Cars.com is an online automotive marketplace that connects car shoppers with dealerships and OEMs across the U.S. and Canada. The core product is the Cars.com marketplace, where consumers browse vehicle listings, access pricing data, reviews, and financing tools, and submit leads to dealers. Cars.com's roughly 19,500 dealer customers pay subscription fees for marketplace listings, dealer websites, and trade/appraisal tools, while OEMs pay for advertising to reach in-market shoppers. About 80% of revenue is subscription-based, with the remaining ~20% coming from variable media and advertising spend. The key revenue drivers are dealer count and average revenue per dealer (ARPD), which grows as dealers upgrade to higher-tier packages or adopt additional products. Beyond the core marketplace, Cars.com offers dealer websites under the Dealer Inspire and D2C Media brands (~7,700 sites), AccuTrade (a SaaS vehicle appraisal tool that helps dealers source used inventory directly from consumers), and DealerClub (a dealer-to-dealer digital wholesale auction acquired in early 2025). Cars.com's growth strategy centers on adding dealers, expanding ARPD through package repackaging and cross-selling, scaling AccuTrade and DealerClub, and integrating AI tools like Carson, a natural language search assistant. The cost base is largely fixed, so revenue growth converts to EBITDA at high incremental margins. Cars.com uses its free cash flow primarily for share buybacks.