In announcing its purchase of Dealix and Autotegrity last week, Autobytel said it plans to grow the used-car side of its business. 

So, Auto Remarketing reached out to Autobytel’s president and chief executive officer, Jeff Coats, to find out more about why the company saw a need to expand its presence in the pre-owned space.

“The used-car market is very large and growing more quickly than new — and right now, used cars represent only 9 percent of our current revenue, so there is plenty of upside opportunity for us” Coats said. “According to IHS data (formerly Polk) many consumers are in the market for both new and used, so not focusing on used is definitely a missed opportunity.”

According to Coats, Dealix’ revenue from pre-owned leads accounts for over 16 percent of its overall revenue, nearly double the percentage of Autobytel’s former numbers. The acquisition of Dealix also includes its site, UsedCars.com.

“With UsedCars.com, we now have the ability to enhance our used-car lead program, and we are also excited about the relaunch of Car.com,” Coats said.

Coats touched on this topic further during a conference call on Thursday when the company formerly announced the acquisition, briefly outlining a bit of Autobytel’s strategy in the space.   

“They do generate a pretty good volume of their leads off of their UsedCars.com site, but I think that site probably has not been as strongly invested in over the last couple of years as we would probably now, because we view that as an integral part of our strategy going forward,” Coats said. “We will definitely be beefing that up and continuing to focus on that as we are really beginning to grow our used-car pay-per-lead business.”

Auto Remarketing also followed up with Coats on the used-car beta test platform the company had previously mentioned alongside its acquisition news to see if any details could be fleshed out.

“Our latest used-car test involved utilizing our existing SEM strategies, which had been very successful for us on the new car side, to drive in-market pre-owned car buyers to dealers,” Coats said. “We really hadn’t focused on that until now.”