Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads Feed

How to create and submit an automotive feed for Facebook

You’ll need to share information with Facebook in order to promote your automotive inventory on the platform. This can be achieved by creating an automotive catalog and then filling it with automotive details.

To build a catalog, you should connect a data feed or upload data to Facebook. The data should contain all the required fields for the vehicles that you want to advertise, which are listed below.

1. Determine Your Auto Catalog Feed

Mandatory Fields for Auto Catalog Feed – Vehicle-Specific Details

All enum fields are case-insensitive.

Mandatory Fields for Vehicle Catalog Feed – Dealership (Vehicle Location)-Specific Details

Optional fields include:

Optional Fields, Product Deep Links

Provide deep links in Product Feed following the App Links specification. Deep link information in Product Feed takes precedence over any information Facebook 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. Facebook uses information from App Links to display the correct deep link. To display deep links in your ads see Dynamic Ads, Ad Template.

2. Create Data Feed

There are two options, you can either have a single auto feed to represent all vehicles in your catalog or multiple auto feeds where each feed represents a single dealership or a specific region’s vehicles.

Provide your feed in the correct format: CSV, TSV, or XML. Once you create the feed file, you should host it at a URL for frequently scheduled updates.

You have these available feed options:

• A single vehicle feed to represent all vehicles in your catalog
• Multiple vehicle feeds where each feed represents a single dealership or region’s vehicles

This sample feed is as XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<listings>
 <title>Vehicles Feed</title>
 <link rel="self" href="http://www.example.com"/>
 <listing>
 <vehicle_id>SED1234</vehicle_id>
 <title>2017 Ford Fusion SE</title>
 <description>Ford Certified and 6-Speed Automatic. Turbocharged! Gasoline!</description>
 <url>http://www.example.com/test</url>
 <make>Ford</make>
 <image>
 <url>http://example.com/some.image_1.jpg</url>
 <tag>Exterior</tag>
 </image>
 <model>Fusion</model>
 <year>2017</year>
 <mileage>
 <value>10</value>
 <unit>MI</unit>
 </mileage>
 <drivetrain>FWD</drivetrain>
 <vin>1FADP5AU6DL536022</vin>
 <body_style>SEDAN</body_style>
 <fuel_type>GASOLINE</fuel_type>
 <transmission>AUTOMATIC</transmission>
 <condition>EXCELLENT</condition>
 <price>18000 USD</price>
 <address format="simple">
 <component name="addr1">550 Auto Center Dr</component>
 <component name="city">Watsonville</component>
 <component name="region">CA</component>
 <component name="postal_code">95076</component>
 <component name="country">US</component>
 </address>
 <latitude>52.35</latitude>
 <longitude>42.10</longitude>
 <exterior_color>white</exterior_color>
 <sale_price>16000 USD</sale_price>
 <availability>AVAILABLE</availability>
 <date_first_on_lot>2018-02-21</date_first_on_lot>
 <state_of_vehicle>NEW</state_of_vehicle>
 <dealer_id>ABC1234</dealer_id>
 </listing>
</listings>

You have these available feed options:

• A single vehicle feed to represent all vehicles in your catalog
• Multiple vehicle feeds where each feed represents a single dealership or region’s vehicles

3. Schedule Uploads

Rather than uploading refreshed files manually, you should schedule feed uploads to automatically push the latest vehicle inventory data to Facebook.

For more info on how to schedule feed uploads, see Product Catalog – Schedule Product Feed Fetches.

You can download a sample feed (CSV, TSV, XML format) if you try to create an Auto catalog via Catalog Manager.

4. Debug your Automotive Feed

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.

You’ll find that this is helpful in the early stages, to discover whether the current feeds you may already have are supported by Facebook.

5. Create Vehicle Sets

Once the catalog upload is set up and working properly, you can create vehicle sets.

A vehicle set is a subset of your catalog. Vehicle sets are defined by filters that are applied to the Vehicle catalog. For instance, you can create a vehicle set with all vehicles with a year later than 2015. Note: You can also create a vehicle set without any filters, where the vehicle set contains all vehicles in your catalog.

Example – Create a vehicle set containing all the vehicles that manufactured in 2016

The filter parameter is made up of the following operators and data:

use FacebookAds\Object\ProductSet;
use FacebookAds\Object\Fields\ProductSetFields;
$vehicle_set = new ProductSet(null, <PRODUCT_CATALOG_ID>);
$vehicle_set->setData(array(
 ProductSetFields::NAME => 'Test Vehicle Set',
 ProductSetFields::FILTER => array(
 'year' => array(
 'eq' => 2016,
 ),
 ),
));
$ vehicle_set->create();

The filter parameter is made up of the following operators and data:

Our full-service team of experts will ensure your Automotive ads are optimized and delivering the desired results. Take a look at some of our other Automotive solutions below:

Auto Parts Feed (Online product visibility)

Dynamic Text Ads (Best option for Car Dealers)

Remarketing on Google & Facebook (Bring your visitors back to increase chance of closing sale)