ENDECA AND TRADER MEDIA GROUP PARTNER TO DELIVER THE NEXT GENERATION USER-EXPERIENCE AT AUTOTRADER.CO.UK
Endeca IAP to support UK's largest car buying audience at Autotrader.co.uk
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- February 7, 2007 -- Endeca Technologies, Inc., an enterprise information access software company, today announced that Trader Media Group, one of Europe's largest specialist multi media groups and online media companies publishing 70 leading titles with associated Web sites including Auto Trader, the UK's number one automotive Web site and magazine, has selected the Endeca Information Access Platform (IAP) to power AutoTrader.co.uk, Europe's largest motoring Web site and the fourth largest ABCe audited Web site in the UK*. (*Source: ABCe April 2006).
Trader Media Group will use the Endeca IAP to introduce a variety of new customer-facing features designed to help people more easily explore, find and compare offerings, while taking advantage of the platform's unique performance and scaling characteristics to offload demand on backend Oracle databases. This combination is designed to grow the UK's largest car buying audience, best serve Trader Media Group's network of 5,000 dealers, increase ad revenue, and reduce site management costs. The new features and functionality will be introduced in 2007.
Attracting and retaining car buyers requires more than just great content, it requires a great user experience to match. This combination is putting pressure on site developers to innovate at a rapid pace to remain competitive, while at the same time ensuring that back end infrastructure can scale to meet the increased load. Databases, typically the backbone for such operations, were not designed for this volume of access activity, and have shown very poor performance characteristics under these conditions. In addition, this database infrastructure limits developers' ability to deliver the rich user experience features that today's increasingly Web-savvy consumers demand.
Jonathan William, Head of Marketing at Trader Media Group comment: "We initially looked at traditional search engine technology as a way to help customers more easily find desirable offerings while relieving our databases of the heavy traffic demands. Once we saw what was possible with Endeca's technology, it became clear that search alone was not enough to meet our objectives, either on the back end or the front end.
"Beyond just great search, Endeca gives us the ability to take full advantage of our 5000 dealers' investments in data, giving people the ability to browse all of our offerings by the criteria most important to them. And the platform's tools, scaling characteristics and performance capabilities were important to grow on our success at Autotrader.co.uk."
The Endeca Information Access Platform combines a variety of best-in-class information access capabilities, including search, Guided Navigation®, geospatial filtering, data visualization and context-driven content presentation (also known as Content Spotlighting and Dynamic Merchandising). The capabilities encourage content exploration and discovery -- increasing content consumption, page views, ad inventory, etc. -- while ensuring that users can quickly find and evaluate relevant offerings. In addition, the platform's Web-based management suite gives non-technical business users the ability to optimize the user experience and promote highly targeted advertisements, related content and other contextually relevant information.
Endeca's technology is used to power some of the most popular and highly trafficked sites in Europe, the Americas and Asia, including AutoTrader New Zealand (autotrader.co.nz), CDW, Comet, Cox Newspapers, Dice.com, The Guardian, Lastminute.com, Office Depot, Yellow Pages Singapore, Tesco.com, and Walmart.com.
Trader Media Group, a division of the Guardian Media Group, employs over 3,000 people across 40 locations in the UK, Ireland, Holland, Italy and South Africa. The Group is looking to expand on its winning formula - further developing its online and print offering to provide a one-stop-shop for all vehicle owners across all effective channels to market; building the services and relationships with dealers, manufacturers and consumers; and strengthening its portfolio of automotive and specialist classified titles.
About Endeca
Endeca is a next-generation information access company, uniting the ease of search with the analytical power of business intelligence. Combining patented intellectual property, breakthrough science and a deep focus on user experience, the Endeca Information Access Platform helps people find, analyze and understand information in ways never before possible. Leading global organizations like ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Boeing, Cox Newspapers, Dice, The (US) Defense Intelligence Agency, The Home Depot, Hyatt, IBM, John Deere, The Library of Congress, Nike, and Walmart.com rely on Endeca to power business-critical applications that increase revenue, reduce costs and streamline operations.
Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, USA, Endeca is a private company with worldwide operations. For more information: www.endeca.com or info@endeca.com.
About Trader Media Group
Trader Media Group publishes market leading niche titles such as Auto Trader, Top Marques, Bike Trader, Truck & Plant Trader, Ad Trader, Motorhome and Caravan Trader, Boats and Yachts for Sale, Boat Trader, Farmers Trader, Auto Freeway, TNT magazine -- all leading their sectors with magazine readership and web visitors.
AutoTrader.co.uk has been voted amongst the top 10 most trusted online brands, reliable Web sites and best Web sites to visit* according to The eSuperbrands Council -- experts in marketing, managing, creating or reviewing Internet brands. (*Source: eSuperbrands 2006)
With 13 regional Auto Trader magazines across the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the brand is building a competitive position across all effective channels including print, the web and WAP. Auto Trader provides buyers and sellers including dealer groups and motor manufacturers with an integrated offering including mobile (Orange, O2) and online (AOL and MSN). Auto Trader has a 39% market share of visits to automotive classified Web sites* and has over 350,000 classified vehicles for sale at any one time. (*Source: Hitwise June 2006).
Trader Media Group publishes over 70 titles every week with a combined circulation of 1.5 million and has market-leading Web sites for its top titles.
Trader Media Group owns and operates the following companies; Contact Advantage Group, a leading CRM software provider; 2nd Byte, a market leading web services business to motor industry; Trader Data Systems, providing vehicle data services to the motor, finance, insurance, warranty and parts and accessory organisations; www.CarZone.ie, Ireland's no 1 motoring channel for new and used cars; www.BoatShop24.com Europe's no 1 independently owned classified recreational marine Web site; Vebra, the UK's no1 provider of estate agency software and UK's no2 Business and Finance - Property Web site* (*Source: Hitwise, March 2006) and Think Property, an online property portal.