Navigating Automotive Tariffs: Our Focus on Efficiency & Competitive Strategy
As an advertising agency specializing in the automotive industry, we understand that upcoming tariffs on vehicles and parts are beyond the control of both dealers and agencies alike. While these changes may impact pricing and margins, our commitment to our clients remains the same: driving efficiency, maximizing ROI, and staying ahead of the competition. Now more than ever, dealers need an agency that prioritizes performance over percentage-based fees, ensuring that every marketing dollar is working as hard as possible. Our approach has always been rooted in paid search and paid social best practices, focusing on high-intent buyers and strategic optimizations to maintain an edge in an increasingly competitive market.
In addition to strong digital advertising strategies, having compelling specials and clear calls to action on your dealership’s website will be more critical than ever. Ensuring these offers are updated quickly and efficiently can make all the difference in driving conversions. That’s why Green Line’s DRIVE software, included in our SEO packages, makes it simple to update specials and CTAs seamlessly, keeping your dealership agile in a shifting market.
While external factors like tariffs may create industry challenges, our mission is to ensure that your dealership remains competitive, visible, and profitable—regardless of market conditions. By leveraging data-driven strategies, advanced targeting, and continuous campaign optimizations, we help dealers navigate uncertainty without sacrificing performance.
The automotive landscape is shifting, but our focus remains steadfast: efficiency, transparency, and results.
Let’s continue to drive success together.
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Green Line’s Customer Data Platform Now Integrates with Tekion DMS
At Green Line, we are always looking for ways to enhance our technology and provide our customers with seamless, efficient solutions. That’s why we’re excited to announce that our Customer Data Platform now integrates with Tekion DMS! This powerful new integration is designed to optimize data flow and improve digital targeting.
Green Line Automotive Extends Partnership With Volkswagen After Sales
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Schaumburg, IL- (February 12th, 2025) - Green Line Automotive has been selected to continue as the Agency of Record for After Sales for Volkswagen of America Tier One National Media. Green Line looks forward to continuing the great work they have been doing with Volkswagen of America (VWoA) After Sales and helping achieve their goals.
Green Line Automotive started its partnership with VWoA Afer Sales in 2022. Green Line works closely with the VWoA team on digital strategy and a full-funnel approach to after-sales marketing, including Paid Search, Programmatic and Paid Social efforts.
“Having the opportunity to work with the Volkswagen team has allowed us to rethink how we manage and approach after-sales marketing, and we are appreciative of the VWoA team for allowing us to test new ideas and get creative,” said Brent Rogers, Vice President and Managing Partner of Green Line Automotive.
Green Line Automotive offers industry-leading insight on digital marketing efforts, specifically crafted to each client’s needs. From strategies such as SEO, SEM, Display, Social, Video & First Party Data Integrations, there are multiple avenues for every dealership to engage with their target audience.
About Green Line Automotive
Green Line Automotive is a digital advertising agency created for automotive dealerships. Our mission is to deliver tier-one automotive advertising expertise, technology, and service to tier-three dealers. We give you an advantage over your competition by giving every dealership the best in technology coupled with a fully customizable approach.
Google's November 2024 Core Update has made some more changes to how they evaluate and rank search results. Google regularly updates its algorithm to ensure users receive the highest quality content for the best search experience.
This update is just another step in Google's ongoing mission to make sure that genuinely helpful and relevant content gets the spotlight, while low-quality, keyword-stuffed pages fade into the background. This has led to ranking volatility over the last couple of weeks.
Key Changes and Focus Areas
Enhanced Content Quality Metrics: Google has emphasized the importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness). Websites with in-depth topic knowledge that are trustworthy, made by people who know what they're talking about, are likely to maintain or improve rankings.
Alignment with Search Intent: Google matches content to search results that best aligns with user intent. This includes favoring websites that provide actionable, clear, and query-specific information over generic or overly optimized pages.
Demotion of Thin Content: Pages that offer limited value for users or are over-optimized for SEO purposes, including excessive keyword stuffing, may observe a decline in their search engine rankings. Google's algorithm prioritizes content that is both comprehensive and user-friendly.
Initial Impact on Websites
Websites relying on content created solely for ranking purposes are likely to see a decline in search visibility. However, sites offering well-researched, user-centric content are likely to see improvements. This update reinforces consistency in topical representation and prevents larger publishers from using existing ranking authority to outrank smaller publishers in new categories. These outcomes underscore Google's commitment to user satisfaction over algorithm manipulation.
Recommendations for Recovery and Core Update Response
Search results are constantly changing as user expectations, search behaviors, and web content evolve. Google emphasizes that websites affected by the update may take several months to recover their rankings as its systems learn and validate improvements. Furthermore, making reactive changes does not guarantee a ranking recovery.
Conduct a Content Audit: Identify underperforming or thin pages and work to improve their quality. Content should be original and engaging, and it should give users what they're searching for.
Optimize User Experience: Address technical SEO issues like page speed, mobile-first design, and accessibility. These factors are key to maintaining rankings and encouraging visitors to interact with your content.
