It was rebranded Auto Trader in 1988. The first title was followed by the publication of a second one, Southern Auto Trader.[5]
The company launched a website, Autotrader.co.uk, in 1996, giving people the ability to buy or sell a car online.[6]
British international investment firm BC Partners bought a stake in the business from John Madejski in July 1998 for £260m; then Guardian Media Group, who had acquired Automart in 1982, merged that business with Hurst Publishing in May 2000 so creating Trader Media.[7]
21st century and evolution to digital only
Auto Trader launched a mobile website in 2002, initially using the WAP protocol.[8]
In July 2008, Auto Trader launched a .mobi site,[9] and in July 2009, separate versions for differing handset capability levels were released.[9]
In April 2011 a group called the Motor Traders Advertising Union launched an online petition and proposed a mass pull out by auto dealers who objected to an increase in the fee for a dealership to advertise a car, from £7 to £8.50, before any discounts for bulk advertisers.[11][12][13]
Sales of the print magazine dwindled in line with the decline of the print industry. By July 2012, circulation had dropped to an average of 87,000 copies a week[14] and down to 27,000 in March 2013.[15]
In June 2013, after thirty six years, the final editions of the printed magazine were published, with the company concentrating on its online business.[16]
In October 2013, AutoTrader.co.za (Auto Trader South Africa) a subsidiary of the Auto Trader Group, was sold off to become an independent South African company.[17][18][19][20][21]
In January 2014, Apax Partners bought the business from Guardian Media Group for £600m.[22]
In March 2014, the company rebranded, and became known as Auto Trader,[23] and in March 2015, Auto Trader Group launched an initial public offering, with a market capitalisation of about £2bn and floated on the London Stock Exchange on the FTSE250.[24]
In 2020 it was reported that Auto Trader had created a data lake and intelligence platform using services including Amazon Web Services and Google's Looker, and was working to foster a ‘culture of data’ internally by setting up a data academy for employees.[25]
Auto Trader granted four months of free advertising to its retailer customers to support them during the COVID-19 pandemic.[26][27]
In 2022, Auto Trader began a partnership with the Office for National Statistics sharing its used car pricing data to power its official measures of inflation, including the Consumer Prices Index.[28]
Also in 2022, Auto Trader acquired Autorama, owner of Vanarama, one of the UK’s largest transactional marketplaces for leasing new vehicles.[29]
At the core of Auto Trader is its online marketplace, where consumers buy and sell cars and other vehicles, and where car dealerships advertise and sell their stock, both new and used, to consumers. Retailers pay to advertise vehicles, and consumers also pay a fee unless the transaction is less than £1,000.[39]
AutoTrader.co.uk website
The Auto Trader website was ranked first in the UK in the vehicles category by Similarweb and Eighth globally in January 2024.[40]
Auto Trader operates a YouTube channel where it publishes videos such as car reviews, car comparisons, drag races, and buying guides. Television presenter and automotive journalistRory Reid joined Auto Trader as YouTube Director in December 2019, and fronts the videos on the channel.[43]
