Naved Khan: That’s right.
Sonia Jain: We have – I guess for lack of a better word, it’s baked into the guidance that we’ve provided. We really just launched it at NADA. We’ve done a very small pilot kind of prior to that. So the benefit of that is going to roll in throughout the year, and you should think about it in some ways as a little bit of an extension to the existing media buy that dealers are already making with us. So it’ll be a benefit to our numbers, it’s baked into our guide.
Naved Khan: Got it. And so Sonia, just to clarify your answer on my first question on the ad spending, so as a percentage of revenue, it shouldn’t really change in ‘24 versus ‘23, or how should I think about that?
Sonia Jain: Yes, it’s pretty – I think we’ve been pretty consistent on a percentage of revenue basis now, and so it’ll stay in that same ballpark.
Naved Khan: Understood. Thank you.
Alex Vetter: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes on the line of Kunal Madhukar from UBS. Please go ahead.
Kunal Madhukar: Hi, thank you for taking my questions. A couple from me. One on the cookie list world that we may be going into, don’t know how quickly that gets ruled out, but the investor breakfast at NADA, you talked about how a significant proportion of your traffic comes direct and is organic that you don’t need to pay for. So can you help us understand how you intend to capitalize on the brand, and the loyalty of consumers that you’ve kind of built on? And the second question on the AccuTrade side. So one of the things that was apparent from the NARA show was everybody seems to have a similar kind of offering to help dealers with used cars or getting used cars on their dealerships. So why should a dealer use you and use AccuTrade versus some other service and what stops them from using multiple services? Thank you.
Alex Vetter: Great questions, Kunal. Thank you. First of all, the demise of the cookies have been talked about for years, and I think it’s proving to move a lot slower than a lot of the early projections in terms of when it would actually crumble, but we do see it as a tailwind for us. The absence of cookie tracking technology being more prevalent is that brands have got to spend more money in first-party audiences, of which we have the largest original retail media network of any of our peer group that’s heavily – that’s solely in market car shoppers. 90% of our audience is undecided, and nearly all of them are in market right now. And so the opportunity for brands who use third-party technology companies or inferred audiences, those conversion rates and those programs are going to weaken with the collapse of the cookie and in favor of those brands having to spend more with first-party marketplaces.
To your point, like, what do we do to generate loyalty, well, the average consumer in the U.S. is only in the market once every several years. And so having a brand that’s synonymous with car shopping naturally is one of our wow factors because we generate a lot of our traffic, as you said, organically or directly coming direct to Cars.com. But you also noted in the call that we rolled out things like Your Garage, which allows consumers now to register their car long before they are in market, and then we send them real-time updates on what their car is worth and then can recommend trade-in solutions to them always developing that organic relationship with our platform and our brand. So, I think we have got a number of ways that we keep our audience healthy and strong.
It’s a testament that after 25 years, we still are setting records for traffic growth. And so I think we have demonstrated that we have a great formula for value capture and delivery. Your second question was about AccuTrade and the notion that everybody has a similar solution. And I would challenge that assertion because yes, there are no less than 12 different dealer-to-dealer trading platforms. Many of them have – some have tons of sellers, no buyers. Others have tons of buyers, no inventory. And so you have got all these digital wholesale platforms that tend not to have a true network effect. And then on the instant cash offer side, you have got a lot of marketplaces selling leads to dealers about buying cars. That is not what AccuTrade is.
If you look at AccuTrade, we are giving dealers the ability and the power to buy cars directly from their own customers. When those customers walk in the store are considering a trade-in, in their service lane off their website. And yes, you can also source private seller opportunities from the Cars.com marketplace. But the power of our technology is that we don’t give generic ranges. We give precise valuation tied to the health of the vehicle. This is saving dealers tons of money. It’s speeding appraisals from hours to minutes. And it’s also so much more cost advantageous than buying cars at the auction. And with used cars scarcity of being a predominant theme this year, we know that auction prices are going to go up. We know fees, both auction fees and transportation fees are hefty to the tune of $1,500 per vehicle sold contrasted to AccuTrade, which is $1,500 a month, and you can buy hundreds of cars directly from customers in your own backyard.
So, we think the differentiate of AccuTrade is vast from what we see out in the industry, and the dealers that have adopted AccuTrade have said it’s an absolute game changer to both their top and bottom line.
Kunal Madhukar: Thank you.
Alex Vetter: Thank you, Kunal.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Doug Arthur from Huber Research. Please proceed.
Doug Arthur: Yes. Good morning. Sonia, did you mention anything about Dealer Inspire in terms of growth in the quarter and number of dealers in the system?
