I'm going to take the completely opposite viewpoint on this one.
Previously, third parties used the standard paid search text ads on Google to capture traffic, right?
Well now, the cheese has moved, and third parties are taking advantage of this new ad format.
If the third parties didn't take advantage of this feature, Carvana and CarMax would be eating everyone's lunch on VLA's.
And unlike most things third parties do, they aren't charging dealers any additional fees for this.
Sure they are driving traffic to their own website, not our dealership website, but if our vehicles are priced and merchandised well we have a good shot.
So the big question is - if third parties are doing this for their dealer clients for "free", is it worth dealers investing thousands to also compete in the VLA ad unit but drive traffic to their dealership website instead?
