Straight answers on dealer video ads.
Short pages on the questions dealers ask before they spend a dollar on video: what it is, where it runs, what it costs, and how to tell if it's working.
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What is a VIN video ad?
A VIN video ad is a short vertical video made for one specific unit on your lot. It uses that car's own photos, shows its price and details, and links to its VDP. Each unit in stock gets its own ad, and the ad comes down when the car sells.
Automotive Inventory Ads vs Vehicle Listing Ads: what's the difference?
Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) are Meta's feed-driven ads that show your units to shoppers on Facebook and Instagram, mostly as photos. Vehicle Listing Ads (VLA) are Google's feed-driven listings that show your units when someone searches for a car. Both run off the same inventory feed, so the difference is where shoppers see your cars.
How much do car dealer video ads cost?
Dealer video ads cost three things: making the videos, the media spend that puts them in front of shoppers, and someone to run the campaigns. Vendors bundle these differently, so compare the total per month and what it covers, then divide by the units that got an ad to get your cost per unit advertised.
What is a good cost per VDP view?
A good cost per VDP view is one that beats what you already pay to get shoppers onto a vehicle detail page. Work it out by dividing ad spend by the VDP views the ad sent, then compare that number against your listing sites, paid search, and other social ads for the same period.
What are the vertical video ad specs for car dealers?
Meta recommends 9:16 vertical video at 1440 x 2560 pixels for Reels and Stories, and 4:5 at 1440 x 1800 pixels for the Facebook feed. Each placement has its own length and text limits, plus areas the app covers with buttons and captions. Build one vertical video and check it against each placement.
Can you get dealer video ads without a long-term contract?
Yes. Some dealer video vendors work month-to-month, which means a written agreement with no minimum term. You still sign something, but you can cancel with notice instead of paying out a full year. Before you sign with anyone, get the term, the renewal rules, and who owns the videos and the ad account in writing.
How do dealer video ads stay in sync with inventory?
They read the same inventory feed that keeps your website current, so the ads change when the lot does. New arrivals get an ad automatically. A price change rebuilds the ad with the new number, and when a unit sells and leaves the feed, its ad comes down the same day.
Why do dealer video ads get ignored?
Shoppers have learned to skip them. Years of stitched photos with a robot voiceover reading VIN-decoded features taught people to scroll past, and most watch with the sound off anyway. Ads with a chance of getting watched show one real car, its price on screen, and one next step, with no narration needed.
What did Meta's ad ranking change mean for dealer inventory ads?
Meta's new ad engine, called Andromeda, rewards advertisers who give it more creative and more variety. For dealers, the old play was a handful of ads and tight targeting. Creative is the new targeting. A store that runs one ad for each unit in stock is giving Meta many different creatives by definition.
Inventory ads or lifestyle ads: which should a dealer run?
If the goal is to move metal, put most of the budget into inventory ads. They show an in-market shopper one specific unit, its price, and a link to its VDP. Lifestyle ads can keep the store's name in front of people, but in one Iowa store's account in August 2026, they trailed far behind.
What should a dealer look for in their own Meta ad account?
Start with four numbers in Meta Ads Manager: link clicks, cost per link click, where the ads ran, and frequency. Then check whose name is on the account. When the ads run in your own ad account, you can verify every number a vendor reports and keep the campaign history if you fire them.
How do you read cost per VDP view in Ads Manager?
Ads Manager has no column called VDP views. The closest stand-in is landing page views, which counts a page load after a tap, as long as the Meta pixel is on your site and each ad links to that unit's VDP. Cost per landing page view is your Ads Manager estimate of cost per VDP view.
Do dealers need to be on camera for video ads?
No. Inventory video ads can be built from the photos already on each VDP, with the year, model, price, and your store name on screen. A face helps in brand video, where shoppers decide whether they trust your store. In an ad that sells one specific unit, the car is the subject.
How many of your cars have a video?
If your store looks like the ones we checked, very few. Of 302 franchised Minnesota rooftops in Meta's Ad Library in September 2026, 71 ran any video ad, and one ran video built around single stock units, on three cars. The likely gap is labor. Filming every car takes more hours than most stores have.
What is an automotive inventory ad?
An automotive inventory ad (AIA) is Meta's catalog ad format for dealers. You send Meta a vehicle feed, Meta builds a catalog, and Meta fills one ad template with whichever unit each shopper seems most likely to want, based on your pixel and the shopper's activity. The creative is usually the unit's feed photos, price, and mileage.
Can dealers still list cars on Facebook Marketplace?
Not from a dealership's business Page. Since January 30, 2023, Meta has not let business Pages create vehicle listings on Marketplace, and it said it would delete the listings those Pages had up. People can still list their own cars for free. For a dealer, the routes left to Marketplace shoppers are mostly paid ads.
What radius should a dealer target with ads?
No single radius fits every store. Set it around how far your buyers will drive to buy a car, which is usually a shorter distance in a metro with competing rooftops and a longer one in a rural market. Start from the home addresses in your own sales records, then check where the ad spend lands each month.
What happens to the ad when the car sells?
That depends on how the ad was built. If it runs off your inventory feed, the unit drops out of the feed when it sells and the ad stops at the next update. If someone made it by hand, it keeps running until a person turns it off. Meta's Ad Library shows which kind your store has.
What do dealers spend on advertising per vehicle sold?
The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) puts the 2025 average at $739 of advertising for each new vehicle sold, up $34 from 2024. About three-quarters of those dollars went to digital. Your own number is monthly ad spend divided by units sold, and it compares to NADA's only when you divide by new units.