Digital Advertising Ad Structure

Chaya David
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Overview

Fullpath's Digital Advertising automates your Search, Display, Performance Max, and Social advertising operations. Powered by artificial intelligence, and connected to the Fullpath CDP, Digital Advertising by Fullpath allows digital marketing agencies and in-house marketing teams to manage a coordinated dealer advertising strategy at scale. Digital Advertising runs ads across 4 channels:

  1. Google Search Ads
  2. Google Display Ads
  3. Google Performance Max (PMAX)
  4. Meta Advertising (Facebook, Instagram) 
  5. Demand Gen (coming soon)


The Structure

Fullpath organizes ads in a hierarchical fashion. On the top level is the Objective, which is the highest ordinance and has the largest grouping order. One level beneath that is the Ad Bundles level. Under that, on the bottom level, is each subset of the individual Ads within the Ad Bundles.  

Each of these groupings can be “run” or “paused,” which will then automatically enable or pause all the group’s constituents - this is like an on/off function. Therefore, by definition, if a larger grouping is paused (off), it is not possible to enable (turn on) a smaller unit within that group.

For example, if a user decides to pause a certain Objective, no Ads within that Objective can be enabled. In order to access the Ads and Ad Bundles in that group, you must first re-enable the overall controlling Objective.

This hierarchical system works in a very similar way to Google Ads and Facebook, which make use of Campaigns, Ad Groups/Sets, and Ads. 

The way ads are hierarchically structured ensures that your ad is targeted towards the correct audience as well as with the correct user intent in mind. Consequently, Fullpath drives the right, high-quality traffic to your site and helps meet car buyer objectives throughout each step of the user’s journey. 

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CHANNEL

The channel is the primary location and format where the different ads will run. Currently, we run ads on 4 channels:

  1. Search
  2. Display
  3. PMax
  4. Social

 

OBJECTIVE

Objectives are the secondary grouping in Digital Advertising and are pre-determined. Each Objective contains a specific goal.  The Ad Bundles and Ads within that group seek to accomplish that goal. There are currently 9 Objectives available (9 for Google, 7 on Social):

  1. New Inventory - The goal of this objective is to promote specific new car models
  2. Used Inventory - The goal of this objective is to promote specific used car models

→ Note that both of these Objectives run Ad Bundles/Ads that are model-specific (Not VIN-specific). The Ad Bundles consist of ads of all the available models in your inventory. 

  1. Brand - This objective runs Ads that drive consideration of the dealership as a brand, focusing on keywords such as the dealership name.
  2. Trade-In - The goal of this objective is to generate leads of customers who are looking at different trade-in options for their current vehicles
  3. Competitors  - The competitors objective targets customers who are searching for your competitors, and tries to convince them to come to your site instead *does not run on Social
  4. Dealer Near Me -  The goal of this objective is to target customers looking for dealers in their area. *does not run on Social                     
  5. Service – The goal of this objective is to raise awareness and drive traffic to the dealership’s service department. It runs Ads promoting the services offered and targets customers who are searching for repairs or otherwise identified as interested in service.  
  6. Parts - The goal of this objective is to target potential or previous customers looking to purchase vehicle parts for replacement or repair.
  7. Pre-Order - The goal of the Pre-Order Inventory Objective is primarily to enable dealerships to advertise for inventory which is not yet released and in stock. This inventory is typically future-stock which the Manufacturers encourage dealerships to pre-order or create a waiting list for such vehicles. 
  8. Certified Pre-Owned - The goal of this objective is to promote specific Certified Pre-Owned inventory

 

AD BUNDLES

Under each Objective, the next grouping is Ad Bundles. An Ad Bundle is a group of Ads that share an overarching goal. There are many different types of Ad bundles, but they can be divided into four major groups: Search, Display, PMAX, and Social.

1. Display Ad Bundles- Target audiences with certain criteria:

a) Conquest - Ads within this Bundle are displayed to users that haven't interacted with your business before. The purpose of all the ads in this bundle is to trigger the users interact with your business on your website for the first time.

b) Website Retargeting - Ads within this Bundle will appear to users that have already visited your website. The purpose of all of the various ads in this bundle is to make it easy for your visitors to pick up where they left off and encourage them to convert on your website. This process is known as Dynamic Retargeting.  Read more here about Dynamic retargeting.

c) CRM Retargeting - Ads within this Bundle will appear to specific users that are listed in your CRM. These can be any leads from a variety of places such as your website, a phone call, an in-person showroom lead, or even clients from previous transactions that already purchased a car or utilized service from your dealership. The purpose of all of the ads in this bundle is to interest your past clients to buy an additional car from your dealership. An additional goal is to engage your existing clients by encouraging them to come back to your dealership to renew or service their vehicle.  

