Paid media · Automotive
Dealer ads withthree different jobs.
A new car, a used car, and an oil change are not one intent. The account has to say which one it is buying.
The short answer
What dealership paid media has to separate.
Dealership paid media fails when sales and fixed ops share a budget and a landing page. New-car shoppers are comparing models over weeks. Used shoppers are often closer to a specific vehicle. Service customers want a time on the drive. Those are three campaigns, three pages, and three definitions of a useful action. We do not promise that a manufacturer will reimburse the spend. Co-op rules differ by brand and by dealer agreement, and we will not claim a partnership or a compliance status we cannot know.
Buying cycle
Research, a VIN, or a service lane.
New-car demand starts with model comparisons, payments, and availability. The ad's job is a vehicle page or a conversation the desk will have, not a vague 'shop now' into the homepage. Used demand is more specific. The shopper wants that car, at that price. If it sold yesterday, the ad is a broken promise.
Fixed ops is a different calendar. Maintenance is habitual. Repair is urgent. Recalls and declined-service follow-ups are your own customers, and they do not belong in conquest spend for new metal. A service special that lands on a new-vehicle page teaches the algorithm the wrong lesson. We split the intents even when one manager owns the store.
Constraints
Price, inventory, and co-op we will not pretend to clear.
Prices, payments, and offers in ads have to match the page and the paperwork. A payment ad without the term, the amount due at signing, and the disclaimers your process requires does not run. The feed has to drop sold units quickly. Aged units can be their own campaign. They cannot hide inside a catalog of cars you no longer have.
Manufacturer co-op and brand advertising rules are the dealer's to confirm with the manufacturer. We will follow a written guideline you give us. We will not tell you an ad is 'co-op safe,' and we will not put a badge on this site that implies we are a factory partner. If you sell several brands, each rooftop's rules stay with that rooftop. We do not average them into one loose standard.
- No co-op reimbursement promised, estimated, or filed by us.
- No manufacturer partnership implied in the ads or in our reporting.
- Offers match current inventory and current lender or lease terms.
- Service ads use the service scheduler or the service number, not the sales BDC line.
Channels and KPIs
Different channels, and no blended dealer ROAS.
Google search and vehicle feeds cover new and used inventory when the feed is trustworthy. Performance Max will also find brand and service queries if you let it, so it is not the only campaign. Meta can show specific used vehicles. It is a poor place to hide the service department. YouTube fits model research. None of these share one efficiency target.
Sales leads count when the desk reaches a person about a vehicle you have, or books a visit. Service counts when an appointment is booked. A service appointment and a sales lead do not share one cell. A cheap oil-change click will make a blended number look calm while the new-car budget is lost.
- New, used, and service budgets reported on separate lines.
- Sales: contacts and appointments, not vehicle-page views.
- Service: booked appointments by job type, maintenance versus repair.
- Feed errors and sold-unit clicks reviewed as waste, not as demand.
Mistakes
One store, one campaign, one fake partnership.
The account we replace is often a single campaign pointed at the homepage, a bid strategy aimed at all conversions, and a line in the deck about co-op that nobody has read the bulletin for. Service searches make the blended number look fine. Used cars that sold last week keep spending. The manufacturer relationship is implied with a logo we were never given the right to use.
- No blended ROAS across the showroom and the service drive.
- No ads for VINs the feed should have removed.
- No 'factory authorized partner' language unless that exact status is yours and current.
- No conquest campaign pointed at a service coupon page, or the reverse.
Example engagement
A single-rooftop dealer.
Single rooftop. New, used, and service sat in one set of campaigns because the conversions all fired on the same tag. The report looked steady. Service searches were cheap and frequent. Sales leads were a form the desk did not trust, in part because some of them were about cars already sold. Nobody had a current co-op bulletin in the shared folder.
We split new-car, used, and fixed ops into separate budgets and separate pages. Used ads depended on a feed that removed sold units. Service ads went to the scheduler and were judged on booked appointments. Sales were judged on whether the desk reached the person. We did not file co-op, estimate a reimbursement, or describe the store as our manufacturer partnership. Those rules stayed with the dealer to confirm.
3 budgets
New, used, and service were not one ROAS
Dealer
Co-op compliance stayed with the store to confirm
The example uses anonymized results from a Quorum engagement. It is one account, not a benchmark you should budget against.
Questions
Automotive questions.
Can you make sure the ads qualify for manufacturer co-op?
No. We do not know your dealer agreement, this month's bulletin, or what the manufacturer will reimburse. If you hand us written rules, we will build inside them and flag lines that look risky to us. Clearance is still yours. We will not put a co-op estimate in the performance report.
Why can't service and sales share a campaign?
Because the person, the page, the phone, and the value of the click are different. Service will usually be cheaper and more frequent, so a shared bid strategy chases oil changes and starves the showroom, or the reverse when a sales event is on. Separate budgets make that choice visible. A blended ROAS hides it.
How do new and used differ in the account?
New is models, offers, and availability you can stand behind. Used is vehicles you have, with price and mileage that match the detail page. A used campaign that cannot drop a sold vehicle gets slowed until the feed can. We do not advertise a huge selection and land people on cars that left yesterday.
What do you count as a sales lead?
A person the desk actually reached, or an appointment that was booked, about a vehicle or an offer you can still honor. Raw form fills stay in the appendix. If the business development team will not log a contact, we say the account can only be judged on form fills and we do not dress that up as showroom demand.
Do you claim relationships with specific manufacturers?
No. We do not list brands as partners, and we do not use factory badges as proof of anything about this practice. Your store's franchise is yours. Our work is the account structure, the feed, the pages, and the reporting split. If a sentence implies we are endorsed by a manufacturer, it does not ship.
We have several rooftops. Is that one program?
It can be one engagement with separate budgets, feeds, and phone paths per rooftop. Brand rules do not automatically transfer from one franchise to another. A group average that mixes a luxury store and a volume store will justify spend neither general manager believes. We report by rooftop.
Talk through automotive.
One conversation. A diagnostic. A plan you can kill if it is not the work.