Google announced that the vehicle ads are now available to all US advertisers. Vehicle ads are a performance-focused, lower funnel ad format which allows auto advertisers to promote their entire inventory of vehicles to interested customers shopping for vehicles on Google.
This format shows customers an image of the vehicle with important information such as make, model, price, mileage, and advertiser name. Showing inventory of available vehicles both enriches the customer's purchase experience and provides more qualified leads for auto advertisers. Vehicle ads help advertisers drive sales by optimizing for both online conversions (leads) and offline conversions (store visits).
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 such as contacting the dealer, filling out a lead form, etc. before visiting the dealership.
Prior this was a pilot but now it is available to all US advertisers.
Advertisers are required to upload their vehicle data feed to Merchant Center. The advertiser’s feed must contain pertinent details about their vehicles, including make, model, price, mileage, color, and more. Google uses these details to match a customer's search to the most relevant cars.
To use vehicle ads, you must create Smart Shopping campaigns on Google Ads. You must also link your Google Ads account to a Merchant Center account and a Google Business Profile. A store feed alternative to Business Profile linking is available if you don’t own or manage the profiles for your dealer locations.
Vehicle ads target customers at the bottom of the funnel, closer to selecting a specific vehicle, configuration, and/or dealer. The format appears on queries with a high car shopping intent.
You can learn more over here.
Update: Several hours later, Google posted a blog post on this with some screenshots of how they look, which is what we saw in the tests we covered a while ago:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
