Dealer Magazine: Hi Katie, thanks for joining us for this month’s Facebook Q&A. We know that Facebook is committed to helping dealers leverage digital video to connect with car shoppers. What is driving this focus on video?

Facebook: For years, auto marketers have used print and TV to tell dynamic visual stories to consumers. With consumer behavior changing, it’s now time to translate those ideas for the on-the-go consumer. The key to modern marketing is engaging consumers where they’re already spending their time— on mobile. The average US adult now spends 40 minutes per day watching mobile video¹.

Dealer Magazine: What is Facebook doing to help dealers get up and running with mobile video, knowing that is where more and more of their customers are turning to?

Facebook: With our Facebook Automotive Playbook for Dealers, we are helping dealers better activate on video and understand the pivotal role it plays in marketing. We often hear that creative is one of the biggest hurdles to testing and running video campaigns, and there are a couple of ways we’ve addressed this.

First, we offer several tools within Facebook Ads Manager to build video ads.

The Video Creation Kit allows dealers to create mobile-first video ads that use their existing photo assets, text overlays, and logos. There is also a video editing tool within Facebook Ads Manager to cut down existing assets like :30 TV spots and make them shorter, mobile-first video creative that is :06-:10 and optimized for sound-off viewing with text overlays.

We have also enabled several new integrations to take the heavy lifting out of the creative build. Facebook’s Marketing API allows providers to integrate and offer solutions to automotive dealerships.

Dealer Magazine: Can you share more on some of the providers that offer video solutions on your platforms?

Facebook: As mobile video consumption has grown rapidly, agencies and dealer advertising providers have prioritized the inclusion of video programs into their suite of products. At this year’s NADA conference in Las Vegas, we saw the launch of several of these programs from providers who already run Facebook advertising for dealers.

• Cars.com’s FUEL in-market video program focuses on targeting in-market shoppers using Cars.com proprietary targeting capabilities within a dealer’s geography and includes customized video creation with chatbot response to viewer inquiries. This program integrates with tools and reporting capabilities from Dealer Inspire’s Connected Marketing solutions.
• Dealer.com’s Video Advertising Solution gives dealers access to both dynamic video solutions to promote their value propositions, incentives, and inventory at scale, and custom video creation resources for those dealers who want individualized video production. Dealers can leverage the video creative while targeting in-market shoppers who have visited Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book.    
• CF Search Marketing is revamping their creative templates to match Facebook’s Mobile First Creative Best Practices, after running tests on various mobile-first strategies, due to higher ROI and responses from buyers.
• Dealers United deploys a full-funnel and targeted video strategy to in-market shoppers near the dealership. Focusing on targeting best practices allows the dealership to scale video creation depending on users’ model line interests and/or retargeting windows. They modify video creative to meet Mobile First Creative Best Practices, which helps elevate dealer brands and drive more car sales.

Dealer Magazine: What kind of success have you seen with auto dealers using video across the Facebook family of apps and services?

Facebook: Here are a few recent success stories:

• TurnKey Marketing creative agency tested video ads made with Facebook’s Video Creation Kit for several car dealerships and found that video ads created with the templates yielded greater auto sales and service appointments than photo ads. They saw 13x more vehicles sold and 7x more service appointments booked with video ads versus static images alone. You can read the full case study online.
• Using Dealers United’s video offering, Power Ford was able to leverage multiple video campaigns, including OEM model line videos and branding videos, to elevate their brand in Q4 of 2019. They attributed 21 unit sales and 127 service orders to these video campaigns.
• Rob Sight Ford similarly used Dealers United’s video strategies to introduce their 2020 Ford Escape and F-150 incentives to local shoppers. Coupled with community-based videos to help the dealership stand out in a competitive market, Rob Sight’s video strategy led to 77,698 Video ThruPlays and seven vehicle sales in Q4 of 2019.

We look forward to many more as an increasing number of dealers get up and running with these tools.

Dealer Magazine: Are there any best practices you can share around building video creative for auto?

Facebook: Facebook released a video best practices guide specifically for the automotive category, designed to help dealers craft best-in-class video advertising. You can find our tips and tricks online.

Dealer Magazine: Where can a dealer learn more about other key strategies they can execute on your platforms to help drive profitability?

Facebook: Dealers can download the latest edition of our Automotive Playbook for Dealers on Facebook’s Dealer Hub.

Reference/Note:

(1) eMarketer, Mobile Video Monetization Report, Nov 2019