Update Old Content: Complete content refreshes where necessary to remove outdated information on high-performing pages. This is essential to maintain relevance and align with current user needs.
Build Niche Authority: Establish expertise in specific topics to enhance overall domain credibility. Google has also recently communicated that if a website publishes content that strays too far from its main topic, that content might experience downgraded rankings.
Most importantly, wait until the update is completed before analyzing the ranking impact.
Long-Term Strategy
Core updates often bring temporary volatility. Don't rush into making changes. Instead, use tools like Google Search Console to track your performance and identify areas for improvement.
Organic Keywords Trend
Here’s an example of a website that focuses on providing a great user experience and valuable content, supported by a holistic, long-term SEO plan, has seen immediate benefits from the update.
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POV: Utilizing Conversion Value Bidding For Automotive Paid Search
Google's ad algorithm is now best at optimizing performance when ad campaigns are structured with either a max conversion value bid strategy or target ROAS, even when the target KPI is a lead submission or phone call. The max conversion value bid strategy allows advertisers to set values for each conversion action, which tells the bidding algorithm to prioritize higher-value actions. Using a value-focused bidding strategy can both increase lead volume, decrease CPA & help prioritize conversions that are more meaningful for your business.
Testing Max Conversion Value To Increase Key Conversions’ Volume
Assigning a value to non-purchase conversions is quickly becoming a best practice in paid search advertising. In our latest test, we assigned values to phone calls & form fills for 3 different car dealerships based on which conversion was most valuable to them. Other conversions that are tracked, but not a priority were left with a $1 conversion value to deprioritize them in the algorithm.
Two dealerships prioritized phone calls & one dealership prioritized form fills.
Results Achieved
After one month, we saw a 25% increase in phone calls & a 45% increase in form fills. We also saw a 45% increase in overall conversions. While each client had a goal to improve a specific conversion, we saw an overall increase in conversions as well.
While a maximize conversion bidding strategy is meant to increase conversion volume and control your Cost Per Lead, we saw that a maximize conversion value strategy not only increased the number of key conversions but also improved the CPL.
Across the same 3 auto accounts, we saw a 20% improvement in our cost per lead.
Conclusion
GLD recommends assigning a value to KPIs in Google Ads and testing into a maximize conversion value or target ROAS bidding strategy. Utilizing this bidding strategy helped improve automotive clients' conversion volume & cost per lead in comparison to maximize conversion bidding. Value-based bidding also drove more key conversions for clients based on their business objectives.
This strategy takes advantage of the algorithm’s most optimized bidding strategy & applies it to conversions that do not directly lead to revenue (such as a purchase) to mimic the success that is seen in other industries with this bidding strategy.
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Witches, ghosts and the scariest of all…
BOT TRAFFIC!
Bot traffic in Google Analytics are often miscategorized as Direct traffic, making it hard to filter out unwanted data from sources like web crawlers, scrapers, and spam. While eliminating bot traffic isn't feasible, focusing on users who spend more than a few seconds on your site helps you evaluate meaningful interactions and reduce the impact of bots.
Where does bot traffic come from?
Bot traffic comes from a variety of sources… too many to list, but below are some of the most common sources:
WEBSITE WIDGETS that crawl your site looking for data, i.e. pricing data for dealers. This is often crawled off websites and pushed to you in a software.
WEB SPIDERS AND CRAWLERS who are checking your site for issues/broken links and errors.
INVENTORY URL SCRAPERS from websites such as 3rd party providers will grab your VDP URLs so that your inventory on their website links to the right page on your site.
SPAMMERS that are trying to collect phone numbers and email address to sell and distribute.
How do I eliminate bot traffic from GA4?
Unfortunately, you can't eliminate bot traffic from GA4. GA4 automatically filters out known bots and spiders from your property, and updates traffic numbers as their database updates. These traffic sources are identified by Google research as well as by Google referencing the International Spiders and Bots list, maintained by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Sometimes internal or 3rd party tools will masquerade as a bot or spider, even though they will not be flagged by Google’s systems. For systems like this, it is recommended that you reach out to these partners and see if it is possible to get their IP address(es) so you can set up an IP exclusion within your property. IP exclusions will allow you to label this traffic as “internal” so that it can be more easily filtered in reports.
If I can't eliminate Bot Traffic, how do I best evaluate my direct traffic?
Focus on users and not sessions.
Identify people who spend time on your site, i.e., users who have spent more than 15 seconds on your website. Most bots come, get their required information and leave in a few seconds, so focusing on time on site will help evaluate quality traffic.
How to Reduce Bot Traffic
Although it’s a continuous effort, refining your filters this way offers the most practical solution for reducing the impact of bot traffic on your GA data. As mentioned above, if it is possible to label this traffic as “internal” (using IP exclusion) then that can go a long way in ensuring your reports remain clean of this data.
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Google Chrome Rolled Out Three New AI Features: See how they can impact you for Paid Search
Google Chrome has rolled out its August update, and the effects impact how consumers search. This includes 3 new AI features including Google Lens for desktop Chrome, Tab Compare for products, and search with Gemini.
