CarAdvice Closes Capital Raising Round
CarAdvice, one of Australia’s leading automotive editorial sites, has just closed a round of capital raising. The company raised between $500k and $1m for the funding of aggressive sales and marketing growth. This capital raising follows hot on the heals of the acquisition of CarBuddy in June.
CarAdvice has over 500,000 unique visitors each month and with CarBuddy, this number has now increased to nearly 700,000 UV’s each month.
CarAdvice Acquires CarBuddy
CarAdvice has acquired the carbuddy.com.au business from Jumbuck Entertainment.
Founded in 2006, CarAdvice.com.au is a leading Australian motoring editorial site offering thousands of new car reviews and news. In May this year, the site was visited a total of 772,000 times(1) by over 500,000 visitors(1).
The acquisition of CarBuddy immediately adds 38,000 new and used car listings to CarAdvice’s existing free classifieds offering launched earlier this year. In addition, the Carbuddy.com.au site had 195,000 visits(1) in May, strengthening the CarAdvice groups market presence to a combined 967,000 visits.
Commenting on the acquisition, CarAdvice Chief Executive Officer David Holmes said, “The acquisition of CarBuddy is a natural extension for our business. CarBuddy fast tracks our free classifieds model, improves our offering for dealers and private sellers, and compliments our strong editorial position.”
“In the United States the main competition to the top paid automotive site, AutoTrader, now comes from free alternatives such as Craigslist and Kijiji. We believe this trend will also occur in Australia and CarBuddy.com.au has the potential to become an alternative to top paid auto sites, Carsales.com.au, Drive.com.au and Carsguide.com.au” said Holmes.
CarAdvice has also strengthened its management team with the announcement last week that ex-CarSales General Manager of Media Sales, Justin Whelan, has joined the company as GM Sales and Marketing.
CAV Invests in CarAdvice
Classifed Ad Ventures, through its investment company, CAV Investment Holdings Pty Ltd, has take a stake in the Australian based online automotive site, CarAdvice.com.au. In the process, Simon Baker, the CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, has joined the Board.
CarAdvice has over 450,000 unique visitors per month and has just launched a classifieds section – clearly taking on CarSales.
Here is the announcement from CarAdvice.
CARADVICE TAKES ON CARSALES
Sydney, Australia 10th November 2009 – CarAdvice.com.au – Australia’s largest editorial only automotive site has embarked on an aggressive growth strategy and has the market leader, CarSales, firmly in its sights.
Firstly, Simon Baker, internet veteran and former CEO of the REA Group (realestate.com.au) has invested in the business and joined the board. He brings to CarAdvice a wealth of knowledge and experience in building online classifieds businesses.
Secondly, CarAdvice has just released its classifieds section of the site. Private sellers and dealers are now able to advertise their used cars to CarAdvice’s 450,000 unique visitors (source Google Analytics) at half the price charged by CarSales.
Lastly, six months of editorial improvements and 20% month on month growth have been rewarded with a strong increase in traffic. According to Google Analytics, nearly 450,000 people visited CarAdvice in October. In addition, new research conducted by Nielsen shows that CarAdvice is the 3rd most visited vehicle editorial site in Australia behind Drive and CarGuide and ahead of CarSales.
CarAdvice CEO, David Holmes, said; “CarAdvice has strong momentum and 2010 should deliver strong growth for the business. Over the last 2 years we have built a large and loyal readership for our motoring editorial. We now believe we can leverage this readership into the lucrative motoring classifieds market and take on CarSales in their core revenue area.
“The value of Simon’s online classifieds experience, our continued strong readership growth, and experienced team has positioned us to do well in the online car classifieds market and to chase the car manufacturers advertising dollars.
Car Advice is also positioned to do well in markets outside of Australia as 40% of its traffic being sourced from overseas with the US being the next largest country.”
Commenting on his investment, Simon Baker said, “We invested in CarAdvice as the business has significant growth potential – both in Australia and selected overseas markets. They have already done the hard work in building a large relevant online audience and this positions them well to take on the lucrative automotive classifieds and display advertising markets. In addition they have a strong, experienced and passionate management team. I am looking forward to working closely with the team.”
