Net toddler CarsDirect.com rolls $20 million campaign.

Carsdirect.com will launch an aggressive off-line campaign designed to prove it means business even if the company is only 5 months old. "We want consumers to know us as a company, an organization, an entity that is here to stay for the long-term," said VP-Marketing Lou Weiss. The $20 million fourth-quarter advertising, from Think New Ideas, West Hollywood, Calif., breaks Nov. 1 in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco with the tagline, "America_s No. 1 way to buy cars online," and includes TV, print, outdoor and online.The campaign will run through yearend. Additionally, CarsDirect expects to spend $100 million to $200 million on advertising during the next three to five years. Separately, another car-selling site, Cars.com, this week is to announce its own ad campaign, a consumer TV effort that begins next week. CarsDirect was launched in May and has received $30 million in financing from Idealab Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs and others. CarsDirect, which sells more than 1,000 cars a month, aims to up that to 2,500 by the end of the year. Unlike Autobytel.com and Autoweb.com, which refer consumers to dealers, CarsDirect lets consumers research, price, select, finance, order and arrange delivery of a new car online. CarsDirect buys cars from franchised dealers and resells them. In online activity, however, CarsDirect has yet to make a dent: According to Media Metrix, CarsDirect_s unique visitors in August numbered 215,000. In contrast, Autoweb had 731,000 unique visitors and Autobytel, 1.1 million.