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.
Google and Facebook are the two biggest places to advertise your cars. AutoDealer.io feeds your published inventory to both. 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 November 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.
- In the Inventory feed card, click Generate feed URLs. This creates one feed key that powers all of your channel links.
- Leave the Feed key switch 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 Eligible to list stat 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 November 2025. Cars now appear only through Vehicle Ads, which are paid — they require an active Google Ads campaign with a budget, plus a linked Google Business Profile.
- On the Marketplaces page, find the Google Vehicle Ads card and turn its switch on. (A paused channel stops serving its feed.)
- The card opens on its Feed URL tab — copy the URL there. (Generate your feed URLs first if there isn't one yet.)
- In Google Merchant Center, open Settings → Data sources, click Add → Scheduled fetch, paste your feed URL, and set the frequency to Daily.
- Turn on the Vehicle ads add-on, link your Google Ads account and your Business Profile, and pass Google's one-time data-quality review.
- Once you're approved and a campaign is running, your cars appear in Google Search — new cars in, sold cars out.
The US, Canada, and Australia are self-serve. In the EU/UK, Google has to allow-list you before vehicle ads will run.
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.
Facebook is the one channel with a real one-click connection — when your account has it enabled, you connect once and inventory pushes automatically. If one-click isn't enabled yet, you can still run the ads with a manual feed URL.
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 Manual feed).
- 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, open the Sync settings tab and 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? On the connected card's Sync settings tab, 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 — Manual feed (when one-click isn't enabled)
Use this if the Facebook card shows a Manual feed badge instead of a Connect button.
- On the Facebook card, open the Feed URL tab and copy the Facebook feed URL. (Generate your feed URLs above first if there isn't one yet.)
- 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 Feed key switch 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.
- Other marketplaces such as Cars.com and Autotrader (Cox) are not self-serve here — they are paid, partner- or syndicator-gated walled gardens that don't accept a dealer feed URL, so there's no card for them. CarGurus is available as a separate channel, but it's FTP-upload based and requires a CarGurus dealer account first — it isn't a paste-a-URL setup either.
- 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 November 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. 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 "Manual feed" instead of showing a Connect button?
One-click live sync isn't enabled on your account yet. You can still run Facebook vehicle ads today using Option B — paste the Facebook feed URL into Meta Commerce Manager as a scheduled data feed. The Connect button turns on once your account is set up.
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 Managers can change marketplace settings, generate or rotate the feed key, connect Facebook, or toggle channels. Salespeople can view the page but not change it.
What is "Rotate" on the feed key?
It issues a new feed key and invalidates the old one. Use it only if your feed URL leaked. After rotating, you must paste the new URL anywhere you used the old one (Merchant Center, Commerce Manager), or those marketplaces will get a 404.