Vehicle ads overview

Vehicle ads are a performance-focused lower funnel ad format designed for auto advertisers, dealerships, agencies, marketplaces and more to promote their entire vehicle inventory to interested customers on Google, driving qualified leads and sales.

Through vehicle ads customers are shown an image of the vehicle with important information such as make, model, price, mileage, and advertiser name.Clicking on a vehicle ad will take the customer to the vehicle description page (VDP) on your website. From there, they can perform additional actions like contacting the dealer or filling out a lead form before visiting the dealership website. Learn how to join the Vehicle ads program in the "Availability" section below.

Vehicle Listing Ads Hero Image

Note: In Merchant Center, you can enable Vehicle ads in the "Add-on" section. Vehicle ads are available in Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States, in open beta in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Refer to the “Availability” section below for more information regarding participation in this program.

Google Vehicle Ads: Onboarding & Setup Guide

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On this page

Getting started with vehicle ads
Benefits
Availability
How vehicle ads work
Instructions

Getting started with vehicle ads

This paid ad format helps auto advertisers drive sales by optimizing for online and offline conversions. It allows advertisers to show their entire inventory to interested shoppers on Google. Customers see an image of the car with details like the make, model, price, mileage, and dealer name. To use vehicle ads, you first need to enable the program in your Merchant Center account. You can typically find this option in the “Add-ons” section of your account. If you're having trouble locating it, ensure your account doesn't have existing data sources or other programs active, as these might prevent the Vehicle Ads program from being enabled. After it's enabled, you can upload your vehicle data sources (also known as Feeds) to Merchant Center and run Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads to serve vehicle ads. Learn how to Enable vehicle advertising.

Benefits

Vehicle ads help you get in front of auto shoppers online at the right moment, with the right listings and information to move them closer to a purchase. Key benefits include:

More qualified leads: Show customers key information and visuals about the car before they select, helps provide more qualified leads.
Omnichannel goals: Optimize for both online conversions (leads) and offline conversions (store visits).
Automated targeting: Vehicle ads show your most relevant listings for a related user query.

Availability

Vehicle types

Vehicle ads support both new and used vehicle inventory from dealer, retailer stock, aggregators, or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Vehicle ads from private sellers, individuals, or auto brokers aren't permitted.

Vehicle ads may be used to promote only non-commercial passenger vehicles, such as cars or pickup trucks (utes in AU).

Examples of not-allowed vehicle types are commercial vehicles, farm vehicles, buses, 2-wheelers, trains, boats, airplanes, or outdoor utility vehicles. Learn more about Vehicle advertising policies and supported vehicle types.

Locations

Google Vehicle Ads are available globally with varying levels of access depending on your region. To support local advertisers including searches for google vehicle ads uk and google vehicle ads deutschland the setup steps and availability are structured as follows:

Fully Released Countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United States):
- Merchants in these regions can enable the Vehicle ads add-on directly in their Merchant Center account.
Open Beta Countries (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands):
- Auto advertisers in these countries (like looking for google vehicle ads uk or google vehicle ads Germany support) must first verify their eligibility by reviewing the prerequisites.
- After meeting the requirements, submit the contact us form. You cannot enable the add-on directly in Merchant Center unless your account has been officially allowlisted following this form submission.

Closed Beta Countries: If you are an auto advertiser in a closed beta country interested in participating in Vehicle Ads (VAs), reach out to your dedicated Google sales representative to request access.

How Vehicle ads work

Advertisers can activate vehicle ads in 2 ways depending on your goals:

You can Enable vehicle ads in your Performance Max campaigns. Performance Max with vehicle data sources is a cross-channel performance focused format powered by Google AI.
Enable vehicle ads in your Standard Shopping campaigns. Standard Shopping campaigns with vehicle data sources have more control on what subset of their inventory is shown to customers.

Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns can be used together for cross-channel goals.

Google will test different combinations of the assets available to create high performing ads across formats and networks that work best for your goals.

Instructions

Before you begin, link a Google Ads account to a Merchant Center account and a Google Business Profile. You can also submit your store data source instead if you don’t own or manage the profiles for your dealer locations. Learn how to Create, register, and submit your store data (Optional).

Go to Merchant Center and upload a vehicle data source.
Fill all necessary attributes for your vehicle inventory. Google uses these details to match a customer's search to the most relevant cars.
Go to Google Ads and create a New Campaign.
Select your campaign objectives.
Select Performance Max or Shopping under “Select a campaign type” based on your campaign goals.

Best practices

Upload your own video assets

To prevent Performance Max from automatically creating videos, it's highly recommended to upload your own video assets to your asset group.

If you see unwanted auto-generated assets, you can disable "Automatically created assets" in your Performance Max campaign settings. For more granular control, you can also manage "Account-level automated assets" in your main Google Ads account settings.

If you attach a vehicle data source without adding other assets separately, your Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaign will show your vehicle ads only on Google search.

Control where your ads appear

To control where your ads appear and prevent them from showing on irrelevant sites or apps like mobile games, you can use Account-Level Placement Exclusions. In your Google Ads account, navigate to Content suitability under “Tools and Settings” to add specific websites, YouTube channels, or app categories to an exclusion list. This helps refine your campaign's reach and focus your budget on more relevant placements.

Vehicle Feed Service Provider program

Simplify the feed management experience when you work with a dedicated Vehicle Feed Service Provider.

Vehicle Feed Service Providers are an optional service that automates the creation and submission of your vehicle feeds. These partners can help accelerate your onboarding process and assist with ongoing campaign management to implement Vehicle Ads at scale. Learn more About the Vehicle Feed Service Provider program (for dealers).

Note: We are gradually rolling out the capability to show vehicle feed based ads on Google Display network. Currently, this is available only for advertisers in Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United States. Performance Max campaigns with a vehicle feed attached will be able to show ads on the Display network without the need for separate addition of assets such as headlines, descriptions, images, and more to be added separately.

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