Facebook ads
for car businesses.

A dealer and a workshop both use Facebook and Instagram, but for different reasons. Nobody scrolling Instagram on a Tuesday night was searching for a car, but plenty of them looked at one on your site last week. For a dealer, the job is to keep the right cars in front of people who are already shopping, while they backtrack and compare. In carsales' 2026 research, 63% of buyers backtracked at least once before deciding, so the second and third look matter.

For a workshop, the job is local memory. Most people don't need a mechanic today, but when the dash light comes on they'll ring the one whose name they know. Short videos of the team, the workshop and real jobs do that better than a 10% off coupon. Keep targeting to the suburbs you can actually serve.

Meta's vehicle catalogue turns your stock list into ads that update themselves. Each car needs an ID, title, description, link, make, model, year, kilometres, a photo, body style, price, exterior colour and whether it's new, used or certified pre-owned, plus the dealership's address. The VIN is optional but, if given, must be exactly 17 characters.

Two fields do most of the work after setup. Availability: Meta doesn't show a car marked not available, so a feed that updates daily stops you paying to advertise a car that sold on Saturday. And the date it first hit the lot, which lets you push aged stock harder. Most dealer management systems and listing providers can produce the feed. Ask yours how often it refreshes.

Treat the feed price like any other advertised price. In NSW it has to follow the dealer advertising rules, and a priced used car needs its rego or stock number. Put the number in the description if there's no field for it.

Tick what your stock feed or listing export holds today. It lists what Meta needs, what's worth adding for NSW buyers, and the one setting that stops sold cars being advertised.

Marketplace is where a lot of people browse used cars, and dealers don't list there the way private sellers do. When Meta opened the vehicle category to Australian dealers in 2018, it said used stock would come through listing partners such as carsales and the Drive network. Meta's catalogue rules add that a car listed on Marketplace must have more than 500 kilometres on it.

Ask your listing provider whether it still sends your stock to Marketplace, how often, and where the messages land. A Marketplace enquiry answered two days later is a lead handed to the private seller down the road.

Meta's Australian rules cover ads promoting financial products and services, and reporting lists loans, insurance, credit cards and investments among them. A post that leads with '$89 a week' is selling a loan as much as a car. Since February 2025 those ads need the payer and beneficiary verified before they run, with an Australian Financial Services Licence number or an exemption. Meta's own advice to mortgage brokers, as reported by The Adviser, was that businesses outside the AFSL system can claim the exemption, and the ad then shows 'AFS licence: exemption claimed'.

The wording rules don't change on social. If the ad shows a rate, ASIC's guidance needs a comparison rate, no less prominently, with a warning. If it shows a repayment, show the price and the term next to it, in the post itself and not three taps away. The ACCC has heard of buyers whose actual repayments were higher than the ones advertised.

Social video tempts people into launch-control clips and drifts on a closed road. The FCAI's voluntary code, which Ad Standards administers, says car ads shouldn't show unsafe driving, speeding or other breaches of road laws, and its explanatory note goes further, advising against drawing attention to speed or acceleration. A dealer's Reel showing a customer's new car taking off from the lights is still an ad.

What works without the risk is usually plainer: a walkaround of the actual car, the boot with a pram in it, the tow bar fitted, the service history shown page by page. Buyers worried about the wrong decision want to see the car, not the brochure version.