Creating a Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads campaign manually using a VIN IQ optimized inventory catalog

How to Deploy a Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads Feed

Once you have configured your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads feed in VIN IQ the following steps will walk you through connecting your feed with your Facebook Ads account and configuring a campaign that utilizes the inventory contained within that feed. Once deployed, inventory in your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads will automatically update according to the performance of individual vehicles on your dealership website.

Step by Step Instructions for Setting Up a Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads Feed

General Introduction

The process for creating Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads is to first create a product Catalog in Facebook's Commerce Manager. You then schedule automated updates to that product catalog which will pull inventory every hour from the VIN IQ feed. Next, you create an Ad in either a new or existing campaign and ad set in Facebook Ads Manager whose Ad Creative setting is configured to use inventory from the product Catalog you just created. Once you have completed this, Facebook will then use the vehicle inventory in the Catalog to populate your ads. As inventory is added to or removed from the feed by VIN IQ the ads update automatically. Follow the steps below to set up your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads feed.

A. Create Catalog

Before you start, ensure that you have created your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads feed in the Feed Management section of VIN IQ. For Facebook Product Catalogs you will need to provide the URL of the feed file to create the initial feed. On the Inventory Feeds screen in VIN IQ, click the View link next to the desired feed and from the dialog that appears, click on the Copy Link to Clipboard. This will copy the feed URL to your computer's clipboard so you can then paste it later when needed.

To begin, log into your Facebook Business account.

1. At the top left of the screen, click the hamburger menu (the menu with 3 lines) to access All Tools.

2. From the All Tools menu, choose Commerce Manager.

3. This will take you to the Facebook Commerce Manager application.

The Commerce Manager Assets screen will load and show you any Shops and Catalogs you may have already set up.

4. Click the blue Add Catalog button in the Catalog section. You will be prompted to choose your Catalog Type. Choose Autos and a Vehicles option should appear with the radio button already selected.

5. The Catalog Owner menu should have your business account selected as the owner. If the correct business is not selected, choose the correct one from the list. Now enter a Name for this catalog. It should be descriptive enough so you can easily identify it later.

In our example, we are using a used car feed so we have simply named it VIN IQ Used Car Feed.

6. Click the blue Create button and Facebook will create the catalog and show you a Catalog Created message after a few moments.

Click the blue View catalog button.

7. After your catalog is created, the Catalog Overview screen will load. On the right side of the page, click the Add Items button in the Catalog section.

8. Next, choose the Data Feed option and click the blue Next button.

9. You will be asked if your spreadsheet or file is ready. Choose Yes and click the blue Next button.

10. You are now asked how to upload your file. Choose Use a URL. In the field labelled Enter the URL where your file is hosted paste the link you copied from VIN IQ. This is the location of your feed file.

The URL where the file is hosted will look similar to this: https://app.viniq.io/feeds/17849/17849.619b0560ab391619b0560ab393880337.csv

You can leave the Username and Password fields empty as they are not required.

If you do not have the link to your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads feed file handy, choose the appropriate feed section under the Feed Management section in VIN IQ, then click View next to the desired feed. The link to the feed file is presented. Click Copy Link to Clipboard and then you can paste the link into the Facebook form.

Click the blue Next button.

11. You will now be prompted to choose the frequency for the file to be refreshed by Facebook. Choose Hourly. You do not need to change any of the time settings.

Click the blue Next button.

12. Review the settings and click the blue Save feed and upload button if everything looks correct.

The Default Facebook Page does not require a value since you will have entered your Facebook Page ID into the VIN IQ Feed Configuration screen. This Page ID will always be included in the feed so Facebook will connect the ads to the correct page in your account.

13. Facebook will now fetch the feed from VIN IQ and will process the initial catalog data. This might take a few minutes but progress will be presented on the screen.

14. Once the upload is processed, Facebook shows a summary with the number of vehicles in the feed file, vehicles added, vehicles removed (if any) and the next replacement schedule.

You have completed the first step in setting up your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads feed. Please proceed to Step B - Create a Campaign.

B. Create a Campaign

The next step is to create a basic campaign in Facebook Ads.
While there are numerous ways to set up a campaign in Facebook Ads, this guide will take you through a basic configuration.

1. Click the hamburger menu at the top of Commerce Manager.

2. Choose Ads Manager from the menu that appears.

3. Click the green Create button.

4. The Create new Campaign dialog appears - choose the Traffic option under campaign objective.

Click the blue Continue button.

