Digital sales have grown 12% through the first six months of 2019, according to KAR Auction Services' 2019 second quarter earnings call.

Online sales volume grew 20% in the period. Through the first half of 2019, ADESA's online sales amounted to 783,000 versus 655,000 in the first half of 2018.

It is important to note that these online totals include volume from TradeRev, which ADESA's parent company KAR Auction Services fully acquired in 2017. However, even without the additional online volume from TradeRev — 72,000 in 2019 and 52,000 in 2018 — ADESA would still be experiencing growth in online sales.

Meanwhile, physical sales have been essentially flat this year. ADESA's physical sales totaled 1,109,000 through the first half of 2019 compared to 1,107,000 through the first six months of 2018.

In total ADESA sold 1,940,000 units through the first half of the year, compared to 1,785,000 in the same period of 2018. Physical sales still represent a bigger portion of ADESA's overall sales that number is continuing to sway in favor of online.   

Another area where ADESA has seen improvement this year is in its European sales category. Through the first six months of 2019, ADESA sold 48,000 vehicles. For comparison, in the same period in 2018, the company sold less than half of that: 23,000.

This growth in the European market might have been fueled, in part, by KAR's earlier acquisition of Belgium-based online wholesale vehicle auction marketplace CarsOnTheWeb (COTW). In its announcement of the acquisition, KAR stated that the purchase was meant to extend its North American and U.K.-based portfolio to Continental Europe.

More recently, the company rebranded COTW's locations under the ADESA name.