Dive Brief:
- Dealers United, a digital solutions firm for auto dealers, launched Facebook Inventory Ads as the latest addition to its Facebook Advertising program, per a press release. A select group of its dealer members are beta testing Facebook Inventory Ads and have seen an average 116% increase in clickthroughs to vehicle detail pages (VDPs).
- The ads are now available to all auto dealers nationwide through free Dealers United membership for pre-owned inventory with new inventory to be added in the near future.
- "Dealers United's inventory ads are something I've never seen before," said Jim Scott, general manager at Jarrett-Scott Ford, in the press release. "I'm able to automatically post my inventory to Facebook and put my vehicles right in shoppers' hands. We're getting more VDP clicks, calls, everything — our results are through the roof."
Dive Insight:
According to an Autotrader survey, 88% of auto buyers research online before going into a dealership to make a purchase. However, a major frustrations for these consumers is seeing ads online for cars that have already been sold or aren't actually available at that dealership. The program tries to address this problem by automatically pulling from their inventory feed so that vehicle descriptions and photos are turned directly into Facebook ads. The automated nature of the program also means dealers’ ads are updated with price changes and sold vehicles in real-time.
The program also includes a retargeting element where if someone visits a dealer’s website without taking any conversion actions they are retargeted with Facebook ads showing the vehicle they viewed along with other similar models. This could help dealers address the fact that many auto buyers have already made a decision about which car they are going to buy before heading to a dealership, per the Autotrader report.
The automotive industry has been in marketing news lately with a number of initiatives. Earlier this month Vistar Media announced a measurement solution piloted by Toyota that combined online and offline data to measure ROI on automotive out-of-home advertising spending.
Both of these announcements point to dealerships increasingly recognizing the importance of digital marketing to auto sales as the relevance of the industry's traditional mix of linear TV, print and billboards shrinks in the face of changing consumer behavior.