AI powered retailing a reality as industry embraces 'game-changing' tools to deliver retailing excellence
London, 27th May 2025 – At a time when retailers are navigating an increasingly complex and competitive market, the industry has been quick to embrace the power of artificial intelligence (AI). It comes in response to the launch of Auto Trader’s suite of AI powered tools, Co-Driver, which in just a few months has already seen circa 10,000 retailers utilise Auto Trader’s unparalleled vehicle data and consumer insights to help drive performance and deliver retailing excellence.
Co-Driver was launched in November last year, with the introduction of Smart Image Management, the first in a long pipeline of AI innovations powered by Auto Trader Intelligence, underpinned by over 80 million cross platform visits and circa 619 million combined search minutes every month, as well as around 1.6 million daily vehicle observations. In February, Auto Trader gave all its retailer partners further access to its wealth of data and insights with the launch of two brand-new tools, AI Generated Descriptions, and Vehicle Highlights.
Since launch, Smart Image Management, which instantly arranges images into the optimum sequence according to buyer preference, has been used by retailers to re-order nearly 9 million images on over 290,000 adverts. Vehicle Highlights leverages the same powerful AI-driven Auto Trader Intelligence to automatically pinpoint the features buyers really care about, based on Auto Trader’s unrivalled consumer insights. Such is the effectiveness of the tool, car and van buyers have interacted with its summaries over 33 million times.
AI Generated Descriptions taps into Auto Trader’s wealth of rich data to instantly generate detailed and highly engaging vehicle descriptions. Also when comprehensive VIN specification details sourced directly from leading manufacturers is incorporated, each vehicle is described and positioned accurately and in the most appealing way for potential buyers— helping retailers to showcase their stock in the most impactful way in just a click of a button. Since February the tool has generated over 285,000 descriptions, with retailers accepting the first proposed description 96% of the time.
In total, nearly 10,000 retailer sites have used Co-Driver tools on their adverts, accessed either through their Auto Trader Portal accounts or for those utilising Auto Trader’s suite of API solutions, Auto Trader Connect, seamlessly integrated into their chosen systems. With Co-Driver tools reducing the average time to create an advert from circa 28 minutes to around just five, the huge benefit of artificial intelligence is now a reality for automotive retailers.
Co-Driver’s AI retailing tools are game-changing for us. Through optimised workflows, we've revolutionised our digital forecourt to present a highly engaging solution for our customers. With Co Driver we're leveraging over 80 million data points to curate accurate and engaging vehicle descriptions alongside Smart Image Management tools. Our partnership with Auto Trader and Nexus Point unlocks high level automation, everything from vehicle description and tone of voice to image optimisation are handled through Apex DMS software on day one. It's amazing!”
Ben Mills, Digital Marketing Specialist at FOW Car Supermarket
As with all of our tools and solutions, we didn’t rush Co-Driver. It’s the pinnacle of a decade of AI investment, as well as close collaboration with our partners to ensure it met their needs, particularly within today’s challenging market. We’re delighted therefore that these combined tools have been embraced so quickly, and retailers are seeing such immediate benefits. We’ve long been committed to giving our partners access to our data and technology to drive business performance, and these initial Co-Driver tools mark an important milestone in what will be a long pipeline of AI powered innovations.
Developed by Auto Trader’s in-house team of over 400 data scientists and engineers, Co-Driver represents the scale of its data and technology capabilities and marks the pinnacle of more than a decade of investment in AI. To ensure all retailers can benefit, the full range of Co-Driver’s features are available as part of all used car and van advertising packages.
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