Autotrader Loses the Plot and Its Customers

How the UK’s Biggest Car Listing Platform Forgot What It Was and Who It’s For…

Autotrader’s recent backlash over Deal Builder is the clear sign of a business losing its way. As we head into the final days of 2025, one of the UK’s most familiar classified advertising platforms finds itself in an escalating and very public crisis. What began as the rollout of a new feature has mushroomed into widespread customer dissatisfaction, revenue losses, mass cancellations, negative media coverage and a staggering drop in market valuation. For a company whose website dominates the UK automotive classified space, the upheaval reflects not just an unhappy product launch, but potentially a deeper strategic confusion over who its real customer is and what a classifieds listing business is supposed to do.

Deal Builder: A Technology with Negative Consequences

After three years of trials, Autotrader recently decided to mandate the use of its Deal Builder feature for all car dealers advertising on its listing platform. Deal Builder is designed to allow prospective buyers to begin the car purchase journey online by entering part-exchange details, applying for finance, selecting handover options and, perhaps most controversially of all, placing a fully refundable £99 reservation.

Conceptually, this mirrors a shift toward digital retailing, in a blunt attempt by Autotrader to migrate towards being more of a marketplace than a pure classified advertising platform. However, many UK dealers feel the execution and imposition of Deal Builder has been ill thought out, poorly tested and is ultimately flawed for many reasons, including the following:

• Deal Builder essentially locks a car as reserved, potentially removing it from broader view and putting other buyers off from contacting the seller. Those other buyers could be ready to buy and convert to completion more quickly than the one reserving the car and holding it off-market. Dealers worry that the system could be easily abused, with potential buyers reserving multiple vehicles and then taking their time to visit and test each one, while the seller could be locked in for weeks, unable to sell a car to anyone else.

• Dealers say the new display now hides or alters their traditional contact information in favour of promoting the reservation function. This results in reducing the quality and quantity of genuine enquiries via more traditional direct channels, such as messaging the retailer or calling the dealership.

• Another absurd concept introduced by Autotrader is requiring the buyer to login before a reservation is made or contacting the seller. This has understandably and reportedly deterred many buyers, who view the website as a listing provider and not someone to transact with.

Dealers say, all these changes put too many obstacles in the way of the buyer and that these features have never been asked for and are not wanted.

Lead Crash

The net effect of all these changes is a complete drop off in leads being sent to car dealers via the Autotrader platform, with many claiming the phone has stopped ringing. Leads are what dealers pay Autotrader handsomely for, so it is clear they are no longer serving the customer with Deal Builder, they are serving themselves. Autotrader defends the changes as their way to funnel leads to car sellers with a higher level of buying intent. My experience of similar lead propositions in the tech space is that the word intent is often misused, and seldom means anything more than an excuse to charge a premium for user data. Qualifying a buyer’s intent is almost impossible to do unless you have a conversation with a real person. Direct contact between the seller and buyer is a key part of the sales process, and that is the job of the dealership, not a black box algorithm or reservation feature that stops a dealer selling the car to a potential customer.

Customer Revolt

These frustrations have boiled over into coordinated protests and cancellations. Reports suggest that at least hundreds of dealers have either downgraded their advertising packages, cancelled contracts or publicly pledged to defect. The narrative from dealer associations like the Independent Motor Dealer Association (IMDA) has been stark: Many dealers feel the forced rollout of Deal Builder is the worst product Autotrader has introduced, and that it places the platform between them and their customers in ways that disrupt traditional sales, potentially eroding dealer brand control and customer relationships.

Real Financial Consequences

The reaction has not been limited to dealer forums. The stock market has responded, with stock trading almost 35% below Autotrader’s 52-week high of 920 pence. Since launching Deal Builder, the company has seen an almost immediate reduction in market capitalisation of around £800 million. That kind of movement reflects something deeper than just a product dispute: it indicates scepticism about Autotrader’s strategic direction, and that these changes are harming its growth prospects, at least in the short term. Recent interviews with Autotrader’s CEO and executives have shown no willingness to back down or even take time to review. In fact, they have stood firm and displayed a doubling down and blind belief that the Deal Builder product is a good thing, while customers are screaming the contrary.

Price Hikes, Forced Features and Shifting Priorities Makes Dealers Angry

Overlaying the Deal Builder issue are longer-running industry frustrations. For example, the annual price increases for dealer advertising packages has already been forcing many customers to reassess their relationship with Autotrader. As a publicly listed company, Autotrader reports consistently to shareholders and is under pressure to grow revenues, profits and increase the company valuation. This pressure appears to have translated into rising costs for customers, many of whom already feel squeezed by margin compression in the used car market. Dealers argue they are paying more for a classified advertising service that now feels less reliable as a lead generator and more invasive in the sales process. Complaints about pricing are longstanding, but the Deal Builder rollout seems to have crystallised broader dealer dissatisfaction into open revolt.

A Strategic Misstep Caused By Autotrader’s Own Confusion

At the heart of the controversy lies a fundamental confusion by Autotrader’s own people about who their customer really is. In several public interviews and communications, Autotrader executives have described two customer groups: car dealers and car buyers (consumers). This is what happens when you employ people who are data smart but business stupid. I completely disagree with this false, naïve and poorly thought-out concept, as this framing is misleading and blatantly untrue. In classified business models, like Autotrader’s, only the sellers are the paying customers. The car-buying public does not pay to use the platform and are USERS, not customers.

