Understanding VLA costs?

[Mark A Hoffman]

I've got a dealer that is running their own small VLA campaign. It's delivering good results as far as VDPs, conversions, etc, but the costs don't make sense when I look at things in Google Ads. Since Google now requires VLA ads to be Performance Max campaigns, it's not just Shopping Ads; it's ads that supposedly run on Google's network. But Google seems pretty reluctant to show any meaningful data about those ads performance.
Case in point: I picked a single day (8/18/2024) and ran the "Shopping Products" report which shows clicks, impressions for the shopping ads (ie, VLA)
According to this report, my client spent $25.20 to drive traffic to their VDPs. Cool.

But when you look at the overall campaign for the exact same day, Google says the cost was $41.67. A $16.47 cost difference; or 65% increase. Apparently that is traffic from other parts of the "Google network". But that's a mighty big spike in cost.



And it's just for 8 clicks. Just doing the math, I see those 8 clicks cost them $2.05 per click. ($16.47 / 8) But I can't find anywhere in Google Ads where it actually shows where those clicks came from or any other information. I can see the various mobile apps that the ads appeared on, but they only show impressions. No click data and no cost data. In fact, for the date I've shown, it only shows that there were 5 impressions from a single site, and it's certainly some spammy site that they don't even want their ads appearing on anyway:



I feel like I gotta be missing something here. How in the world did cost go up $16.47 for 45 additional impressions and 8 more clicks; and why doesn't Google show me that information. Why can't I see a similar report that says "oh, you got X impressions from this website, or mobile app and this many clicks and the CPC is this."

Any agencies that have experience with VLA have any insights they can give?

 

[AlexCaradonna]

At the past agency I was always under the impression our media team had the ability to pick and choose which Google networks (Gmail, Display, etc) they wanted the VLA ads to run on even with the "upgrade" to PMax. I haven't had any caffeine yet today so I may be confusing the VLA targeting with Bing Automotive Inventory Ads..

I want to say either @DrewAment or @Ryan Everson had addressed this in the past?

 

[Mark A Hoffman]

At the past agency I was always under the impression our media team had the ability to pick and choose which Google networks (Gmail, Display, etc) they wanted the VLA ads to run on even with the "upgrade" to PMax. I haven't had any caffeine yet today so I may be confusing the VLA targeting with Bing Automotive Inventory Ads..

I want to say either @DrewAment or @Ryan Everson had addressed this in the past?

Client says they don't and I logged in and dug around Google Ads myself and I didn't see that option either. In fact, they force you to add logos, images to your campaign so it can be shown on their network.

 

[levin233]

The $16.47 cost difference is likely due to traffic from other parts of the Google network, but it's unclear where those clicks came from. It's frustrating that Google Ads doesn't provide more detailed info. Maybe the additional cost is due to ads on other Google properties like Gmail or Display Network?