CARY, N.C. -

When the cross-bidding capability within the multiplatform wholesale environment comes to fruition, said ARI’s Bob Graham, it will mark the most significant innovation since the Internet in terms of impact to the remarketing industry.

“Cross-bidding among platforms will exponentially increase the opportunity for a seller to sell their vehicle faster and for a higher sales price because of competition,” Graham, vice president of vehicle remarketing at ARI, told Auto Remarketing. “In my mind, when it happens, and I’m sure it will at some point, it will be the biggest advancement to remarketing since the Internet itself.”

Cross-bidding, he says, is the key development to remember when discussing multiplatform in the remarketing business. What often gets lost is that the multiplatform piece of the puzzle has been around for nearly a decade; the new wrinkle to the discussion now is the cross-bidding capability that has been developed.

“I’m fully on board with multiplatform, and really cross-bidding, which is the key element of it all. One of the things I would say is that in all the press releases and stories, the headline is always multiplatform. To me, the headline isn’t really multiplatform, it should be cross-bidding,” Graham explained.

“Multiplatform is the ability to take your vehicles and put them on multiple platforms, ADESA.com, Manheim’s OVE, etc., and various other websites, all at the same time. Multiplatform itself has existed for a long time,” he continued.

“We at ARI have had multiplatform for almost 10 years,” Graham added. “Within the last two to three years, two independent technology companies, Liquid Motors and AiM, developed the same style of multiplatform and have offered it as a service or product to remarketers. And there are a number of companies who have taken them up on that product. As an industry, multiplatform already exists.”

From a seller’s perspective, multiplatform allows them to get more eyeballs on their cars by having the vehicles listed on several websites instead of just one, Graham said. However, what it doesn’t currently allow for is cross-bidding throughout those platforms.

That’s what the development around MPS, also referred to as the Hub, is all about, he noted.

“Now, if a buyer is on OVE and another buyer is on ADESA.com, they can’t bid against each other, because the platforms are in silos,” Graham said. “What happens today with multiplatform is that it’s really an exposure mechanism to get your vehicles on all the platforms.

“And what the seller does is they start the bidding at their floor price. As soon as someone bids on any one of those various websites, the seller knows they have at least an acceptable bid, and the technology pulls the vehicles down from all the websites, except for the one that got that first bid that matched the seller’s floor price,” he continued. “Bidding will continue in that one silo, let’s say OVE, for a couple more hours or days, so you don’t know yet what the final price is or who the final buyer is, but you know your floor price has been met or exceeded and now you are selling it in that one silo.

“So that’s what multiplatform is today. The new piece, and the important piece, is cross-bidding. It’s the auction’s initiative to tie their systems together so that buyers on OVE and ADESA.com — I will use those two examples for simplicity — could bid against each other in real time.”

Much of what Graham expressed was reflected in an explanation by Manheim North America president Janet Barnard to help clear up one “point of confusion” she often sees.

Barnard said that “the difference between what exists today and what we’re piloting is — this is my term — dynamic bidding.”

As multiplatform currently exists, once the bid hits the reserve price, the platform receiving that particular bid “continues the facilitation from that point on,” she said.

“And the bidding stops in the multiplatform environment. In this Hub arrangement, that competitive bidding continues until the car is sold. So, even after the bid reaches the reserve price, the competitive bidding continues throughout the entire marketplace among all the participants in MPS,” Barnard said. 

“And that’s the key for the customer. That’s the push that we continue to hear from our customers. They want that specific piece to be the next enhancement in MPS,” she added.  “The multi-listing service already exists. So this effort is not a replication of what exists today.”