Facebook’s Automotive Inventory Ads Enhanced

In the latest WDA Marketing Pit Stop, we take a look at the most important digital marketing news and updates from the last two weeks, 7th – 20th September, including Facebook Business Suite, Google Custom Audiences, IGTV Auto Captions and Automotive Inventory Ads enhanced.

Let’s take a pit stop and get into it.

Facebook Business Suite

Facebook has launched a new app and desktop interface called Facebook Business Suite. A single dashboard that allows SMBs to seamlessly manage content on Instagram and Facebook – providing tools for publishing, messaging and analytics in one place. The aim is to also integrate WhatsApp next year. This is great for small to medium automotive brands who want a simple way to manage content across both platforms without using a Social Media scheduling tool such as Hootsuite.

Google Boosts Nearby Product Visibility

Google has started to put more emphasis on nearby product inventory as a change in consumer behaviour sees “buy online, pickup in-store” growing over 250% year on year. Google has introduced new and updated features to make nearby product inventory more visible including a new local stores card, increased visibility for Curbside and In-store Pickup labels and making the “nearby” filter under the Shopping tab more prominent.

Google Custom Audiences Now Live

Google has now launched custom audiences (first announced last year at Google Marketing Live). Google Custom Audiences unify both custom affinity and custom intent audiences under one option for Display, Discovery, Gmail and YouTube campaigns. Existing custom intent for affinity audiences will be automatically migrated into a new custom audience. The new unified option gives automotive advertisers more options with targeting, allowing for a more focussed campaign.

Twitter Updating Trends

Twitter has announced that they are working on updating their Trending section by starting to add headlines and descriptions to some of the trends – enabling users to get a better understanding of why something is showing up. Despite the recent updates, however, there are still many trends that don’t have an explanation, confusing users. While this is progress there’s still a way to go.

YouTube New Ad Tools

With a significant rise in YouTube viewership since the start of the pandemic and in particular YouTube videos watched on TV increasing 80% year on year, they have made some additions to help advertisers get more from their campaigns. The updates include more targeting options for where advertisers place their YouTube ads with dynamic lineups segmenting videos based on their content and with their advanced machine learning being able to determine the subject of each video. So, rather than targeting just “Automotive”, as a broad category, dynamic lineups means you can get more granular.

The video platform is also expanding on its partnership with data giant Nielsen to provide additional data insight and allow brands to maximise their campaigns. The new updates are designed to help advertisers reach more defined audiences at a lower cost.

Auto Captions Added to IGTV

Facebook has increased its accessibility efforts by adding new automatic closed captions for IGTV uploads. The option is available to toggle on and off when uploading an IGTV video and is great for businesses who want to expand potential viewing of their content. However, it’s important to be mindful of the caption accuracy which will largely depend on how clear the audio is.

Topic Exclusions now available in Video Ads

Facebook has introduced new brand safety controls for video advertisers, including topic exclusions and publisher allow lists. Topic exclusions can be used to control where your video ads appear based on the content and are powered by machine learning technology. The new publisher allow lists give advertisers the power to choose from a list of publishers to show ads with.

Facebook’s Automotive Inventory Ads Enhanced

Automotive Inventory ads were introduced by Facebook last year, enabling car dealers to reach potential buyers through automated ads. The enhancements include additional mobile optimisation features to provide more ways to reach your desired audience. Here’s what Facebook had to say…

“Today we’re launching the ability to drive automotive inventory ads to a mobile-optimized shopping experience on the Facebook platform. When a shopper clicks on an auto dealer’s ad, they’ll land on a dynamic Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) on Facebook that’s created using information from the dealer’s auto catalog. From this VDP, shoppers can research vehicles, discover additional inventory and connect directly with dealers via Facebook Messenger, lead form, phone call or by visiting a dealership in person.”

That wraps up the latest Marketing Pit Stop. Subscribe to our blog and follow us on social media so you don’t miss the next one!

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