Unlocking Success: The Comprehensive Guide to Dealership Facebook Ads
In the realm of digital marketing, social media is a pivotal component of effective dealership marketing. As trends evolve and consumer behaviors shift, platforms like Facebook provide dealerships with unprecedented opportunities to engage with potential customers. If you’re a dealer yet to tap into the power of dealership Facebook ads, you’re overlooking a massive opportunity to drive growth and visibility.
At NetSource Media, we’ve cemented our reputation as a premier Facebook ad agency with a focus on the automotive and outdoor industries. With over 25 years of expertise, we’ve navigated through significant shifts in the industry, helping our dealers optimize their dealership digital marketing strategies effectively.
Why You Should Run Facebook Dealership Ads
What Are Dealership Facebook Ads?
Where do Dealership Ads Display?
What are Facebook Ad Campaign Objectives?
What Lead Ads Work for Dealers?
What Facebook Ad Formats Work Best for Dealerships?
What’s the Difference Between Traditional Ads and AIA?
Should I Run Both AIA and Traditional Ads?
Expert Insights from a Leading Facebook Ad Agency
As the parent company of RVUSA and TrailersUSA, The NetSource team understands the importance of dealer inventory marketing. Facebook dealership ads allow dealers to effortlessly connect with a broad audience and precisely target potential customers. They are an effective way for dealerships to expand their reach and engage more deeply with customers. With over a billion people interacting with businesses weekly through Facebook Messenger, the potential for customer engagement is enormous. And with Facebook’s user base in the U.S. set to increase by 12.6 million by 2028, dealers should not sleep on Facebook ads.
Not only is the audience size growing, but this trend also reflects evolving consumer preferences. According to a 2020 Facebook Auto e-commerce study, 54% of consumers are comfortable negotiating significant aspects of vehicle transactions online, and 72% feel confident understanding vehicle features remotely. These insights are prompting dealerships to shift from traditional advertising methods to more dynamic digital marketing strategies.
Our team of Facebook-certified experts are here to help dealers explore the power of Facebook dealership ads. Keep reading for detailed insights into Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) and other relevant Facebook ad types that enhance powersports, marine, trailer and RV dealer marketing.

Dealership Facebook Ads: A Comprehensive Guide by NetSource Media
Before delving into the specifics of Facebook ad types, it’s vital to grasp the platform’s potential. For over two decades, Facebook has remained at the forefront of the social media landscape. Now part of Meta, it continues to dominate in the U.S. capturing 45% of all social media site visits. Facebook reports an astonishing 3.98 billion monthly users across its main platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. This massive audience spends an average of 33 minutes per day on Facebook, totaling about 17 hours per month. These metrics highlight why Facebook is indispensable for marine, powersports, RV and trailer dealer marketing.
By understanding Facebook’s advertising options, dealers can leverage these tools to achieve remarkable outcomes. NetSource Media is here to help you optimize your social media marketing.
Understanding the Basics of Facebook Ads for Dealerships
What Are Dealership Facebook Ads?
Dealership Facebook ads promote automotive industry products, services, or events to a targeted audience. They span sectors like RV, powersport, marine, and trailer dealer marketing, without significant differentiation. Using Meta’s detailed user data, these ads are refined by demographics, behaviors, and preferences. This data-driven strategy ensures ads reach the most relevant buyers, with Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) providing the most precise targeting.
These ads allow dealers to showcase inventory, promote sales, increase website traffic and generate leads. They are a cost and time-effective approach to keeping your brand prominent in consumers’ minds. We’ll get into AIA and traditional Facebook ad types shortly. But first, let’s start with the basics of Facebook dealership ads, exploring where they appear and their primary objectives.
Where do Dealership Ads Display?
When you set up a dealership ad campaign, you can choose where your ads will appear across various Meta platforms. These platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. Each platform offers unique placements that can help maximize your ad’s visibility:


Feeds: Ads can appear in Facebook and Instagram feeds, both on desktop and mobile devices.
Marketplace and Explore: Ads placed in Facebook Marketplace or the Explore sections of Facebook and Instagram can reach users actively looking to discover new content.
Stories and Reels: Use immersive formats like Facebook and Instagram Stories or Reels to capture attention in a full-screen format.
Video Feeds and Right Column: Place video ads in Facebook’s video feeds or static ads in the desktop right column for additional visibility.
Search and Messages: Your ads can also appear in search results or as sponsored messages in Messenger, engaging users who are already interacting with related content.
Campaign Objectives for Facebook Dealership Ads
The first step in launching your Facebook dealership ads is establishing a clear goal, known as the campaign objective. This objective is the cornerstone of your Facebook ads strategy. It guides the entire structure of your campaign—from the overarching focus right down to individual ad designs.
Picking the right objective is usually easy—it’s all about what you aim to achieve. Each objective is crafted to match your campaign to specific marketing goals. Meta uses this to fine-tune your ads to hit the right audience and spark the action you’re looking for.
Here’s a breakdown of the typical Facebook ad objectives you can choose from:
Awareness: Ideal for dealers looking to increase brand visibility.
Engagement: Aims to increase interactions on your posts or page. This objective is great for building community presence and customer interaction.
Traffic: Focuses on driving visitors to an online destination, like your dealership’s website or a specific landing page. This objective drives online traffic and engages users directly with your inventory or services.
Sales: Targets ads to users most likely to purchase, based on their past online behavior and demographic details. This objective is often suggested for moving inventory quickly. Ads in these campaigns encourage specific actions on or off Facebook. Examples of those actions include signing up for a newsletter, scheduling a service, or making a purchase.
Leads: Designed to collect information from prospective buyers, this objective is best for growing your customer base. Ads in this campaign also allow dealers to follow up on potential sales leads. Leads can be collected on Facebook, on your website and on third-party destinations.


Effective Types of Facebook Dealership Ads for Leads
Dealer Lead Generation Ads: These are designed to collect information from prospects, making it easy to follow up with them later. They can encourage potential customers to sign up for more information, schedule service appointments, or receive quotes on your website or on Facebook.
Message Ads: Message Ads connect you to potential customers through Messenger. These ads effectively open up conversations with your business, driving meaningful results. With 1.3 billion people using Messenger every month, your ad has the potential to reach a vast audience, enhancing engagement and customer interaction.
Choosing the right campaign objective is imperative. It shapes how your ads are served, who they reach and their overall results. Here at NetSource, we want to make sure your ads do more than just show up—they work hard to meet your specific dealership goals. By selecting the best objective, we can tailor your ads to reach the right audience and make the most out of your advertising budget. We’re here to guide you through this process. We’ll ensure that your objectives align perfectly with your business goals, maximizing the impact and efficiency of your campaigns.
Popular Facebook Ad Formats for Dealerships
Facebook offers a variety of ad setups. Here’s an overview of the most common Facebook ad formats for dealerships:
Single Image or Video Ads:
For clear and direct communication, the ‘Single Image or Video’ ad type is perfect. It uses a static image, video, or slideshow to engage your audience. Video ads are particularly engaging and offer a dynamic way to tell your dealership’s story or to provide a detailed walkthrough of a unit. They excel at grabbing potential customers’ attention, often resulting in higher engagement rates.
Single-image ads are also very effective, providing a sharp and compelling message that feels right at home in users’ feeds. These ads are designed to spark curiosity, requiring just one high-quality image to make an impact. They are ideal for promoting specific products, events, or offers, equipped with a clear message and a strong call to action to convert viewers into leads.

Carousel Ads:
Carousel ads are a versatile tool for dealerships because they feature up to 10 images or videos in a single ad. Each ad slide can be customized with its own unique link. This format is perfect for highlighting different models or promotions. It provides ample creative space to detail various features or tell a story that unfolds with each swipe. While Facebook can automatically optimize the order of the images to maximize engagement, you can opt out of this feature. Opting out ensures your narrative flows as intended, maintaining a specific sequence.

Flexible Format Ads:
The ‘Flexible’ ad format streamlines your dealership advertising by using predictive analytics to automatically choose the best layout—like a single image, video, or carousel—for your audience. Although it limits you to one landing page, it is great for engagement and lead objectives. This ad formant dynamically optimizes itself without needing constant tweaks. This feature is a real game-changer if you’re looking to efficiently reach your audience with varied content in the most impactful way.
Traditional Ads vs. AIA Ads
Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA):
Dynamic catalog ads for automotive dealers, AIAs automatically promote your current vehicle inventory to the most relevant audiences. These ads are linked directly to your inventory pages and can help drive interested buyers to the exact units they are searching for. Each of these ad types can be customized and optimized based on the dealership’s specific goals and target audience. AIA alone makes Facebook a versatile and powerful tool for dealership marketing.

