Google Vehicle Ads and Facebook Vehicle Ads
Get your published inventory onto Google Vehicle Ads and Facebook Vehicle Ads. Both are paid programs, so this covers the real setup and the limits.
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Google and Facebook are the two biggest places to advertise your cars. AutoDealer.io feeds your published inventory to both, so your latest cars flow in automatically and a sold car drops off on its own.
Both of these are paid programs in 2026. They are advertising, not free listings. Google retired its free vehicle listings in 2025, and Facebook ended free Marketplace catalog listings years ago. You pay Google and/or Meta for the ads; AutoDealer.io supplies the inventory feed. There is no free tier for either.
Before you start: generate your feed
Every marketplace runs off one inventory feed. Set it up once.
- Go to Settings → Marketplaces.
- Turn on the channel you want. The first one you turn on creates the one feed key that powers all of your channel links.
- Leave the Feeds switch under Feed key, at the top of the page, on. Turning it off pauses every marketplace at once.
Only a car that is published and complete shows up. Each vehicle needs an asking price over $0, at least one public photo, a valid VIN, and a year/make/model. The line at the top of the page shows how many of your cars qualify right now. Open any vehicle's Edit page and check the Listing readiness panel to see exactly what a car is missing.
Google Vehicle Ads
Google's free vehicle listings were retired in 2025. Cars now appear only through Vehicle Ads, which are paid and run from your own Google accounts: Google Merchant Center, Google Ads (with a budget) and a verified Google Business Profile for each lot. AutoDealer.io supplies the inventory feed and keeps it current.
What Google asks of you and your cars
- A physical lot customers can visit, in the state where the car is listed, with a verified Google Business Profile.
- Your dealer license: Google asks for it before your ads can run.
- Clean-title cars only. A car marked salvage, rebuilt, flood, lemon or not-actual-mileage stays out of the Google feed.
- Each car needs a price, at least one photo, the full 17-character VIN, the mileage and an exterior color, and it must be for sale today. A car badged Sold, Sale Pending or Coming Soon stays out, because Google allows only available cars on its ads.
- The price is the full price. In the US, Google wants the price in your feed to be what any buyer pays, excluding only government charges (taxes, title and registration). If your deals add a doc fee or other dealer fees, include them in your asking price. The Google card warns you when your deal settings add dealer fees.
- On the Marketplaces page, find Google Vehicle Ads under Ads on your own accounts and turn its switch on. Copy the link from its Feed URL section.
- In your Google Business Profile, set a store code for each lot: select More, then Business Profile settings, then Advanced settings. Then enter the same codes in the Store codes box on the Google card, one per lot, exactly as Google shows them. Store codes are case sensitive, and a car on a lot with no code stays out of the Google feed.
- In Google Merchant Center, verify and claim your website, add your business details, and link your Google Ads account and your Business Profile.
- Turn on vehicle ads: open Settings, then Add-ons, choose the Vehicle ads card and select Add in United States. Do this before you add any data source.
- Add your feed: open Settings, then Data sources, then Add product source, choose Add products from a file, paste your feed URL and set the schedule to Daily.
- Send Google your dealer license, then ask for the data quality review. Google checks that each car page matches the feed. It takes 3 to 5 business days, so avoid big inventory changes while it runs.
- Once approved, create a Performance Max campaign with your vehicle feed in Google Ads. Your cars show in Google Search with their price and mileage, and a sold car drops off at the next daily fetch.
Your vehicle pages already show what Google's review looks for, with no extra clicks: your dealership name and address, the price, the VIN, the mileage and that the car is for sale. Each Merchant Center account covers one state, so a dealer with lots in two states needs two accounts. The US, Canada and Australia are self-serve; in the EU and UK, Google has to allow-list you first.
Facebook Vehicle Ads
This is paid Automotive Inventory Ads, shown across Facebook, Instagram, and Marketplace as ads. It is not free Marketplace listings (Meta ended catalog-to-organic-Marketplace years ago). Facebook also only lists used cars over 500 miles, and each car needs an exterior color and a body style.
