Automotive Model Ads

To set up automotive model ads, you need a Facebook catalog. A catalog is a container of information about your products and where you can upload your inventory. You can use your catalog in different ways within the Meta family of apps. In your inventory, each individual product represents a unique vehicle offer you want to promote in your campaign.

Meta’s automotive model ads leverage cross-device intent signals to automatically promote relevant vehicle models and offers on Facebook and Instagram. A vehicle models and offers catalog consists of information about the offers, corresponding vehicles, and markets/regions where the offer is valid.

Use Commerce Manager to create and manage your catalogs. Learn more about building a high-quality catalog.

Before You Start

Before you set up your catalog, we recommend these guidelines:

• If you manage multiple catalogs for different businesses or want an agency to access your catalogs, you may need to set up Business Manager.

• To use the Catalog Batch API, you need the appropriate Marketing API Access Level and must accept the Terms of Service by creating your first catalog through Business Manager. See Catalog Reference.

To set up automotive model ads, we recommend the following steps.

Step 1: Set Up Your Vehicle Models and Offers Catalog

Create Feed Files

To create a catalog, you should connect a data feed or upload data to Meta. The data should contain all the required fields for the vehicles that you want to advertise. Automotive Model Ads only require one product feed. See Reference - Automotive Model Ads - Supported Fields.

We recommend that you ensure your feed format follows our recommended guidelines. See Reference - Automotive Model Ads — Supported Formats.

Downloadable Sample Files

Download a CSV sample feed.
Download an Excel sample feed.
Download an XML sample feed.

Deep Links

Provide deep links in data feed following the App Links specification. Deep link information in data feed takes precedence over any information Meta collects with App Links metadata with our web crawler.

If you already have deep link information from App Links, you do not need to specify this data. Meta uses information from App Links to display the correct deep link. To display deep links in your ads see Advantage+ Catalog Ads, Ad Template. Learn more about product deep links.

Create Catalog

Once your feed file is ready, create your catalog.

Step 2: Schedule Uploads

We highly recommend using scheduled feed uploads to automatically push the latest offer feed to Meta instead of having to upload refreshed files manually.

You can make a POST request to the product_feeds edge from the following paths: /{product_catalog_id}/product_feeds

To add a schedule to the feed, you can provide the schedule parameter in the POST endpoint.

Example - Set Up a Schedule Upload

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name=Offer Feed' \
  -F 'schedule={"interval":"DAILY","url":"http://www.example.com/offer_feed.tsv","hour":"22"}' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/<CATALOG_ID>/product_feeds

Example — Create Offer Feed

curl \
  -F 'name= offer feed' \
  -F 'access_token=<access_token>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/<catalog_id>/product_feeds

Example — Upload Local Offer Feed File

curl \
  -F "file=@offer_feed.csv;type=text/csv" \
  -F "access_token=<access_token>" \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/<offer_feed_id>/uploads

Step 3: Create Product Sets

After the feed is successfully uploaded, optionally create product sets to further filter your offers. A product set is a more granular set of items that you want to promote based on your campaign strategy when setting up a campaign.

Example—Create a Product Set that Contains Only Lease Offers

curl \
 -F 'name=lease offer set' \
 -F 'filter={"offer_type":{"eq":"lease"}}' \
 -F 'access_token=<ACCESS TOKEN>' \
 https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/<CATALOG_ID>/product_sets

You can create product sets from the Commerce Manager UI or by using the API. Learn more about Product Catalog Product Sets.

Step 4: Install the Meta Pixel

The Meta Pixel is a snippet of JavaScript code that allows you to track visitor activity on your website. When a visitor interacts with the website, pixel events are fired in response to their actions. A pixel event is a very lightweight http(s) request sent from the visitor's browser to Meta's servers together with some extra information about that event, such as the page url that the visitor is viewing, product ID or price of the product and so on. Therefore, to enable the tracking, you need to modify your website template to insert some JavaScript code in certain pages.

Properly setting up the pixel code is important for automotive model ads because our machine learning algorithm relies on the visitor-product interaction data in the web site collected from the pixel code. Without these data, Advantage+ catalog ads would not be able to make good recommendations to the potential customers with high probability to convert.

Standard Events to Use with the Pixel

You can set up the Meta Pixel using the defined standard events and parameter that send specific signals to the offer.