Traditional Facebook Dealership Ads
Traditional ads, which don’t use catalog feeds or dynamic content, give you more creative control. These ads are key for highlighting your unique offerings—from satisfaction guarantees to special deals and promotions. These ads are best for helping your dealership stand out. They are perfect for emphasizing your dealership’s commitment to customer satisfaction and showcasing your company culture. They’re not just about selling inventory; they’re about inviting potential customers into your dealership’s community.
What’s the Difference Between Traditional Ads and AIA?
Traditional ads and Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) serve distinct purposes in dealership marketing. Traditional ads offer more creative freedom, allowing dealerships to highlight specific offerings like satisfaction guarantees or exclusive buying options. They excel in conveying the dealership’s unique selling propositions, fostering customer connections through stories of real employees, and enhancing engagement with your dealership’s community and values.
In contrast, AIAs are dynamic and data-driven, automatically updating to showcase the latest inventory to highly targeted audiences based on user data. This makes AIAs especially effective for driving traffic directly to specific listings on your website, offering a streamlined path from ad to acquisition.
While traditional ads require regular updates to keep the content fresh and engaging, AIAs continually refresh themselves with the latest inventory, reducing manual effort and potentially lowering costs per interaction by targeting high-intent buyers. Both ad types can be finely tuned to a dealership’s goals but serve best when used in tandem to maximize reach and engagement across different customer segments.
Facebook’s Automotive Inventory Ads
How do Facebook AIAs Work?
Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) are particularly powerful as they use user data to show ads to shoppers already interested in specific unit types. These dynamic ads update automatically to show the latest inventory to those most likely to buy, based on their activities both on and off Facebook. Facebook’s algorithms ensure that the most relevant units are shown first, potentially reducing the cost per click and reaching more buyers with a high intent to purchase.


Can you have multiple AIAs?
Inventory Sets for AIA
We generally recommend using a traffic AIA for your full inventory, but you can also organize your inventory into sets. These sets can spotlight special inventory, attributes, or promoted units. Like the broader AIA strategy, these sets update dynamically, ensuring that the most relevant vehicles are shown to potential buyers, ultimately driving more traffic to your website.
Creative for AIA
While AIAs don’t allow as much creative flexibility as traditional Facebook ad formats, you can still enhance them by uploading a frame and dynamic elements like price and title. These elements update as your inventory changes. It’s important to note that using a frame limits the display to the first photo uploaded, rather than a slideshow of photos. Our data indicates that AIAs with frames typically reach fewer people but generate more website leads compared to those without frames. We suggest using a frame when aiming to highlight sales, special features, or to boost leads, as it effectively showcases your entire or specially selected inventory.




Leveraging AIA alongside other Facebook Ad Formats
Incorporating AIAs into your overall Facebook ad strategy can significantly boost your dealership’s visibility and sales. With proactive inventory management dealers can use AIA to keep their current units in front of interested buyers and bring back potential customers to increase sales.
Adding lead generation ads to the mix allows dealerships to collect contact information directly through their websites or on Facebook. This helps to streamline the conversion process, making dealer lead management easier.
And don’t forget to mix in different ad formats like videos or carousels along with your AIAs. This variety not only covers all your bases but also caters to different customer tastes. Many dealerships have seen their engagement and sales climb by adopting this combined approach.
Facebook Ad Agency Paid Ad Management for Dealerships
Our team at NetSource understands the ins and outs of Facebook’s ever-evolving ad platform, from Automotive Inventory Ads to custom traditional ads that showcase your dealership’s unique offerings. Whether it’s optimizing your ad spend or crafting compelling ad content, our goal is to help your dealership thrive in a competitive digital landscape. By partnering with us, you gain access to dedicated professionals who are committed to maximizing the effectiveness of your paid campaigns and ensuring your dealership stands out in the bustling online market.
