Vehicle Ad Campaigns: discover how to set up Google’s new ads

The automobile sector, like many others, has suffered due to COVID-19. There’s been a decrease in the number of vehicle registrations in the last few years and family demand has also fallen; however, we can’t forget that moments of crisis are also moments of creativity, of habit changes and the appearance of new ideas. 

For vehicle sales, this paradigm change happened online. The trend of selling cars online is reaching its peak: according to a study from KPMG, 62% of Spanish executives in the automobile industry predict that by 2030, the majority of new vehicle sales will be completed online. And this percentage increases to 78% when we ask executives on a global scale. What implications does this have for the sector? 

If we know how to take advantage of it, the digital channel can have a very positive impact on the industry. The consumer is more familiar than ever before with online shopping for all kinds of products, and the internet is a channel to use to increase sales and profitability. In addition, online automobile sales open new doors; you can sell your car to someone across the country or even in a different country, especially within the EU where we all use the same currency. 

This is an opportunity for dealers to bet on online sales and facilitate the process for the user. Google has taken note of these latest trends and activated the search for vehicles in its search engine. Learn more about Vehicle Ads here. 

What is Vehicle Ads? What Does it Do? 

Vehicle Ads is a new ad format for Google searches that, with the use of certain words (for example, “buy seat Ibiza”), shows vehicles for sale that meet the said search. The final result for the user would be similar to this: 

These ads contain important information about the brand, model, price, mileage, and name of the car. When you click on it, you access a page with vehicle information on its original website and then you have the option of realizing various actions: filling out a form, requesting an appointment with the seller, or directly buying the car. 

What are the advantages of Vehicle Ads? Well, it opens a new sales channel in which it’s relatively easy to be positioned, given that it’s new and there’s little competition. You can achieve higher visibility at a lower cost and high conversion rates, web traffic, or even increase visits to your store. Thanks to Vehicle Ads, it’s now easier to acquire qualified leads, given that the ad offers key sales information and attracts a truly interested user. 

How Does Vehicle Ads Work? Availability and Ad Policy: 

As of right now, Vehicle Ads are only available in the United States and, on a limited beta version, other countries like Australia and Canada. However, it’s best to think that if these ads are well received, it will be expanded to other areas like Europe or Latin America; we’ll keep a close eye on updates. 

Vehicle Ads campaigns support both new and used vehicles, from both dealers and retailers. However, ads from private sellers, brokers, or individuals are not allowed. 

We also can’t forget that these ads are only for non-commercial vehicles dedicated to passenger transport; as of right now, it doesn’t include recreational vehicles, commercial vehicles, farm vehicles, buses, trains, boats, or airplanes. 

If you work in the automotive industry and think that Vehicle Ads can help you in the near future, keep reading to learn how to create a clear and simple Google Vehicle Ad campaign:

How to Create Vehicle Ads Campaigns 

Just like with Shopping ads, Vehicle Ads also require the support of Google Merchant to load products through a catalog. Therefore, we have to use this tool to upload the ad information:

We have to keep in mind that, today, we’re in a testing stage, which is why we don’t see this option in the tool. We’ll need to request access through this form: https://support.google.com/merchants/contact/vehicle_listing_ads 

Once we’ve entered our information, we should receive an answer in a few weeks. As we mentioned earlier, it’s currently available only in the US, Australia, and Canada. Depending on how it goes, we expect it to expand to other countries in the future. 

The most important thing is to correctly define the different information, especially for the mandatory fields; if we don’t, it will be impossible to activate the Vehicle Ads campaign. Some of these are identifiers, an image, a link to a website, or the price. You can get more information here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/11192663.

Once the information is uploaded and the products are correctly validated, it’s time for the hardest job. We have to ensure that we’ve properly configured the company’s profile and selected our location in Merchant.

Now we can follow the general steps associated with any Shopping campaign, link Google Merchant Center with a Google Ads account, if we haven’t already, and activate Vehicle Ads in our Shopping campaign with the right price and target audience.

Recommendations for Starting a Google Vehicle Ad Campaign

Here are some of the most interesting tips that will allow us to successfully realize this type of campaign:

• If you haven’t done Shopping campaigns before, check out reports for these kinds of campaigns; these are special campaigns that require a series of knowledge to obtain the best results. 
• Fill out as much information as possible about the vehicles in the Merchant feed; this will allow you to provide more details and the Google Ads algorithm prefers ads with more information. This translates into more opportunities of appearing in relevant search results and lower CPCs. 
• Reviewing the policies of the ads will allow you to minimize problems and, once you meet all the rules, help you achieve better results.
• Starting as soon as possible is key, given that the new program has little competition at the moment and will allow us to get better results.
• Testing ads as soon as possible will also help us achieve a competitive advantage and learn more about this kind of advertising and optimize our content over that of the competition. This is how we’ll obtain better results. 

I hope this article was interesting! Stay tuned for Vehicle Ads updates and their arrival in new countries and regions. We encourage you to research the possibilities for your company and share this article if you think it could be useful to others.