302 Minnesota dealers, 71 run video, one runs it per car.

What this means for a dealer

Inventory ads are normal in Minnesota. 131 of the 302 rooftops run them, and those ads name a year, a model, a price or a stock number. Inventory video is rare. Only 31 stores run a video that names a model or price, and 75 of the stores running inventory ads run no video at all. Of the 150 stores that advertise at all, 131 already pay to put units in front of shoppers. They do it with still photos and catalog cards.

Ad count does not decide the ranking. Walser Nissan Wayzata runs 49 ads and ranks eighth. Hibbing Chrysler Center runs 35, and 16 of them are video written for the Iron Range, with new creative every month since July. Nelson Auto Center runs 11 videos out of a rural rooftop in Fergus Falls, with Ram and Super Duty spots next to customer review clips. Hibbing keeps a steady schedule, and both stores write copy that sounds like their town.

None of the 302 stores we checked covers the whole lot in video. Waconia Dodge comes closest, with its own clip for three units. Every other store's video is about a model, a promotion or the store itself, not a stock unit. That leaves the same opening in Minnesota. The first store in a market to run video per unit is alone in the feed, and each clip sends a shopper to the VDP for one unit on the lot.

Method

• Roster: the Minnesota DVS export of active dealer licenses, filtered to names with a franchise brand or a known dealer group, plus OpenStreetMap trade names missing from the legal-name list. Used-only, RV, powersports, truck, broker and OEM direct sellers (Tesla, Rivian) were removed. 302 rooftops remained.
• In the CSV, city comes from the MN DVS export and is blank or a street fragment for some rows.
• Coverage: MADA's site describes its audience as nearly 400 Minnesota franchised dealers, so the roster covers roughly three quarters of them (source: https://www.mada.org/about).
• Lookup: a headless Chromium browser, logged out, ran one keyword search per store in the Meta Ad Library (United States, active ads only), then the same search with Meta's video filter. Pulled September 23, 2026.
• Undercount: each search read the first 30 to 50 ad cards, so stores with a lot of ads are undercounted.
• Attribution: the advertiser's page name had to share a distinctive, non-brand word with the store and not conflict on brand. OEM co-op ads count when the copy names the store and carries a Minnesota signal. A hand blocklist removed out-of-state name collisions such as Rochester, NY and Grand Rapids, MI. Stores with generic names got a second, exact-phrase search.
• Group pages: groups such as Walser and Luther sometimes run ads for several rooftops from one page. Those ads land on whichever roster entry matched the page. Luther Brookdale is left out of the top ten because its entry rolls up seven rooftop pages.
• Classification: an inventory ad names a price, a year and model, a stock number, VIN or MSRP, or uses catalog "shop these vehicles" copy. Service and hiring ads are counted separately. A video ad is any ad Meta's video filter returns. The classifier is rule-based, so expect a few percent of noise either way.
• Top ten: chosen by editorial judgment of creative quality and consistency across the active ads we saw, not by ad count.
• Snapshot: counts change daily. These are the active ads on September 23, 2026.
• No spend or reach: the Meta Ad Library does not publish spend or reach for commercial US ads.

Related

• What is a VIN video ad?
• Automotive inventory ads vs vehicle listing ads
• VinScroll vs Impel

Questions about this study

How many Minnesota dealers run video ads on Facebook?

71 of the 302 franchised Minnesota rooftops we checked had at least one active video ad on Meta, which covers Facebook and Instagram. That is 24% of the roster. 31 stores ran a video that named a model or price. One store, Waconia Dodge, ran video built around single stock units. Data pulled from the Meta Ad Library on September 23, 2026.

Which Minnesota dealer runs the most video ads?

Of the 302 stores we checked, Merit Chevrolet in Saint Paul had the most, with 20 active video ads across its own page and Chevrolet co-op ads that name the store. Hibbing Chrysler Center was next with 16, all from its own page. Diamond Buick GMC in Alexandria and Luther Brookdale each had 15, though Luther's count rolls up seven rooftop pages. Source: Meta Ad Library, September 23, 2026.

What counts as an inventory ad in this audit?

An ad counts as inventory when it names a price, a year and model, a stock number, a VIN or an MSRP, or uses catalog copy like "shop these vehicles." Service and hiring ads are tracked separately. By that rule, 131 of 302 Minnesota franchised rooftops ran inventory ads on Meta on September 23, 2026. Only 31 ran video that named a model or price.

How was the dealer list built?

We started with the Minnesota DVS export of active dealer licenses and kept names with a franchise brand or a known dealer group. We added OpenStreetMap trade names missing from that list, then removed used-only, RV, powersports, truck, broker and OEM direct sellers. That left 302 rooftops, roughly three quarters of the nearly 400 Minnesota franchised dealers MADA cites.