Vehicle ads (formerly known as VLA) allow advertisers to promote their entire inventory to customers shopping for vehicles on Google. This format shows customers an image of the vehicle and information such as make, model, price, mileage, and advertiser name. Vehicle ads drive sales by optimizing for both leads and store visits.
Initial configuration
A one-time configuration requiring assistance from the Fluency team.
Contact your Advertising Engineer to set up the initial feed configuration. Use a common inventory source for all accounts and the Fluency team will reformat your feeds for Google Merchant Center.
Link Google Ads, Merchant Center, and Business Profile (formerly Google My Business).
Use the Google Vehicle Ads Readiness Checklist to identify which steps need attention to get your campaigns ready for launch (Select an account > Tools).
Navigate to “Manage Accounts” to confirm the links (Settings & Tools > Accounts). Any team member with admin access can visit backpack.fluencyinc.co/setup to authenticate the connections. Note: Business Profile isn’t required to be linked to Fluency in order to run vehicle ads; they can be externally linked to the accounts.
Enabling vehicle ads at the account level
You can enable vehicle ads at the account level, rather than globally across a portfolio. Enabling this functionality requires Fluency Engineering support during the initial configuration stage.
Once enabled:
Go to Manage > Select an account > Settings > Basic > Options to access the toggle.
Turn on the toggle.
Refresh the data source.
The VLA:Vehicles inventory feed will automatically be generated and pushed to Google Merchant Center (GMC).
Blueprint setup
Creating scalable vehicle ad strategies via Blueprints.
Create a Performance Max campaign.
Open the Product Filters section within a Blueprint campaign.
Create product filters to segment campaigns based on your desired variables, such as Condition is New or Brand is -Mazda. Add a “-” in front of the values to create an exclusion. You can also use tags in this area.
Open the Miscellaneous section, and input the name of the VLA inventory feed in the Catalog Template field (e.g., Vehicles).
(Optional) Add a Product Division (Select or create a Blueprint ad group > Product Divisions). This should be different from your campaign-level filter and segment the asset groups (e.g., Brand, Condition, etc.). Note: Product Divisions are not required if you have already configured a product filter at the campaign level.
Add a Performance Max creative. Note: Creative asset fields are not required for Vehicle Ads.
(Optional) Add feature flags to the campaign or ad groups' valid when statements.
Create different variations of your Performance Max campaigns as needed. Note: You can only have one creative per Performance Max ad group. Create separate campaigns or ad groups for different ads, such as separating new and used vehicles.
Account setup
Preparing accounts for vehicle ad launches.
Before setting up an account for vehicle ads in Fluency, make sure that the end client has verified and claimed their website. Merchant Center provides HTML code to be placed on the site as part of the verification/claim process.
Ensure that the account has been enrolled in the Vehicle Ads program in Merchant Center.
Once the account has been ingested into Fluency, navigate to Settings & Tools.
Select Accounts and confirm that your account is linked to Merchant Center and Business Profile.
Find the Google Store Code column in your ingest sheet. If a column does not exist, add a new column and name the header “Google Store Code.”
Add the code from Business Profile to the ingest sheet. If the field is blank, it can be added manually. Note: The code cannot begin with a zero.
Navigate to Settings & Tools and select Account Ingest to reprocess your feed and pull in the Google Store Code.
Hover over the data source and select the Ingest Now icon. Fluency will automatically push an inventory feed to Merchant Center based on the account’s inventory data. Note: It may take up to 24 hours for the system to recognize this connection.
View the feeds in Merchant Center. To track the status of the approvals, navigate to the Products tab and then go to Needs attention and filter by Vehicle Ads.
Review diagnostics and look for any disapprovals.
Resolve any issues with missing vehicle attributes, store codes, etc., from your feed.
All products will initially have a “Pending initial policy review for vehicle ads” error—this is standard and usually takes 24–48 hours for Google to approve but can sometimes take more than a week.
If you see the “missing inventory data” error, it should resolve after Google’s initial policy review is approved.
Back in Fluency, navigate to the Google Vehicle Ads Readiness Checklist to re-process the feed at Merchant Center (Select an account > Tools).
Click Resubmit. This forces an inventory update even if there have been no changes.
Account launch
Launching new vehicle ad campaigns.
Once the previous sections have been completed, you’ll be ready to launch new vehicle ad campaigns:
In Launch, stage your account with the Blueprint that contains your Performance Max campaigns for vehicle ads.
Toggle on/off any feature flags, as needed.
Click review and confirm that the correct campaigns and ad groups are generating.
Note:
The landing page URLs will look like they’re directing to your account’s homepage. Once the campaigns push to Google, Fluency will use the URLs specific to each model in your inventory feed.
The ads look blank but that is to be expected. Fluency pushes an empty shell of a creative to the partner so you won’t be able to preview the ad until it connects to the feed at Google.
There will be a warning for “too few headlines and descriptions.” This is also expected as these assets are not required for vehicle ad creatives.
Click Launch to create the campaigns and asset groups in Google Ads.
Troubleshooting common vehicle ad issues
Here are some common issues you may encounter with vehicle ads and tips on how to troubleshoot them.
Missing store code
Make sure your account ingestion sheet is pulling in a valid store code.
In your account, go to Settings > Blueprints > Account Data, and check your vehicle ad inventory feed to confirm the store code is included.
Go to Google Merchant Center (GMC) to confirm that the correct feed is pulling the correct Google Store Code.
Invalid store code
Make sure the store code in Fluency matches the account’s store code in Google My Business (GMB).
If everything appears to be correct, the issue may be due to a pending approval at GMC.
Missing products
Check if the products listed in GMC match your vehicle ad feed in Fluency. If there's a discrepancy, go to the Google Vehicle Ads Readiness Checklist (select an account > Tools) and select Resubmit Inventory.
You can also refresh the feed directly in GMC by navigating to Settings > Data Sources and selecting Update.
Other product disapprovals
To view current disapprovals, go to the Google Vehicle Ads Readiness Checklist (select an account > Tools) in GMC.
You can also find disapproved products within GMC under Products > Needs Attention.
For more details on product disapprovals and guidelines, view the full list here.