Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) [Complete Guide]
Digital media has become a key step in the automotive consumer journey. Twice as many start their research online, compared to dealers. 95% of vehicle buyers use digital as a source of information. According to Meta, 63% discover new vehicles and 53% decide on new vehicles online.
At Driftrock, we’ve helped 22 brands and hundreds of dealerships capture & convert more leads from 20+ lead sources and our clients have consistently seen good results from Facebook.
Hence, we’ve put together this article to talk about Facebook Dynamic ads and Facebook Automotive Inventory ads. We will discuss the differences, how to create the Facebook automotive ads and best practices.
Want to capture and convert more automotive leads? Learn more about Automotive Strategies powered by Driftrock here.
Facebook Dynamic ads
Using Facebook Dynamic ads, you can retarget people who’ve visited your website and shown interest and intent for your products/services. It will also retarget users who’ve shown interest elsewhere on the internet.
It’s a great solution for brands with a large product list that changes frequently. Showing the customer relevant, in-stock products that they have viewed, or similar products increases conversion rates and ad engagement.
In Automotive, the products are much more complex than most industries, and so they require a more custom automotive experience. That’s where Meta Automotive Inventory Ads come in!
In the next section we will tell you:
- What are Facebook Automotive Inventory ads
- Why you should use Facebook Automotive Inventory ads
- What is the difference between Facebook Automotive Inventory ads vs Facebook Dynamic ads
- How to create Facebook Automotive Inventory ads
- Best Practices
Facebook Automotive Inventory ads
What are Automotive Inventory ads and Why you should use Automotive Inventory ads?
Facebook (Meta) automotive inventory ads are ads focused on in-market car buyers. These ads are optimised by Facebook to reach and retarget people with intent and interest in buying a car. This optimisation allows you to generate leads that are easier and quicker to convert. The ads are shown on both mobile and desktop placements.
In addition to reaching people who are interested in buying a car, another benefit of using automotive inventory ads is that it is easy and convenient to set up (more about how to set it up later!). You can create a catalogue and set it up once instead of creating many (and we mean many) individual ads. Moreover, you can set it to update out-of-stock inventory so users don’t click on ads and find a car listing that is not in stock anymore.
In the words of Facebook, “Automotive inventory ads allow manufacturers and dealers to upload their entire catalogue of vehicle inventory with relevant details such as make, model and year, and then show the most compelling inventory and features to the right audiences. You can drive automotive inventory ads to a lead submission form, a website or an on-Facebook vehicle detail page.”
Difference between Automotive Inventory ads and Dynamic ads
The key difference between the two is that automotive inventory ads are more focused on users interested in automotive. There are some differences in the setup and pixel events.
Source: Facebook
How to create Automotive Inventory ads?
- Create a catalogue
- Go to Facebook commerce manager
- Go to add catalogue
- Select Auto from the catalogue type
- Name and Create it
- Vehicle Feed
- Select the catalogue you have created
- From the left-hand panel select data sources
- Add new feed from data feeds
- Choose if you want to create a manual feed through the spreadsheet (CSV) or a Google Sheet or create an automated feed such as an RSS feed (recommended)
- For manual CSV, you can download a template and follow the template style
- RSS pulls data directly from the website and it may involve technical steps
- Pixel
- Go to Business settings > Data sources > Catalogue > Select your catalogue
- Click on associate sources and select your pixel
- Creating an Ad
- Go to ads manager and create your campaign
- At the campaign level, choose leads as the objective
- At the adset level, choose your conversion location as Instant forms. Select the catalogue from the catalogue section
- At the ad level, you’ll be able to select fields from the catalogue as titles and descriptions for the creative in the ad. Create a lead form.
Generating and Converting Facebook Automotive Inventory Leads
Using Instant forms, you can generate a high volume of leads from your Automotive Inventory Ads. The Facebook Instant forms are native lead gen forms that load quickly and are pre-filled with user information.
To increase your conversion rate, it is extremely important to respond to these leads quickly.
You can Sync to any Dealer Management System (DMS), CRM, email system or customer database in real-time using Driftrock’s Facebook Lead Ads sync.
Driftrock captures the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) or product ID for each lead, for each vehicle in your feed.
Try Facebook Lead Ads Sync for free!
Best Practices
- It is important to update your information regularly. For the vehicle feed, use the RSS feed or Google sheet so it is easier to update regularly
- Use appropriate Facebook Ad specs and sizes to create effective ads
- Create product sets in alignment with your target audience to achieve better results. For example, you can create a product set of SUV cars to target families. Similarly, you can create sets for electric cars, sedans, models of cars, etc and optimise your campaigns accordingly
- Make sure to create certain fields in your catalogue that are appropriate for ads. Typically people use vehicle names as headlines and descriptions as ad copies
- You can use downstream tracking to see which ads are not only generating a high volume of leads but ads that are generating high-quality leads which convert!
If you want to learn more about automotive lead generation Book a Demo or Sign Up
