Recently, Google introduced a vehicle ad listing feature that will revolutionize the way cars are advertised online. The new format of ad listing, which was unveiled on Friday, March 11 at the NADA convention in America, will feature cars available for sale directly on the SERPs in Google search from automotive dealers. At the moment, this new ad listing format is accessible only to advertisers in the US, but Google confirms that it will be available to more nations very soon.
What are vehicle Ads?
Similar to Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLAs), vehicle ads will help auto sellers and dealers promote their entire vehicle inventory to potential buyers in a carousel format. As with all sorts of products and services, most users have been browsing the internet to find and purchase cars in recent years.
Google states that about 89% of users looking to buy a new car search for their new vehicle online before purchasing one. To align with this trend of search behaviour, Google will display cars available for sale – by way of car ads – in proximity to the user and connect them with vendors directly through search results.
How does it work?
When a user – with the intent of purchasing an SUV – performs a search for an SUV launched in 2019, Google’s vehicle ad listings will display results of vehicles near the user that are available for sale or delivery.
Once the user selects a car and clicks on the specific ad, they will get directed to a page with the advertiser’s description on their website. Here, the user will fill out a lead form and get the advertiser’s/auto dealer’s contact information, including their website, location, etc. The advertiser will then have the option to select the relevant and necessary actions they would like to measure, such as leads and visits to the store, and even assign a value to them.
How to set up vehicle ads?
If you are a car dealer and are looking to explore this new advertising feature on Google, here’s how:
- First, you must create Smart Shopping campaigns on Google Ads.
- Then link your Google Ads account to a Merchant Center account and a Google Business Profile (GBP).
- The next step involves creating an inventory data feed and connecting it to Google Merchant Center. This feed has all the necessary information about your vehicle inventory, such as car images, car names, makes and models, information on whether they are new or used cars, prices, the mileage that the car gives, etc. If you have not created or are not managing the profiles for your dealer locations, a store feed alternative to Business Profile linking is also available.
Every time a user performs a search, Google will match the user’s search query with the most suitable cars using the inventory details.
Bonus: With the help of Merchant Center, advertisers can track inventory details and acquire excellent insights on the performance of the ads run by them.
How will these car dealership ads help?
To begin with, Google advertising of this nature is sure to increase awareness about your enterprise and your offers among internet users across all devices using text-based searches or voice searches. Google states that 95% of vehicle buyers use digital as a source of information and that twice as many start their research online versus at a dealer.
As vehicles ads reply to queries with a high shopping intent, they are most likely to capture leads and convert customers at the bottom of the conversion funnel. These prospects are very close to selecting a specific vehicle of a particular configuration or dealer.
Google Ads also provides ways to measure the performance of your ad campaigns and confirms that advertisers who enhanced their existing Search campaigns by creating and publishing vehicle ads experienced a +25% average increase in conversions during beta testing.
To sum up, this new advertising tool will help you drive more traffic to your vehicle pages and help you optimize lead conversions, whether at the store or online.
If you want to start your Google Ads campaign and utilize this feature to gain higher visibility, collect quality leads, and increase your offline and online sales, contact Vglobal today! We specialize in creating efficient PPC or Google Ads campaigns that will help you gain a solid e-reputation among potential clients and a high ROI.
