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It doesn’t take much time in online marketing to learn that PPC is extremely effective for the automotive industry. There is simply something about this vertical that makes it ripe for pay-per-click marketing.

Consider the following:

Laura fills up another tank of gas and places her credit card next to the estimate of yet another repair. She wedges them between the cup holders as she tries to calm her frustration. Laura doesn’t know it yet, but some information about a new car would work wonders on her right at this moment.

If you buy or sell cars, you have the solution to Laura’s problem. You simply have to find a way to reach her.

PPC agency services are all about presenting your products and services to the right people and at the best time.

Paid search advertising drives new visitors to auto dealer websites and boosts vehicle sales. PPC strategists leverage different settings and features across platforms to increase sales by generating relevant traffic and understanding competitive advantages.

It’s even easier to do today because Microsoft Advertising recently introduced Automotive Inventory Ads to help this vertical. This ad format allows advertisers to promote an entire inventory of vehicles. It’s performance-focused and targets the lower-funnel users who are shopping for cars online.

These are feed-based product ads. Advertisers upload all the attributes of the car inventory, including the make, model, year, trim, image, and so on. You can then display ads on the Microsoft Bing SERP, the Bing image results page, and native placements on the Microsoft Audience Network.

The Benefits of Automotive Inventory Ads

More volume

Volume is an indicator of sales. Different factors contribute to increasing it for a business. The Automotive Industry Ads specialize in industry and audience and you can use them to showcase the vehicle inventory in real-time to shoppers who are closer to making a buy.

On top of that, you can pair these inventory ads with proposed communication. Speak to the people searching for the services you offer. Yes, many know this as the “lower funnel.” They are in the comparison and transaction stages of the consumer decision journey, but this is a great way to encourage them to continue moving through the funnel.

Richer experiences

Good information helps consumers move toward a purchase. It’s possible to provide detailed information to shoppers by showcasing your vehicle photos and special prices.

Richer experiences like this can increase your click-through rate (CTR) and your number of qualified leads. The right information makes them feel confident that they are making a good decision.

Time savings with automation

Use feeds to generate your ads faster. They keep your inventory and prices accurate as things fluctuate.

Start Using Automotive Inventory Ads

The setup process is very simple, and you have two different options to do it:

Option 1: Automated

Microsoft Advertising uses your campaigns and ad groups to choose relevant keywords and bids. This option is best for advertisers who want to use their current text ad setup. There’s no automated performance tracking. It will be available on an ad hoc basis.

• Setup in Microsoft Advertising UI: No setup required. Microsoft Advertising will choose the relevant keywords and bids from your existing campaigns and ad groups.
• Feed upload: Provision data feed per the Autos Listing Inventory feed schema and upload it via Shared Library in the Microsoft Advertising online user interface.
• Feed scheduling: Keep your feed data fresh and up to date to make your campaigns more effective.
• Link to feed: Microsoft Advertising will link your text ad campaigns to the feed.

Option 2: Advanced

This option offers more control and bid choices for cars in your feed. It’s an ideal setup for advertisers who want more control over campaigns. Here, you can optimize performance, gain control, manage budgets, and track results.

• Setup in Microsoft Advertising UI: Use text ad campaigns with a placeholder ad group, placeholder keyword and ad.
• Feed upload: Provision data feed per the Autos Listing Inventory feed schema and upload it via Shared Library in the Microsoft Advertising online user interface.
• Feed scheduling: Keep your feed data fresh and up to date to make your campaigns more effective.

Additional Notes on Automotive Inventory Ads

• You won’t need keywords. Feed offers match automatically to queries.
• The maximum number of ads shown are three ads. Separately, the minimum is one.
• Your ads are at the right place, at the right time. Car purchase intent queries will trigger Automotive Inventory Ads.
• Download standard performance reports to review and find new insights. Do this on the Reports page by keyword, ad, or campaign.
• Feed item-level reporting is available via the dynamic data feed items grid.

Best Practices for Automotive Inventory Ads

• Provide a comprehensive feed of all available experiences.
• If your feed is larger than 120K feed rows, notify your PPC agency. They will provide the specifics for accounts greater than 120K rows.
• Rich attributes are critical to the success of this feature. These include Title, Make, Model, Year, Trim, and Image URLs.
• For option #1 setup, don’t set bids or budgets.
• For option #2 setup, we recommend that you:
  Start with a daily budget of $500. This will render consistent results for learning and optimization.
  Set bids like your text ad campaigns. Watch performance and average position and adjust up or down.
• Enter location targeting in campaign settings:
  “United States”
  “United Kingdom”

This setting ensures that ads are eligible to serve all users searching in the region.

To start with, don’t apply any bid modifiers based on audiences. Instead, measure and track baseline performance first. Move on to fine-tune the return on investment based on audiences.

Conclusion

In summary, this vehicle listing solution allows dealers to promote their entire catalog of inventory to users. It shows the most relevant vehicles to the users who are in the market for that kind of car. Its format drives vehicle detail page views and lead submissions. It’s designed to increase sales.

Follow our guidelines and best practices to get the most out of this type of these ads.

In a short period, you’ll see improved performance for your dealership ads.

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