Starting today Drive.com.au will be the sales team for CarsGuide.  This is a distribution deal meaning that dealerships will now be able to have a single point of contact for both sites. This isn’t a merger in any sense, both Drive & CarsGuide will continue to operate as separate sites in a competitive environment, with their own editorial, marketing and technical teams.

What it does mean is that both sites will grow as dealers will now be listed on both sites. From the press release this morning:

"This initiative presents significant commercial benefits to new and used vehicle dealers, allowing them to reach potential buyers more easily across two national platforms," Jack Matthews, CEO, Fairfax Digital said. "The personalised account service and expanded offerings resulting from this agreement will streamline the marketing process for dealers."

"We are committed to providing quality leads to dealers from online car buyers across Australia. This agreement reflects our ongoing commitment to increase our customers’ operational efficiencies," he said.

Under this agreement Dealers will benefit by advertising their vehicles with the two largest media organisations in Australia. The combined reach of both platforms coupled with the experience and knowledge of the advertising needs of the motoring industry ensure an offering of immense value to Dealerships nationally.

Furthermore, Dealers will have one Account Manager dedicated to managing all online vehicle listings with both Drive.com.au and Carsguide.com.au.

I’m pretty sure this is an unprecedented move in the online classifieds space in Australia. It’s not just that Drive & CarsGuide are competitors in the online automotive space, but the parent companies - Fairfax & News Ltd. are the two major media competitors in Australia, and traditionally don’t co-operate.  It will be interesting to see how this develops over time.

You can see a video of the announcement here.

(Disclosure: I work for Drive.com.au.  I generally don’t post about work, but this is public news anyway.)