Cars Commerce debuts as Cars.com's new connected technology platform

Cars.com and its various commercial businesses are now linked under the name Cars Commerce — a new brand and connected technology platform designed to bring them all together.

The setup is intended to let users access a streamlined and interconnected product portfolio divided among marketplace, digital experience, trade and appraisal and media operations, according to the company. Cars.com, based in Chicago, Ill., launched 25 years ago and remains the company's flagship operation. It continues as Cars Commerce's dominant brand and the CARS stock ticker remains in place.

CEO Alex Vetter told Automotive News that launching Cars Commerce accelerates efforts to better link software and services that simplify the car-buying process and make it more transparent. It also helps solidify Cars.com's status as what Vetter refers to as a "retail media network" with technology and software (known as software as a service) that enables on-demand use. Cars.com began solely focused on its digital marketplace and remains an important piece of a far larger group of product offerings.

"We will never stop reaching in-market car shoppers as Cars.com," Vetter said. But "when you talk to our customers about the tools they use to run their businesses, whether that's a retailer or manufacturer, those will largely be Cars Commerce technologies that they're using to power their digital experiences."

Making a corporate move such as the launch of Cars Commerce as an umbrella for other related brands has precedent in other industries. Facebook, for example, renamed itself Meta in 2021 to reflect its focus on developing metaverse/virtual reality technology. The Facebook brand continues under the Meta corporate umbrella, along with Facebook acquisitions Instagram, WhatsApp and new social network Threads.

The breakdown of Cars Commerce's new organizational setup places Cars.com and its digital marketplace, financing and trade-in capabilities in the marketplace arm. Digital marketing unit Dealer Inspire informs digital experience operations. Trade and appraisal is addressed by Accu-Trade, a provider of vehicle and valuation data and logistics technology acquired by Cars.com whose technology is integrated into both the Cars.com marketplace and Dealer Inspire websites. The new Cars Commerce Media Network is designed to unify the company's media products including Cars Social, FUEL IMV and its national advertising products and services, the company said.

Some key acquisitions have helped Cars.com diversify the offerings it is now linking more closely together. Most recently, that includes its $65 million acquisition of Accu-Trade in 2022 and its $30 million purchase of automotive financial technology company CreditIQ in November 2021. It acquired Dealer Inspire in 2018.

Cars Commerce allows the company to accomplish a number of things that it couldn't previously, Vetter said.

"We're uniting the exhaustive data that comes through these technologies, tools, decentralized dashboards and analytics for our partners," Vetter said.

By doing so, a manufacturer, for example, could see how advertising during the Super Bowl might be affecting consumer shopping behavior, and how consumers are then shopping for and buying cars across the manufacturer retail dealership network. Consumers, in turn, will experience a seamless experience from price comparison to dealership visits, trade-ins and ultimately auto purchase, Vetter said.

He said developing a brand identity for Cars Commerce should be feasible in the long run.

"I'll tell you what's much harder is building a connected technology platform, which we've done," Vetter said. "How that brand is established I think, is secondary."