Vehicle ads overview

Vehicle ads are a performance-focused lower funnel ad format option for auto advertisers that help drive sales by optimizing for both online and offline conversions. Vehicle ads campaigns allow auto advertisers to promote their entire vehicle inventory to interested customers shopping for vehicles on Google.

Through vehicle ads customers are shown an image of the vehicle with important information such as make, model, price, mileage, and advertiser name. Clicking on a vehicle ad will take the customer to the vehicle description page (VDP) on your website. From there, they can perform additional actions like contacting the dealer or filling out a lead form before visiting the dealership website. Learn how to join the Vehicle ads program in the "Availability" section below.

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On this page

• Getting started with vehicle ads
• Benefits
• Availability
• How vehicle ads work
• Instructions

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Getting started with vehicle ads

To use vehicle ads, you first need to enable the program in your Merchant Center account. You can typically find this option in the “Add-ons” section of your account. If you're having trouble locating it, ensure your account doesn't have existing data sources or other programs active, as these might prevent the Vehicle Ads program from being enabled. Once enabled, you can upload your vehicle data sources to Merchant Center and run Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads to serve vehicle ads. Learn more about how to set up vehicle ads .

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Benefits

Vehicle ads help you get in front of auto shoppers online at the right moment, with the right listings and information to move them closer to a purchase. Key benefits include:

• More qualified leads:Show customers key information and visuals about the car before they select, helps provide more qualified leads.
• Omnichannel goals:Optimize for both online conversions (leads) and offline conversions (store visits)
• Automated targeting:Vehicle ads show your most relevant listings for a related user query

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Availability

Vehicle ads support both new and used vehicle inventory from dealer, retailer stock, aggregators, or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Vehicle ads from private sellers, individuals, or auto brokers aren't permitted.

Vehicle ads may be used to promote only non-commercial passenger vehicles, such as cars or pickup trucks (utes in AU).

Examples of not-allowed vehicle types are commercial vehicles, farm vehicles, buses, 2-wheelers, trains, boats, airplanes, or outdoor utility vehicles.

Vehicle ads are currently available in the Australia, Canada, and US, and are currently in open beta in the France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. Merchants in the Australia, Canada and United States can enable the Vehicle ads add-on directly in Merchant Center.

If you’re an auto advertiser from the United Kingdom, France the Netherlands Italy, Spain or Germany (open beta countries), who is interested in participating in Vehicle Ads (VAs), you must check the prerequisites and then submit the contact us form after the requirements are met. You can’t enable the add-on directly unless allow listed after filling out the form.

If you’re an auto advertiser from the closed beta countries, (like Japan), who is interested in participating in Vehicle Ads (VAs), check the prerequisites and then reach out to your Google sales representative if the requirements are met.

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How Vehicle ads work

Advertisers can activate vehicle ads in 2 ways depending on your goals:

• Create Performance Max campaigns with vehicle feeds on Google Ads . Performance Max with vehicle feeds is a cross-channel performance focused format powered by Google AI.
• Create Standard Shopping campaigns with vehicle feeds on Google Ads . Standard Shopping campaigns with vehicle feeds have more control on what subset of their inventory is shown to customers.

Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns can be used together for cross-channel goals.

Google will test different combinations of the assets available to create high performing ads across formats and networks that work best for your goals.

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Instructions

Before you begin, link your Google Ads account to a Merchant Center account and a Google Business Profile . You can also submit your store feed data instead if you don’t own or manage the profiles for your dealer locations. Learn how to Create, register, and submit your store data .

1. Go to Merchant Center and upload a vehicle data.
2. Fill all necessary attributes for your vehicle inventory. Google uses these details to match a customer's search to the most relevant cars.
3. Go to Google Ads and create a New Campaign .
4. Select your campaign objectives.
5. Select Performance Maxor Shoppingunder “Select a campaign type” based on your campaign goals.

You can attach assets such as descriptions, headlines, and images, separately through asset groups or opting into automatic asset creation under campaign settings. For Performance Max campaigns, Google will test different combinations of the assets available to create high performing ads that align with your goals and audiences.

Best Practice: To prevent Performance Max from automatically creating videos, it's highly recommended to upload your own video assets to your asset group. If you're seeing unwanted auto-generated assets, you can turn off "Automatically created assets" in your Performance Max campaign settings. For more granular control, you can also manage "Account-level automated assets" in your main Google Ads account settings.

If you attach a vehicle data source without adding other assets separately, your Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaign will show your vehicle ads only on Google search.

To control where your ads appear and prevent them from showing on irrelevant sites or apps (like mobile games), you can use Account-Level Placement Exclusions. In your Google Ads account, navigate to “Content suitability” under “Tools and Settings” to add specific websites, YouTube channels, or app categories to an exclusion list. This helps refine your campaign's reach and focus your budget on more relevant placements.

Vehicle data source service provider program

Simplify the data source management experience when you work with a dedicated vehicle data source service provider.

Vehicle data source service providers are an optional service that automates the creation and submission of your vehicle data sources. These partners can help accelerate your onboarding process and assist with ongoing campaign management to implement Vehicle Ads at scale. Learn more about the Vehicle Feed Service Provider program .

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