Important Information About This Step
From the choices available, it is clear you can configure your campaigns in a variety of ways depending on your specific objectives. These instructions will show you how to create a basic campaign from scratch along with the necessary product catalog to produce dynamic inventory ads within Facebook.

Since every dealership's marketing needs are different, it is outside of the scope of this guide to explain every possible setting. For detailed configuration instructions on how to ensure your campaign performs best for your strategic and tactical needs, please refer to your Facebook Ads Specialist, your agency partner or Facebook Help.

5. In the Campaign Details section - populate Campaign Name and choose if this campaign is a Special Ad Category.

Important Information About This Step
It is highly recommended that you choose Credit as a special ad category if you are running automotive inventory ads. The reason is that your ads will be subject to frequent and repeated rejections and pausing by Facebook if your website content, even non-visible source code content or navigation menus, refers to credit-related terms like Finance Applications, Credit and Lease Offers, and similar content. Facebook crawls your website to determine the nature of your ads and if they detect an adequate amount of credit-related content, and you have not declared your ad as a credit opportunity, your ads will be rejected and stop running immediately for policy violation purposes. You will then need to request a review of the ads and wait for them to be re-approved but should expect further subsequent rejections.

Too many rejections for policy violations can lead to your ad account being suspended. Please refer to Facebook Ads Terms & Conditions for further details or speak to your Meta Marketing Pro Specialist.

If you choose Credit special ad category, choose the country in which you are running the ads since there are different requirements per country.

6. In the Advantege campaign budget section, enter your desired budget options and campaign bid strategies, then click the blue Next button.

You have completed the second step in setting up your Facebook Ads Campaign. Please proceed to Step C - Create an Ad Set & Ad.

C. Create an Ad Set & Ad

The next step is to create a basic Ad Set and an Ad.
Ad sets are used for grouping one or more similar Ads under your overall campaign. Ads will be created in the next step.

1. You should now be viewing the Ad Set configuration screen. Enter a Name for this Ad Set that describes the ad(s) you plan to include in this group. Then choose Website from the Traffic options.

2. Scroll down to the Audiences section and choose Audience details and Location details suitable for your campaign.

Leave the Placements setting at Advantage+ placements and then click the blue Next button.

3. You should now be viewing the Ad configuration screen. Enter a Name for this ad that describes the Ad. Then choose the Facebook Page from the Identity section for the Page this ad will be connected to.

Important Information About This Step
The Facebook Page you choose here must match the page whose Page ID you provided when you configured the feed in VIN IQ. If the Page IDs do not match, the feed will not be eligible for linking to your Ad.

4. From the Ad Setup section, choose Create Ad, select Catalog under Creative Source and choose Carousel from the Format options.

5. Scroll down to Ad creative section and choose the Catalog you created earlier.

Leave Vehicle Set as All Vehicles as VIN IQ will adjust the vehicles every hour.

6. The Carousel cards configuration is acceptable with the default settings, but you can always change these later.

7. Populate the text fields in the next set of text input fields. Pay attention to the Deep Link to Website field where you must choose the URL field from the plus menu. After choosing the URL field, the vehicle.url item appears in the Deep Link to Website field. Click the blue Aa link next to the vehicle.url field and choose Use catalog format from the menu.

We also recommend choosing the Open deep link in mobile web browser as your deep link destination option.

8. In the tracking section, choose to enable Website Events if you have a Facebook pixel deployed on your website. Also, do not forget to populate the URL Parameters to pass custom UTM codes to Google Analytics and track this separately from other Facebook campaigns you may be running.

While you can enter any values you wish as UTM tracking parameters, typical examples will be descriptive of the source (Facebook) and the medium (Social). However, in order to clearly see this traffic versus other similar source traffic, ensure these UTMs are not identical to your other source/mediums.

One suggestion is to slightly alter either the source or the medium to denote this is being fed by VIN IQ. A simple example of this is as follows:

utm_source=facebook-viniq&utm_medium=social

By keeping the medium as social you will ensure that Google Analytics treats this traffic as part of the Social channel in your own Google Analytics, but you can easily see the difference between other search sources and the VINIQ-powered source. Alternatively, you can add the utm_campaign parameter and make it more descriptive:

utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=viniq_dynamic_feed

9. Click the green Publish button to publish your ad and activate your campaign. This will publish the ad and it will automatically be set to Review status. After a short period, the ad should be approved and switched to Active status.

You have completed the final step in setting up your Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads using a dynamic inventory feed!