AutoTrader parent company Trader’s latest acquisition represents its first major step outside of the auto market.

Trader has fully acquired Quebec digital marketplace LesPac, which has been labelled by some as the Kijiji of French Canada. Trader would not disclose the value of the deal.

LesPac is quite relevant in the Quebec auto market, says James Ranson, VP of AutoTrader media. It’s a major destination for selling vehicles, as well as for advertisers. According to comScore, the addition of the site will bring Trader’s existing network to 1.7 million monthly unique visitors and 53 million monthly page views. Ranson says at its core, the deal is about combining LesPac’s audience – which includes the key auto intenders demographic but also goes beyond it – with AutoTrader and AutoHebdo’s targeting capabilities.

“It does give us new and pretty interesting opportunities to expand outside of our core market, which has historically been a hard-to-reach consumer. We’re looking forward to understanding how we can fully take advantage of its audience.”

That hard-to-reach audience Ranson is referring to is Quebec. The market is large, but often requires unique solutions from a Canada-wide approach, says Ranson, as audiences tend to prefer a “made-in-Quebec” platform or publisher to a Canadian national publisher. But there’s volume and scale in the province, and Ranson says Trader’s targeting capabilities – which it’s refined over the years through new programs like data solutions platform TRFFK and a partnership with Coherent Path to better understand customer journeys – will create more options for advertisers.

LesPac mostly makes its revenue through display and content ads. Ranson says they will be sold directly as well as programmatically.

Ranson doesn’t anticipate much movement in terms of staff, noting that LesPac already “runs a very tight and lean environment.” On a national level, he says, there are no plans to cut staff.