11:51 am, November 20, 2024
Auto Trader says its new AI powered suite of tools will help dealers save time and their adverts perform better.
Denying that the firm has jumped on the AI bandwagon, director Marc Palmer said this launch will offer dealers access to technology the firm has refined over the last decade.
The advertising marketplace last week launched Co-Driver, a product that can help reorder photographs car dealers have taken of their stock and suggest images that may be missing. Soon it will be able to help write adverts too.
Speaking to Car Dealer, in a video interview above, Palmer explained that Co-Driver has been born out of many years of experimenting with the technology.
‘It’s going to bring together loads of the learning that we’ve had from working with AI over the last 10 years and more,’ he said, in our video interview.
‘All of the brilliant data that we have at Auto Trader, all of the technology, the expertise that we have, has been put into a suite of tools which is just going to help retailers advertise their cars and provide a really great consumer experience.’
Palmer explained the product will help ensure dealers pick the very best images for their adverts and help with ordering them so the ads perform at their very best.
For example, it knows what options are most important on some cars to customers – sat nav, for example – and will move those relevant images further up the order.
‘So one of the key things that we’ve been talking about for a very long time is how much of a difference imagery can make to that initial consumer experience of your car,’ he added.
‘The first image that people see makes such a big difference in the consumer experience. And so this tool helps us to tag and order the pictures to make sure that consumers are seeing the best possible picture – the one that makes the most sense for them.’
Palmer said Auto Trader’s AI has been ‘learning’ in the background which images consumers interact with the most and is deploying that knowledge across all adverts.
But how can car dealers trust that Auto Trader’s AI will get it right?
He added: ‘Well, that’s because of all of the learning and the time and the data that’s gone into it. This isn’t something where we’ve picked up a tool and we’ve added it onto Auto Trader so that retailers can advertise their cars.
‘This has got at least a decade’s worth of learning in the background to make sure that what is shown really is the best, and that is what sets our use of AI apart – Auto Trader data.’
The next step for the AI tech will be to help write the adverts for car dealers – something many don’t enjoy doing. This will launch in the new year.
Palmer added: ‘It’s so important to make sure that the data that goes into a vehicle description is accurate and that the vehicle is correctly described. Essentially what happens is the tool is picking up rich data and it uses AI, and the large language model capabilities, to provide a really good vehicle description.
‘It will make sure that it’s accurate, articulate, that it reads really well, that the grammar is right, and all those sorts of things – the kind of things that the consumers would expect from a good experience.
‘This is a great use of technology to take a lot of that burden away.’
Later the AI tech will help highlight key features of the vehicles to showcase the things it may have that AI knows customers like.
‘These tools are about saving dealers time and giving customers a great experience on the site,’ added Palmer.
Watch the full chat about AI, how Auto Trader is using it to help dealers and what could be coming next in the video at the top of this post.
