Cars.com, Yahoo Autos Team Up

This development relates to coupes, and could, at the same time, be seen as a coup: Yahoo Autos will now receive about 2.5 million new and used vehicle listings from Cars.com.

The benefit to consumers is obvious – more choices in fewer places.  This is also the first time new cars will ever be available through Yahoo Autos, so in a sense, there will be better choices in fewer places, and Yahoo Autos will be moving upmarket.

As for what Cars.com will receive, there’s the publicity.  More importantly, Cars.com will get advertising exposure, perhaps making it better able to compete with sites like Edmunds and KBB.com.  (Compete statistics, by the way, put Cars.com beneath both those sites, but with far better growth in the past month.)

Mitch Golub, the president of Cars.com, followed this line of thought by calling Yahoo Autos “the clear partner of choice as the fastest growing site for in-market vehicle shoppers.”  He then continued, “In addition to an unduplicated audience, Yahoo! Autos complements Cars.com in its commitment to deliver serious shoppers to our vast network of dealers.”

It’s a win-win-win, then, with whatever “lose” is left over belonging only to sites not participating in the deal.