On Wednesday, ACV officially launched its two newest technology pieces with at least one dealer group raving about the capabilities.

The digital automotive marketplace and data services partner for dealers and commercial partners rolled out what it’s calling ACV’s Smart Acquisition Manager (S.A.M.), which is designed to deliver two new innovative ways to engage with ACV’s Marketplace.

The company highlighted ACV’s S.A.M. also offers a buying API (application programming interface) to drive a programmatic buying user experience.

ACV explained through a news release that the technology is geared to make its 20-minute digital auction more powerful by introducing these solutions that can allow dealers to set-up proxy bids via an AI-powered buying agent to make data-driven decisions.

These proxies will bid on and buy vehicles within the ACV Marketplace entirely based on the dealer’s pre-set criteria.

ACV’s S.A.M. also can enable dealers to customize their automatic buying preferences down to minute-level vehicle details, which include more than 160 data fields.

Dealers can use S.A.M. to build highly customized rules that will not only identify vehicle specifications and price ranges, but could, for example, also include preferences for vehicle condition based on ACV’s leading inspection reports.

Later this year, the company said these capabilities will be extended to consumer inventory running in ACV’s Live Appraisal lane within the ACV Marketplace.

Here are more details about how these two programmatic buying options are intended to function.

—S.A.M.: For dealers who do not have their own technology platforms, they can use ACV’s user experience to create a highly detailed S.A.M. Model including specifying condition, pricing, and location parameters. Upon completion, their inventory needs are then launched automatically.

Dealers then can choose to engage in one of two formats. They can select S.A.M. Alerts where they receive an automated notification from the system for approval of the bid. Alternatively, dealers can select S.A.M. Bids for automatic proxy bidding, based on their preset S.A.M. Model.

—S.A.M. API – Live since the fourth quarter, ACV said this offering is available for dealers who have technology platforms that can integrate directly with ACV’s real-time APIs to generate bids within our marketplace.

Current users of this solution include large dealers, rental car companies and others in the used-vehicle buying category.

One of them is Tasca Automotive Group, which was mentioned in ACV’s news release.

“I’ve always said that the Tasca Automotive Group uses ACV because it makes buying and selling cars easy. And now with ACV’s S.A.M., our dealerships are able to add even more efficiency to managing our inventory acquisition needs,” Tasca vice president Bob Tasca III said. “Dealers no longer need multiple buyers tracking down cars at all hours of the day.

“With ACV’s latest technology, you set up this AI-powered buying tool to find the exact cars you need for your dealership and let it do the work for you,” Tasca continued. “ACV gives us the confidence to buy and sell online with speed, full transparency and the utmost integrity. They put our company in a position to win.”

The company said there are no additional fees to use either of the programmatic buying solutions, only ACV’s standard fees related to approved sales transactions.

“Since our inception, ACV’s mission has been to bring trust, transparency and efficiency to the car buying process,” ACV chief executive officer George Chamoun said. “One of the most common pieces of feedback we get from dealers is that they need vehicles, and they don’t have enough time to manage all the traditional inventory sources. We saw an opportunity to make the inventory buying process even more efficient and can’t wait for our customers to leverage S.A.M. and earn back hours of precious time.

“S.A.M. is part of ACV’s holistic strategy where data intelligence is leveraged throughout the automotive ecosystem,” Chamoun continued. “The initial use case for S.A.M. was buying on the current 20-minute auction within the ACV Marketplace, but our vision is much broader. In the future, dealers may be able to select S.A.M. outside of ACV’s live digital auctions. ACV will continue to help dealers source and buy cars from consumers and other sources.”

For more information about ACV, visit acvauctions.com.