For RV dealerships, reaching potential buyers at the exact moment they’re searching for their next adventure vehicle is crucial. Google Ads’ Vehicle Listing Ads (VLAs) offer a powerful solution to do just that, showcasing your inventory directly within Google search results. Recently, Google expanded VLA eligibility to include RVs and campers, opening up a significant opportunity for dealerships in this booming market.

What are Vehicle Listing Ads (VLAs)?

VLAs are a performance-focused ad format that allows automotive advertisers to display their entire vehicle inventory to interested customers on Google. Unlike traditional text ads, VLAs prominently feature an image of the RV, along with key details such as make, model, price, mileage, and your dealership’s name. When a user clicks on a VLA, they are directed to the specific vehicle’s details page (VDP) on your website.

Key Benefits of Vehicle Listing Ads

The main benefit of Vehicle Listing Ads is that specific vehicles in your inventory show for relevant Google search queries. These ads come equipped with a photo of the vehicle, the name of your dealership, the MSRP (plus Sale price if applicable), and the location of the vehicle. These ads appear towards the top of Google search results, and can appear alongside your existing search ads.

Utilizing this ad format along with your standard Google Ads strategy will give your RV dealership a competitive edge as they provide additional real estate on the search results page to help shoppers find exactly the right RV you have in-stock with what they are searching for.

Aside from showing in Google search results pages, VLAs also target in-market shoppers through the display network, including YouTube. This further expands the visibility of your RV inventory for a fraction of the cost of a typical search ad. They can also serve as remarketing ads if you include your GA4 audience as a signal. This way, specific vehicles in your inventory will show to those who have visited specific VDP pages on your website, encouraging them to finalize their RV purchase with you.

Set Up Your VLA Campaign for RVs

In order to utilize the power of VLAs, there are a few things you’ll need to have established first, before you even start a new Google Ads campaign.

1. Google Merchant Center – This is where you’ll manage your RV inventory for your VLAs. Set up is relatively simple, but you’ll need to make sure you have these few steps completed before Google will approve your data as eligible for VLAs.
   1. Enter your dealership’s basic business information, such as its name and physical address.
   2. Verify & Claim your online store/website. – This can be done a number of ways, Google Merchant Center will give you a list of options with step-by-step instructions.
   3. Link your Google Business Profile to your Merchant Center account.
   4. Link your Google Ads account to your Merchant Center account.
   5. Enable “Vehicle ads” as an add-on in the settings menu. This can only be done after you have completed all of the necessary steps mentioned above.
2. Google Business Profile – This profile will need to be linked to your Google Merchant Center account. It will be used to determine the location of your business and ultimately the vehicle being advertised.
3. Vehicle Data Feed – This will be similar to the feed your website provider requires, but can include much less information. However, it must be in the correct format and include specific information for each vehicle, such as mileage. If your RV dealership sells non-motorhome RVs, you will need to set the mileage to 0 as it cannot be left blank.
   • Required Attributes include: Vehicle fulfillment (e.g., in-store pickup), VIN, ID, store code, image link, make, model, price, mileage (for used RVs), and availability.
4. Website Landing Page Requirements – Google will periodically crawl your website to ensure your website includes the appropriate information for each vehicle. This is also checked during the initial quality check when you submit your feed in Merchant Center for the first time. The landing page for each VDP must prominently display:
   • Dealership name and location (full address should be accessible).
   • Vehicle price (matching the feed price).
   • MSRP (if new).
   • VIN.
   • Mileage (if used).
   • Clear availability information (e.g., “in stock,” not “sold” or “reserved”).
5. Google Ads Performance Max Campaign – After all of the above steps are completed and your vehicle feed has been approved by Google, you are now ready to set up your VLA campaign inside Google Ads. Make sure to select Performance Max as the campaign type rather than Shopping, as Google phased out Shopping campaigns for dynamic shopping ads and now requires a Performance Max campaign to run. During set up on the first page, you will be prompted to select a Merchant Center feed to use in the Performance Max campaign, so make sure you select the appropriate feed for your campaign if you’ve set up multiple feeds inside Merchant Center.

Measure Your Results with Conversions from GA4

Measuring the performance of your new VLA campaign is more involved than simply the number of impressions or clicks your ads receive. We strongly recommend utilizing key events inside of your GA4 account to measure user engagement once people land on your VDPs. PCG Digital recommends utilizing Automotive Standards Council (ASC) Events to ensure your key events are measuring the actions most important to your business. However, if your website provider isn’t currently following ASC specifications, below are the categories recommended to best

• Soft Conversions – Indicates interest, but may or may not produce a lead
  • Call-to-Action button clicks
  • Website Phone Number clicks
• Hard Conversions – These should represent actual leads only
  • Form Submissions
  • Chat Submissions
  • Call Submissions (Call Tracking service required for GA4 events)

Hard Conversions should always have a significantly higher conversion value than soft conversions. Once your campaign has enough data (around 30 – 90 days), shifting your Performance Max campaign’s bidding strategy to “maximize conversion value” will encourage Google’s algorithm to target users most likely to make a hard conversion over a soft conversion to further enhance the quality of traffic your VLA campaign produces.

Real Results: RCD RV’s High-Performance Campaign

Over a course of 45 days, we compared the conversion rate between the new VLA campaigns we started April 1st, and pre-existing dynamic search campaigns for RVs. For RCD RV we separated their inventory into four different categories: New Motorhomes, New Towables, Used Motorhomes, Used Towables.

From April 1st to May 15th, the new VLA campaigns produced 258 – Soft Conversions and 17 – Hard Conversions while the existing search campaigns produced 73 Soft Conversions and 11 – Hard Conversions. While this may not seem that significant on the surface, the cost per conversion for these campaigns were significantly different. The VLA campaigns had a combined Cost/conv. of only $7.47 while the Dynamic Search campaigns a Cost/conv. of $67.20.

The need for a full budget and strategy shift was clear after these initial results as it was apparent that Google VLAs for RVs greatly outperform dynamic search ads alone. But combined with VLAs over the next 45 days, these same dynamic search campaigns continued to improve performance to $38.34 per conversion vs the VLA campaign of $4.20 per conversion as we move further into the summer months.