There are two ways in, and the Facebook card tells you which one you have. If it reads Set up in Meta, follow Option B. If it shows a Connect Facebook button, follow Option A: you connect once and inventory pushes automatically.
Option A: One-click connect (recommended)
Use this if the Facebook Vehicle Ads card shows a blue Connect Facebook button (the card badge reads Not connected rather than Set up in Meta).
- Make sure you have a Facebook account that is an admin of a Meta Business (Business Manager). It's free to create at business.facebook.com if you don't have one.
- On the Facebook Vehicle Ads card, click Connect Facebook. A Facebook window opens.
- Sign in with the account that admins your Meta Business, then approve the requested permissions to manage your business and manage your product catalog. We automatically find or create a catalog named Vehicle Inventory for you.
- You land back on the page and auto-sync is turned on for you. From now on, publishing a car, changing its price, or marking it sold updates Facebook automatically.
Want everything pushed right now? Under Sync settings on the connected card, click Sync all inventory now. You can also toggle Auto-sync off to pause pushes, or click Disconnect to unlink. If the card shows Reconnect Facebook, your token expired; click it to restore syncing.
Option B: Set up in Meta (when one-click isn't enabled)
Use this if the Facebook card shows a Set up in Meta badge instead of a Connect button.
- On the Facebook card, copy the link under Feed URL. If there isn't one yet, click Get your Feed URL.
- Go to Meta Commerce Manager and open (or create) a catalog for your inventory.
- Add your feed URL as a scheduled data source / data feed, set the fetch schedule to Daily, and save.
- After the first import, valid cars appear in your catalog. Price edits and sold cars update the next time Meta fetches the feed.
Keep the Feeds switch under Feed key on. If feeds are paused, both Google and Meta get a 404 when they try to fetch your feed, and your listings will stop updating.
What syndication does and doesn't do
- AutoDealer.io supplies the inventory feed. You still pay Google Ads and/or Meta for the advertising and you finish setup in their tools.
- Listing sites work differently. For CarGurus, Autotrader, Cars.com, Carsforsale.com, TrueCar and Edmunds, you need an account with that site, then you choose Request setup and AutoDealer.io finishes the setup with that company. See CarGurus and the generic feed and Autotrader, Cars.com and other listing sites.
- Selling, unpublishing, or removing a car drops it from your feeds automatically. You never have to clean up Commerce Manager or Merchant Center by hand.
FAQ
Are Google Vehicle Ads and Facebook Vehicle Ads free?
No. Both are paid advertising programs. Google retired free vehicle listings in 2025, and Facebook's catalog listings power paid Automotive Inventory Ads, not free Marketplace posts. AutoDealer.io provides the feed at no extra charge, but you pay Google and/or Meta for the ad spend.
Why isn't one of my cars showing up?
It probably isn't eligible yet. A car must be published and have an asking price over $0, at least one public photo, a valid VIN, and a year/make/model. Facebook additionally requires the car to be a used vehicle over 500 miles with an exterior color and a body style, two fields Meta's vehicle catalog requires. Google additionally requires the full 17-character VIN, the mileage, an exterior color, a clean title, a store code for the car's lot, and that the car is for sale today (not Sold, Sale Pending or Coming Soon). Open the vehicle's Edit page and check the Listing readiness panel. It tells you exactly what's missing.
Why does the Facebook card say "Set up in Meta" instead of showing a Connect button?
One-click live sync isn't enabled on your account. You run Facebook vehicle ads with Option B: paste the Facebook feed URL into Meta Commerce Manager as a scheduled data feed.
I changed a price (or sold a car). How fast does it update?
With Facebook auto-sync on, changes push to Facebook automatically. For Google and any manual feed, the marketplace re-fetches your feed on its own schedule (set it to Daily), so changes appear at the next fetch.
Who on my team can set this up?
Only Owners and Admin managers can open the Marketplaces page, change its settings, replace the feed key, connect Facebook, or toggle channels. It is not listed in Settings for other roles.
What is "Replace key" under Feed key?
It issues a new feed key and invalidates the old one. Use it only if your feed URL leaked. Afterward, you must paste the new URL anywhere you used the old one (Merchant Center, Commerce Manager), or those marketplaces will get a 404.