to provide clarity on some specifics about AI Generated Descriptions and Vehicle Highlights:
Vehicle Highlights
Vehicle Highlights are now live on over 420,000 adverts, utilsing powerful intelligence to highlight the key selling points of a specific vehicle to consumers.
We’ve had a variety of questions about what some of the Vehicle Highlights mean, and how they’re calculated.
What do the ‘Trending’ and ‘Highly Trending’ Vehicle Highlights mean?
‘Trending’ and ‘Highly Trending’ use our demand metric to identify vehicle types that are seeing more search appearances than usual.
A vehicle will show as ‘Trending’ if there’s been more searches for that make, model, generation, trim level, and engine size, than it would typically see.
This is calculated by looking at how many people have searched for that type of vehicle on Auto Trader over the past 7 days compared to the past 6 months.
A vehicle will show as ‘Highly trending’ if it has been getting a lot more searches over the past 7 days compared to the past 6 months.
What are ‘Rare’ and ‘Very Rare’ features?
Rare features are features that are only found of 20% of similar vehicles.
Very rare features are only found on 10% of similar vehicles.
What is a ‘Valuable’ feature?
Valuable features are features that have significantly increased the Auto Trader Retail Valuation of the vehicle and go beyond the standard specification for the make and model.
If your vehicle has significant value-adding features, all the features categorised as ‘high value’ will be highlighted on your adverts.
AI Generated Descriptions
AI Generated Descriptions have been used on over 80,000 adverts since launch at the end of February, enabling retailers to generate bespoke and engaging descriptions at the click of a button.
Will Co-Driver re-write my descriptions?
Co-Driver’s AI Generated Descriptions are designed to create a new, accurate and engaging description for your specific vehicle. They enable you to generate a description with the click of a button, and Co-Driver’s AI will use all the information you’ve inputted about the vehicle, combined with our comprehensive vehicle data and consumer insights, to generate a new description from scratch.
It's important to note that AI Generated Descriptions do not use the existing description to help generate the new one. And the new generated description will replace your existing one if you choose to use it.
How does Co-Driver generate its descriptions?
Co-Driver’s descriptions are designed to appeal to consumers.
Our AI has been trained to write content in a style that is easy to understand for the average consumer. This includes ensuring the description has an average reading age score of 10-12 (UK’s average reading age) and the language and tone is adapted to be accessible for all consumers.
Once you have selected to use the Co-Driver generated description, you are free to adapt this as you see fit, whether that’s adding your own tone of voice or amending wording throughout, to really make it your own.
Does Co-Driver learn from my style of writing?
Co-Driver’s AI Generated Descriptions use Auto Trader’s comprehensive vehicle data and consumer insight to create a description that is specific to the vehicle. This means that the features and spec will be described, but it will not try to replicate your previous descriptions or your tone of voice. This ensures a consistent, solid description is generated that can be used as a foundation to adapt as you see fit.
Does using Co-Driver mean that all adverts will look the same?
Co-Driver utilises our rich vehicle data and comprehensive view of the vehicle parc to create a description which accurately describes an individual vehicle, unique to its specification, not generically to the vehicle model.
This does mean if 2 vehicles have very similar or identical spec, the advert description will likely contain similar information, but no two descriptions will be the same. As always, we encourage retailers to add their unique tone and personalisation to their descriptions where they can.
We’re always looking to improve the outputs of Co-Driver’s tools, so if you have any further questions or feedback on Co-Driver, please reach out to your Account Manager or drop a comment below.