ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is being used to dramatically shorten the time it takes buyers to search for a car, and the time to start negotiations with a dealer.

It also lets the buyer quickly search and locate a specific make, model and year of a vehicle, showing the location of a selection of vehicles that meet the criteria.

The AI program is at the core of a marketing platform designed for the automotive industry and launched by Sydney-based media agency McKenzie Partners under the name Traffk.

McKenzie Partners’ chief commercial officer Sam Buchanan told GoAutoNews Premium that the technology uses Google as a starting point.

“Customers know what they want in a car so the first step in their search is on Google,” he said.

“We know that 95 per cent of all car searches start with a digital search on Google. Traffk is model specific, so it searches for the exact car the buyer wants, for example a 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI.

“Traditionally, ad campaigns for dealerships are done on brands and a broad-brush stroke of the sale, but now we focus on individual cars.

“Traffk sells the cars individually, so focuses the buyer on the car and doesn’t waste dealer time with callers. It shortens the process for finding and buying a car for both dealer and consumer.”

Mr Buchanan said his company had been in the market with Traffk for five months and the results across all metrics are “very impressive”.

“It drives a higher quality of leads and produces better sales results,” he said.

“On average, our dealer clients have reported a 42 per cent increase in clicks, a 315 per cent boost in impression share and a 31 per cent reduction in cost per click.”

Mr Buchanan said people looking for a car do not come into the Traffk system at all.

“They access the service by looking for a vehicle via a Google search and this is where AI detects the consumer’s behaviour to help find the vehicle,” he said.

“Traffk works across search and digital display advertising across the network and also in social media.

“The result of their search leads them directly to the dealer website and in this way it connects the consumer with the dealer.”

Mr Buchanan said Traffk gets its income through a licensing fee of $249 a month and an additional management fee for McKenzie Partners, which is an Australian automotive media agency that has 20 years’ automotive marketing experience.

“The product was developed in North America with our partners and we have been working with Google for four months before launch,” he said.

“We wanted world-best practice in digital marketing that was not available in Australia, and we found this.”

By NEIL DOWLING