Car dealers face unique challenges when creating and managing effective ads for each vehicle in the dealership’s inventory. 

When it comes to vehicle shopping, people just want to see the inventory. In fact, inventory-based ads regularly get more than twice as many clicks as ads featuring non-inventory content. 

At 9 Clouds, we have solutions that can streamline this process and make advertising more efficient: using your car dealership’s inventory feed to drive your advertising strategy. 

Here’s how you can use your inventory feed to place ads on several advertising platforms, including: 

• Facebook and Instagram
• Google and Microsoft (Bing)
• Snapchat
• TikTok
• Pinterest

Connect Your Inventory Feed

To get started, we’ll need to connect to your dealership’s inventory feed. We can do this through a third-party platform that supports the feed, such as HomeNet or DealerTrack. 

Once we’re connected, we can use the feed to create ads for each vehicle in your inventory.

Benefits of Using Your Inventory Feed in Advertising

1. It allows you to create unique ads for each vehicle in your inventory, which can increase your ads’ relevancy and improve the ad performance. 
2. It makes it easier to manage your ads, since the ads automatically update based on changes to your inventory. 

According to some studies, dealerships using inventory feeds to advertise saw up to a 68% increase in leads and a 22% increase in sales compared to dealerships that didn’t use inventory feeds. 

9 Clouds is no stranger to inventory-based advertising and its benefits. Throughout the past decade, we’ve found innovative ways to connect inventory to Facebook, Google, and more. 

There have been clear benefits of connecting your ads to your inventory feed on Facebook and Instagram. When dealers choose dynamic inventory ads with 9 Clouds, they often see cost per click reduced by more than 75%, while click-through rates increase by more than 500% compared to conventional ads on Facebook and Instagram. 

Quick Tip: Make Sure Your Feed is Directing Traffic Correctly

Before we get into the different ways you can use your inventory feed to get more leads and sales for your dealership, here’s a quick tip we’ve learned. 

You may lose out on valuable website traffic you could be retargeting if your feed is set up and not checked. 

• Some inventory feed providers default to their own website in the feed instead of the dealer’s site.
• If you share an inventory feed with multiple stores, they may direct to just one of the sites.
• When your site redirects inventory URLs within the site, you may lose your UTM tracking.

Check your inventory feed ads once they’re up and running to ensure the traffic is being sent to your site, the way you want it to, and all applicable UTM tracking is still intact.

Montana Dealer Increases Efficiency (and Results!) with Facebook Inventory Catalog

What Do Inventory Ads Look Like? 

At their core, all inventory ads showcase your inventory — showing images, prices and other details about each vehicle. 

You can target these ads to specific audiences based on thing like location, age, search terms, and interests. These inventory ads have an interactive feel, making them more engaging and attractive to users on each of the platforms. 

Facebook and Instagram Dynamic Ads

On Facebook and Instagram, we can use your inventory feed to create dynamic ads that showcase the vehicles in your inventory.

These ads take several forms, but the most popular is the carousel ad format shown here on mobile (left) and desktop (right). 

At 9 Clouds, we also use highly engaging collection ads, which use the full screen of a mobile device. 

The important thing to remember with inventory-feed-based ads is that they’re dynamic — meaning they adapt to each and every user in the audience based on Meta’s algorithm. This is a powerful way to reach and engage shoppers, which is why we recommend Facebook and Instagram ads before many of these other younger platforms.  

Google Ads Vehicle Listing Ads

On Google Ads, we can use your inventory feed in Performance Max campaigns. These ads appear at the top of the search results page (SERP).

Vehicle ads were one of the bigger changes for Google Ads in 2022. Since 92% of people who purchase a vehicle research it online before they buy, it makes sense for dealerships to take advantage of this ad type. 

According to Google, dealerships using these shopping-like ads saw a 34% increase in clicks and a 20% increase in conversions compared to those just using traditional search ads. These ads also target people lower in the car-buying funnel, so dealers get more qualified leads entering their CRM.

Snapchat Dynamic Ads

Inventory ads on Snapchat can be a great way to target users on the growing platform. 

According to Snapchat, 73% of their users in the U.S. are interested in car-related content — making it a great platform for automotive advertising.

TikTok In-Feed Ads

If you want to reach a large audience who might not be on Facebook and Instagram, we can create in-feed ads showcasing your inventory on TikTok.

According to TikTok, their platform has more than 100 million monthly active users in the U.S. In the first few months of running ads, our clients have seen great engagement and return on ad spend (ROAS).

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Pinterest Shopping Ads

Dealers can use Pinterest, too! On Pinterest, we can use your inventory feed to create shopping ads to showcase your inventory.

According to Pinterest, 83% of their users have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on the platform — and it delivers a 32% higher ROAS (return on ad spend) than other digital platforms. 

Marketing ROI Packages: Don’t waste your budget.

Take Your Inventory to New Places

Using your car dealership’s inventory feed to drive your advertising strategy can have a big impact on your lead generation and sales. We’ve seen it work well for our clients so far — and we know it could work for your dealership, too. 

The benefits are clear. If you’re interested in learning more about how 9 Clouds can help you use your inventory feed to its full potential and deliver better leads and more sales for your dealership, contact us today to request a custom proposal.

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