Users have their own important but distinct definition and requirements from the platform, but that is not the same as, and must never be confused with, that of the customer. Users are the customers of Autotrader’s customers, and that is a lesson Autotrader will do well to remember, because car dealers do not want the listing company interfering with their customers and their sales process. That is not the job of a classified platform, and Autotrader must remember what its business model is, who the customer is and what it is they pay them for. Grandiose ideas about digital retailing is causing confusion amongst Autotrader’s employees. Collecting all the data points and analysis from the platform is meaningless if Autotrader does not deliver new and relevant enquiries every day to car sellers.

A Power Play or Genuine Error?

Autotrader’s revenue overwhelmingly comes from car dealers and trade advertisers. Industry figures estimate that approximately 90% or more of Autotrader’s revenue is derived from trade customers, with only a small proportion coming from private seller fees, ancillary digital services and other segments. Yet, in pushing forward with unwanted digital purchasing tools and attempting to own more of the buyer journey, Autotrader is perceived by dealers as encroaching on the space between buyers and sellers. Dealers argue, correctly, that this undermines their autonomy in sales negotiation and post-lead interaction, something that dealers see as integral to their business model. This conflict isn’t just theoretical, because it has practical consequences for how leads convert and how dealers manage their stock and customer relationships. Many dealers fear losing control of the sales process and customer experience to a feature that cannot value cars correctly or replace human interaction, but which prioritises platform engagement over the dealer’s own sales processes.

Is Autotrader Abusing Its Monopoly Power?

The question of monopoly abuse must be considered. Autotrader dominates the UK online listings space by a wide margin, estimated at 70–80% share of listing revenue and around 75% of audience engagement. No competitor comes close in terms of reach and performance, which makes Autotrader essential to many dealers’ marketing mixes. That dominance, coupled with mandatory rollout demands, raises legitimate questions about market power and fair dealing, questions that may attract regulatory scrutiny if dealer discontent were to continue. What is surprising is that if Autotrader knew anything about their customers, it would have been easy to predict this backlash and amend their approach before wiping almost £1 billion from their company valuation. This brings into question what exactly has Autotrader been up to in the last three years? While developing and testing new features focused completely, and shortsightedly, on the consumer journey, it would seem they have ignored customers, who don’t seem to want any of the so-called benefits offered by Deal Builder. More importantly, what are the real motivations behind these changes?

Autotrader is Not a Marketplace

Other than Autotrader’s confusion about who its customers really are, the delusion may extend to whether the website is a classified platform or a marketplace. I believe Autotrader’s recent behaviour may be a signal it has ambitions to become more than a listings platform. It looks like a very clumsy attempt to develop its core business into a full blown digital retailer. This can be the only explanation for the poorly executed product launch of Deal Builder. Perhaps, and because of Autotrader’s need to show continuous growth to shareholders, it may have hatched a long-term strategic plan to develop the business model into a marketplace, in the full sense of the definition: marketplaces offer a full buying experience with security and convenience; while classifieds offer broad exposure and direct seller control.

For example, an online marketplace (like Amazon or ebay) facilitates the entire transaction, offering shopping carts, payments and streamlined processes for many sellers. This is very different from classifieds (like Craigslist or Autotrader) which are simple listing platforms connecting buyers and sellers who then arrange the deal, payment and delivery off-platform. Autotrader is a classifieds business focusing on ads rather than integrated commerce. If Autrader now has ambitions to become a marketplace, it must first tell its customers and not disregard their needs in favour of its own roadmap.

Conflict of Interest

It’s increasingly difficult for Autotrader to claim, with any degree of sincerity, to be the champion of UK car retailing with its chubby fingers in so many pies. When the car listing provider also offers car and van leasing, consumer vehicle finance, online valuations, auctions, and constantly promotes EV leasing deals to anyone who visits its website, the conflict of interest and overreach are blatant. None of these extra-curricular activities delivers value to dealers, who are losing money from the loss of finance opportunities, have to underprice vehicles to fit in with the unsophisticated online guide price, and then replenish their stock in overpriced auctions thanks to Autotrader’s inflated instant cash offers.

Can Autotrader Save Itself – From Itself?

In response to the negative customer reaction and financial market dip, Autotrader has reportedly called internal emergency meetings, engaged in dealer webinars and begun discussing adjustments to the Deal Builder rollout in an attempt to make it more acceptable. Are they putting lipstick on a pig, or will they end up with a product that customers will learn to work with and benefit from? Only time will tell, but at least they now seem to be listening to the customers that pay their salaries and not making up new definitions for groups that have no basis in reality. Whether these moves will placate dealers, reverse cancellations and shore up revenue remains uncertain. The anticipated April price increases, compounded with these recent dealer frustrations, could be enough to see another mass exodus of customers from the platform, especially if dealers continue to be marginalised and viewed as nothing more than cash cows to fund the future of Autotrader, whatever that may be.

You may want to read: “How to Define Your Target Market.”