Chicago-based Cars.com reached record traffic levels in March with 9 million unique visitors and 15 million total visits. March’s visits were 17% higher than February’s. The heavier traffic also resulted in more contacts for car dealers, with e-mail and phone leads increasing more than 20% over the previous year.
Cars.com president Mitch Golub attributed the gains to the site's largest- ever marketing investment and to recent web site enhancements. "We have doubled our investment in product development and significantly enhanced the user experience, making it easier than ever for car buyers to find the right car on Cars.com,” Golub says. “The results are evident in the record number of leads we are driving to our advertising partners."
New on Cars.com are a redesign of the site's vehicle listings and such features as Lifestyle Criteria Search and enhanced comparison tools.
In February, Cars.com kicked off its biggest marketing campaign ever, called at $110 million. It includes sponsorship of ESPN Saturday Afternoon College Basketball, Saturday Afternoon College Football and spots in ESPN and ESPN2's most popular programs. Cars.com is also advertising on cable networks Discovery Channel, TBS, TNT and USA Network.
"Cars.com saw an immediate lift in traffic with the launch of our 2007 ad campaign, our largest media investment to date," Golub says. "Site performance was outstanding the entire month. In addition to topping monthly traffic records, we broke daily traffic records 10 times. Most important, we delivered record results for our advertisers."
Cars.com is a division of Classified Ventures LLC, which is owned by media companies, including Belo, Gannett Co. Inc., The McClatchy Co. , Tribune Co. and The Washington Post Co.
Back...