2.  Search Ad Bundles- These ad bundles share a common user intent or interest. For example, you wouldn’t want to show the same ad to users who search for “Chevy Colorado 2019 dealer” as you do for users searching for “Chevy Colorado 2019 best price.” The first user intends to find a dealer in order to buy a Chevy Colorado 2019, while the second user intends to find a dealer focused on price with a special offer for a Chevy Colorado 2019. Those are different intentions, or interests, and therefore should trigger different ads from different ad bundles. The system's hierarchy and organization of Ads allows you to do this. 

The Digital Advertising Search Ad Bundles can also help capture the attention of shoppers who are in the information-gathering phase of the car buying process.  The method we use is based on the Google “Five micro-moments” approach, which include the following “micro-moments” broken down by:  

  1.     Which-car-is-best?
  2.     Is-it-right-for-me?
  3.     Can-I-afford-it ?
  4.     Where-should-I-buy-it? 
  5.     Am-I-getting-a-deal?  

Read more about the five micro-moments by Google.

Below are examples of subjects for Ad bundles in the Objective New Inventory and the associated micro-moments in that online search process. Note, Different Objectives can overlap and share the same Ad bundles.  

  • Model Dealer Near Me - All of the Ads within this Bundle will show up to users who search for:  a specific make and model combined with the word Dealer or something similar to it. Associated with the micro-moment - “Where Should I Buy?”
  • Model Incentives - All of the Ads within this Bundle will show up to users who search for a make and a model combined with the words such as “special price”, “special offer”. This is associated with the micro-moment - “Am I getting a good deal?”
  • Model Lease - All of the Ads within this Bundle will show up to users who search for a make and a model combined with the words lease or similar to it. This is associated with the micro-moment - “Can I afford It?”
  • Model Price - All of the Ads within this Bundle will show up to users who search for a make and a model combined with words such as “for sale” or in a price range or price cap such as “under $” etc. This is associated with the micro-moment - “Can I afford It?”
  • Model - All of the Ads within this Bundle will show up to users who search for a specific model. Associated with the micro-moment - “Is this product right for me?”

In the Lease and the Price examples above, both of the Objectives are associated with “Can I afford it?” Therefore, you can see that multiple Bundles can be associated with the same Micro-Moment.

 

 

AD BUNDLES FOR SOCIAL

These are ad bundles built specifically for the use on Social Media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. On these platforms we run Catalog, Carousel and Video Ads leveraging 4 key strategies, which it suggests dealers take into account when building ads:

  1. Why buy here?
  2. Ready to buy
  3. Customers for life
  4. Promotions and Events (Fullpath does not currently run ads for this strategy)

Read more about Facebook strategies for dealers here

Social bundles are built as combinations of content and audiences:

Content include:

  • Aged Inventory
  • Brand
  • Dealer Top Incentives
  • Dynamic Inventory Catalog
  • Model Top Incentives
  • Top Inventory
  • Trade-In

Audiences include:

  • Conquest - New customers in your area, based on Facebook’s built-in audiences
  • CRM Retargeting - Targets people based on your CRM information, unique to each bundle. 
  • Website Retargeting - Targets people that have previously been on your website. We use Facebook's Pixel to retarget previous website visitors and each Bundle has its own distinct audience. We're also retargeting people based on the specific model or VDP they visited


To learn more about targeting and view examples of audiences for each Channel, read more about our Digital Advertising targeting strategies.

 


ADS

Ads are the smallest unit within our system. Each Ad will run on millions of websites and mobile apps in particular contexts and for particular audiences. There are several variants of the same ad, which have different elements such as titles, headlines, display URLs etc. Having multiple copies with slight differences of the same ad help our system to learn your audience and understand which page is most effective for your audience. Read more about A/B tests here.


Each ad can be individually turned on or off by “enabling” or “pausing” The Ad consists of the text and image (if applicable) that will be seen by users. All Ads created by Digital Advertising are constructed using Templates. Read more about Digital Advertising Templates. 

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Enabling/Disabling Objectives

All objectives are enabled by default when Digital Advertising is launched on a new account.

In order to enable or disable a specific objective (and all ads within it):

  1. Enter your Fullpath dashboard.
  2. Click into the Search or Display dashboards under Digital Advertising (Note: If you would like to pause/run an objective in both channels, you will need to perform the next steps on both pages).
  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will see a table titled "Objectives."
  4. Check the box(es) of the objective(s) you would like to enable/disable.
  5. Select either "pause" (disable) or "run" (enable) from the dropdown menu at the top of the table.
  6. Click the "Pause Ads"/"Run Ads" button in the popup that appears.

 

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