Standard Pixel Events for Automotive Model Ads

Required and Recommended Parameters to Pass Back with Your Standard Pixel Events

Learn more about the Meta Pixel.

Content Type

• content_type = vehicle_offer — Required. Used to match the onsite actions to the offer in the ad. This allows Meta to measure the performance and further optimize your campaigns.

• content_ids = An array of IDs of vehicle offers from the offers feed — Optional, but highly recommended for all events; however, only optional for the Search event. This field helps Meta further measure and optimize your ads.

If you have an existing pixel, you can append your pixel code with a content_type vehicle_offer and add the following parameters:

<!-- vehicle offer id information not available-->
 
<!-- Meta Pixel Code -->
<script>
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,'script','https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
 
fbq('init', '<FB_PIXEL_ID>'); // pixel id
fbq('track', "PageView");
fbq('track', 'ViewContent', {
                content_type: 'vehicle_offer',
                offer_types: ['lease', 'finance', 'cash'],
                make: 'Endomoto',
                model: 'EndoHatch'
                year: '2017',
                trim: 'GE'
});
 
</script>
<!-- End Meta Pixel Code -->

Step 5: Build Your Audience

To build an audience of people who are interested in the offers, you need to set up the Meta Pixel. See also Install the Meta Pixel. The pixel should live on all webpages that track action relevant to your business use case. This helps Meta to optimize your campaign to find the right audience.

For example:

• To optimize towards offer detail page views, place the pixel on that page and set up the ViewContent pixel event.
• To optimize towards a lead submission, place the pixel on the post submission page and set up the Lead pixel event. Learn more about standard events.

Associate the Pixel or App to Your Catalog

Example — Using the API

curl \
  -F 'external_event_sources=["<PIXEL_ID>","<APP_ID>"]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/external_event_sources

Example — Using the UI

1. Go to Business Manager → Business Settings.
2. In the left pane, choose Data Source → Catalogs.
3. Find and select your catalog, then click Associate Sources to associate pixel and app to the catalog.

Create Event Source Group

Event source groups allow advertisers and developers to map multiple sources of conversion data into a single object for use in measurement, analytics, targeting, and optimization.

Using the API

curl \
  -F 'name=name of your event group' \
  -F 'event_sources=["<PIXEL_ID>", "<APP_ID>"]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/<BUSINESS_ID>/event_source_groups

Using the UI

1. Go to Business Manager → Business Settings.
2. In the left pane, choose Data Source → Event Source Groups.
3. Click Add to create a new event source group.

Create Vehicle Offer Audience

curl \
  -F 'name=Viewed in Last 30 days' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=VEHICLE_OFFER' \
  -F 'content_type=vehicle_offer' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'inclusions=[
  {        
      "event": "ViewContent",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  },
  {
      "event": "Search",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  },
  {
      "event": "AddToWishlist",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  }
  ]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{
      "event":"Lead",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  }]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

Example — Capture an audience who has visited your vehicle pages belonging to a certain vehicle set

curl \
  -F 'name=Viewed vechicles in vehicle set in Last 30 days' \
  -F 'subtype=CLAIM' \
  -F 'claim_objective=VEHICLE_OFFER' \
  -F 'content_type=vehicle_offer' \
  -F 'event_source_group=<EVENT_SOURCE_GROUP_ID>' \
  -F 'rule={"vehicle_set_id":{"eq":"<VEHICLE_SET_ID>"}}' \
  -F 'inclusions=[
  {        
      "event": "ViewContent",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  },
  {
      "event": "Search",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  },
  {
      "event": "AddToWishlist",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  }
  ]' \
  -F 'exclusions=[{
      "event":"Lead",
      "retention": {"min_seconds":0,"max_seconds":2592000}
  }]' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

Step 6: Debug Your Automotive Feed (Optional)

Using the Product Feed Debug Tool, you can paste in a product feed, and validate the feed for errors and warnings.

To debug your automotive feed, in the catalog selection drop-down menu, select Vehicles.

This is helpful in the early stages of integrating automotive ads to discover whether the current feeds you may already have are supported by Meta.

Learn More

• Catalog Setup
• Meta Pixel
• Catalog, Best Practices, Help Center
• Product Catalog Product Sets
• Standard events