"Facebook says 'so long!' to it's free vehicle inventory listings, here's what comes next!"
Facebook / META announced that they will be phasing out and discontinuing the ability of car dealers to create free vehicle sales listings using a Facebook business page. This means that the only way to list vehicles on Marketplace will be in direct consumer-to-consumer and "for sale by owner" transactions, and only if posted from a personal account. Facebook says that they aren't getting rid of vehicle listings, just changing how these inventories are distributed, so as of January 30, 2023 dealers will no longer be able to manually add those inventories to the Facebook Marketplace from their business pages. They will also be removing the Inventory tabs from your business pages.
Facebook's parent, META, has kept their internal reasoning close to the vest, and there's plenty of speculation one way or the other, but what is clear is that Facebook has been missing out on significant revenues by allowing this space for "free" ads on its platform to continue. Like many other platforms these days, META is keenly interested in "reducing friction" in the shopping process, which is generally described as anything that prevents a customer from moving forward to the next stage. They are also trying to keep their shoppers on-site at all costs (referred to as On-Facebook Destination); both of which are sentiments that their recently enhanced (AIA) Automotive Inventory Ads service tries to emulate.
As these free vehicle listings are being phased out, it is more important than ever to make sure your dealership has a sound strategy to continue promoting and merchandising your inventory on Automotive Inventory. Facebook is still the most used social media platform in the world, and it's standard display ads don't really cater to vehicle merchandising very well. AIA focuses on promoting and selling your on-site inventory, whereas the standard ads are generally better suited to promote your brand offers, your dealership, in-house specials and events, etc.
With AIA you can drive relevant and valuable local shoppers to your VDPs and convert more of your funnel traffic to leads, all while producing remarkably strong attribution models. It's something that your dealership should be doing in addition to standard display ads. With Autofusion as your AIA partner, you can take advantage of our targeting expertise and other best practices like a/b testing, optimized ad delivery, and customized inventory images that showcase your brand and why-buy features.
Autofusion has been helping dealers navigate the minutia of marketing on Facebook since well before the Inventory listings first went live back in 2017, and we will be there to help you get the most out of AIA long after the last free listings are permanently deleted.
To learn more about how Autofusion can help your dealership hit its merchandising stride on the AIA platform, contact sales@autofusion.com or click here to schedule a demo today!