The Daily Vroom

Why BaT Has Been Running TV Ads

When a company that already sells roughly $1.7 billion worth of cars a year starts buying national TV and streaming ads, it’s worth paying attention, not because they need awareness, but because they clearly believe there is still meaningful room to grow. Bring a Trailer is not some scrappy startup trying to find its first customers. They run roughly 150 auctions a day, have around 1.4 million registered bidders sitting in the system, and enjoy a level of trust and liquidity that every other online auction platform is still trying to build toward.

By most marketplace standards, this is exactly the stage where you slow down, protect the base, and let the momentum carry you. Instead, BaT has for the last few months been spending real money to widen the funnel, and that mindset alone tells you a lot about how they see the opportunity in front of them.

The ads themselves are not transactional or listing driven. They are not pushing specific cars or screaming about prices. They lean into the emotional side of car culture and the idea that it’s never just a car, but the stories, the history, the people, and the shared obsession that surround it. They are selling community more than inventory, which is smart, because what BaT really operates is not just an auction site but a gathering place for enthusiasts.

That positioning matters since they are not simply chasing incremental buyers. They are strengthening both sides of the marketplace at the same time. More buyers deepen bidding. More sellers bring better cars. Better cars create stronger results. Stronger results reinforce trust and attract even more serious consignments. The whole thing feeds itself.

From the outside, it might feel unnecessary because their core metrics already look elite. An overall sell through rate in 2025 of 82% is fantastic by any auction standard, and even reserve auctions clearing 68% is a very healthy number. Most platforms would happily stop there and call that success.

But once you start looking at those percentages through the lens of scale, the math tells a different story. 68% still means nearly one third of reserve cars fail to meet reserve, and across BaT’s volume that translates into roughly 9,000 reserve auctions last year that didn’t sell last year. When you multiply that by average transaction values and commissions, you’re easily staring at $15 million+ in revenue that almost happened but didn’t quite get there simply because there weren’t enough bidders at the right moment.

Nobody expects 100% sell through, and that isn’t even the goal, but improving that reserve clearance rate by five or ten points would represent a meaningful step change in both revenue and liquidity. At BaT’s scale, small percentage gains are not small outcomes. More eyeballs mean more bidders. More bidders mean more competition. More competition means more cars clearing reserve. More cars clearing means happier sellers who come back with better inventory. This isn’t branding for the sake of branding. It’s straight marketplace math.

What stands out most is the discipline behind the decision. BaT doesn’t have to run ads to survive or even to thrive. They already have gravity. Sellers already want the exposure. Buyers already trust the process. They could absolutely sit on that advantage and still have the best business in the space. Instead, they’re behaving like a company that assumes nothing is permanent and that attention must be earned continuously. That kind of thinking usually separates the companies that stay dominant from the ones that slowly get comfortable.

There’s also a broader lesson here for everyone else in the market. No one needs to copy BaT and go buy national TV spots, and realistically no one is going to outspend them anyway, but the takeaway isn’t about the tactic. It’s about the mindset. Just like online auctions steadily took share from traditional live houses over the last decade, online platforms are now taking share from each other. Buyers move. Sellers experiment. Inventory follows liquidity. Loyalty only lasts as long as results do. Every platform has to keep investing in growth, trust, and visibility because standing still effectively means shrinking.

What makes BaT’s push interesting is that it isn’t coming from weakness or necessity. It’s coming from ambition. They already have the biggest audience, the most auctions, and the strongest results, and they still see how much opportunity is left on the table. They look at those 9,000 missed reserve cars and think “we can do better.” They look at 150 auctions per day and think 200! They look at the size of the enthusiast market and think “we’re not done yet.” That’s hunger, not defense.

If the leader at $1.7 billion a year is still investing in growth and still widening the funnel, everyone else should probably sit up and take notice, because this isn’t a market you win once and protect forever. You either keep pushing forward or you slowly get passed.