Greg,
I'm interested in setting up VLAs for a dealership. I've contacted several companies - pricing is all over the place...I'm quite sure I can do it myself though. Has anyone done it successfully?
You can for sure run these yourself through the Google Merchant Platform, the issue is that you need to constantly go in to refresh the inventory feed. I know from experience, most agencies are only doing this 1x per week which causes a ton of wasted spend on clicks for vehicles that aren't on the lot. As far a pricing, it should be more about that cost per unit retailed instead of monthly budget. My platform is $2,500 per month and we refresh the feed 4x per day. No contracts. Its a month to month deal. I have reporting for MANY dealers that I can share with you. We seem to average somewhere between $28-$42 in terms of ad cost per unit retailed. If you share with me the dealership name, I can run a pretty cool report that tells me market share, average days on lot, aged inventory that needs paying attention to, market share, etc.
Dealers discuss Google's free inventory ads, with Tony Giampietro cautioning that these "free" ads often serve third-party sites rather than driving clicks directly to dealership VDPs, and recommending Google VLAs as an alternative. The thread reveals that while dealers can set up VLAs themselves through Google Merchant Platform, the key challenge is maintaining frequent inventory feed updates (ideally 4x daily) to avoid wasting spend on outdated inventory, which third-party services handle for a fee.
