The latest update on consumer interest across the marketplace
At Auto Trader, we firmly believe that we only win when you, the customer, wins. That's why we're continuing to invest in advertising, such as sponsoring Dave TV for a full 12 months to help continually drive more audience to view your vehicles on Auto Trader. We're continuing to improve the buying experience through initiatives such as increasing the size of your adverts in search results, highlighting retailers who don't charge admin fees and giving you new ways to attract buyers such as through home delivery services.
We're delighted that these things, in combination with a buoyant market are continuing to drive record numbers of buyers to Auto Trader, and in doing so; creating huge opportunities for you to sell profitably and quickly. So if knowing our numbers is something you're interested in, here's all you need to know...
August was a record month for visits to Auto Trader, with 67 million visits across the month - beating our previous record of 64m visits in June 2020 by circa 4.8%.
Adviews and users (non-unique) similarly continued to grow, beating June & July and we saw a similar story when it comes to time on site with over 10.7 million hours being spent by buyers on Auto Trader through August – up from 10.5 million in July.
August stats:
• Users up 23% YoY
• Visits up 31% YoY
• Ad views up 29% YoY
• Time on site up 27% YoY
Whilst overall activity on Auto Trader saw a slump during lockdown, the surge in activity seen when forecourts re-opened has led to overall activity being significantly above what we saw in 2019. We’ve seen year-on-year increases between April and September 2019 and 2020 in:
• Users up 9.5% (non-unique/all users)
• Sessions up 9.2%
• Ad views up 11.2%
• Session duration up 8.7%
We're also continuing to see strong YoY growth in organic searched across mobile web and desktop of: 26% in users, 32% in sessions and 26% in adviews.
And interest in brand new vehicles are hitting record levels too...
At the time of writing, the last two weeks have seen the highest numbers of search appearances, ad views and leads sent to retailer partners advertising their brand new stock on our platform. Looking at the first week of September vs the first week of March (our previous record for interest in new vehicles), leads were up 63%, including calls which were up 81%. In combination with the hip "70's are back" plate change marketing campaign we're currently running to connect buyers to retailers, now is the perfect time to exceed your sales targets.
Plus, interest in vans, motorhomes, caravans and bikes continues to see massive growth
Vans growth continues to be strong and is consistent across all platforms (circa 400k incremental adviews YoY, 200k sessions & circa 100k users). Although vans traffic has started to plateau and remains flat week on week, but we're still recording record growth year on year with:
• Users up 44%
• Sessions up 51%
• Adviews up 55%
We have seen a steady interest in bikes throughout the past few months, with sessions remaining consistent, they have not drastically been effected by the pandemic. Both audience and engagement is strong when comparing to last year, with sessions last month being up 31% and leads delivered to dealers are 51% ahead of August 2019.
Interest in leisure vehicles continues to grow year-on-year, with the surge in staycations likely leading to users being up 70%, sessions up 68% & adviews up 104%. However, levels of engagement in terms of leads appears to be declining. This is due to a multitude of reasons including the volume of stock on site, dealers struggling to fulfil demand and the onset of Autumn.
For a regular view of what's happening in the market, don't forget to sign up for our bi-weekly webinars here: https://trade.autotrader.co.uk/webinars/