What it is: Google Lens lets you search visually. Previously this was only available on mobile devices, but bringing it to desktop means you’ll be able to select and search for anything that you see on the web, and even refine the search to get you the best results without ever leaving the tab they are on.
Why we care/what to do: As users read articles, search or browse the web, they can snip and discover more information on vehicles or products, compare pricing more easily, and even be led to where to shop. Depending on the question, you might also receive an AI overview response which impacts both paid and organic search:
Paid search: Without keyword based searches, you’ll need to be ready to capture queries through broad match and audience based campaigns with a visual component like Performance Max, Performance Max with Vehicle Listings and Demand Gen.
Have an optimized vehicle or product feed to make sure your vehicles and products are discovered and can be correlated to image searches.
We expect that conversion rates would improve for the searches your products/vehicles are shown for, especially when someone refines a search with Gemini to look for a new color or where to buy.
Be aware of product and vehicle pricing compared to competitors
We may see a decline in impressions and clicks depending on how often the AI overview is presented, and if they are getting the information they need from those results. However, we anticipate that engagement on site from a landed visitor will be greater.
Search with Gemini
What it is: Chrome’s latest feature is to be able to chat with Gemini right from your browser. By typing @gemini you can ask any question and you’ll be presented with an AI response.
Why we care/What to do:
Paid search: This has the potential to impact spend, clicks and impressions as users adopt this and skip the search results page altogether.
This has not be monetized yet so we would anticipate as this gets adopted for search volume to decrease until they add ad placements
With longer, more specific searches, we’ll need to incorporate new match types to capture these queries when this does roll out
As research based questions are redirected or skipped altogether, we will need to find more visual ways to grab consumers by diversifying spend to different ad types or even social channels for discovery.
Tab Compare
What it is: While this hasn’t launched yet, Tab Compare allows users to review products across multiple tabs all in one place. Chrome will offer to generate a comparison table by showing a suggestion next to your tabs. By bringing all the essential details — product specs, features, price, ratings — into one tab to make an informed decision.
Why we care/What to do: Pricing is going to be even more important than ever as potential customers will have an easier time comparing on the fly.
Paid search: Ensure all feed attributes are filled out correctly and completely and ensure competitive pricing!
What Does this mean?
There are a lot of changes going on this year for Search. As your agency, we will help keep you updated and make sure you’re ahead of the curve by conducting early testing, ensuring your feeds are in good working order, and helping you diversify spend to get you the best results.
About Green Line Automotive:
Green Line Automotive is a digital advertising agency created for automotive dealerships. Our mission is to deliver tier-one automotive advertising expertise, technology, and service to the tier-three dealers. We give you an advantage over your competition by giving every dealership the best in technology coupled with a fully customizable approach.
Google Rolls Out Dealership Pricing For All Vehicle Listings
Performance Max with Vehicle Feeds (formerly known as Vehicle Listing Ads) is getting a major update to pricing that will be beneficial to auto dealership PPC marketing. We reported back in April that Google was testing and slowly rolling out Dealership Pricing on cars for sale sponsored ads.
Launching mid-September, the Dealership Pricing feature is now available to all dealerships in the US. Right now this price is displayed in green above the MSRP which showcases the discounts, while giving the consumer all the pricing information before they click on an ad.
Since vehicle listing ads are part of Google Shopping (a comparison shopping engine), pricing will play an integral role in performance - both from an awareness standpoint and engagement - as Google is more likely to show inventory at lower price points. This could result in a dip in impressions if your pricing isn’t competitive with other local dealerships, or if your feeds are not fully optimized.
What’s Next for Dealerships?
The first thing you will need to do is make sure you have the Dealership Pricing attribute included as a field in your shopping feeds so that the discounted pricing can be displayed. At Green Line, this is built into the feeds from day one for our automotive advertising clients.
Outside of pricing, you’ll need to ensure your vehicle data feeds are set up in a way that will improve your rankings and relevancy:
Ensure your feeds have high-quality data by optimizing your titles & descriptions by providing as much detail as you can to help boost search relevance.
Ensure the images you use in your feed are high-quality in not only resolution, but theme, and that the images match the rich descriptions you provided.
At Green Line, we ensure our clients' feeds are fully optimized for rankings by providing keyword-rich, unique and meaningful titles and descriptions that will influence visibility and drive performance. We also use additional feed attributes such as color, trim, etc. to provide additional product information to drive search query relevance.
In addition to optimizing titles and descriptions we also use high-quality images that showcase our client’s vehicles without the use of watermarks or busy backgrounds. If we are not provided with high-quality images, our team works with our clients and utilizes other resources - such as the Product Studio in the Merchant Center - to showcase the vehicles in ads in the way Google prefers.
We also perform robust competitor research and will work with our clients to improve their pricing/sale pricing models to be able to better compete with local competition if needed.
Performance Max & Green Line Automotive
Performance Max with Vehicle Listings can be a tricky campaign type to optimize for, and we do Performance Max differently for our clients to ensure high-quality leads at the lowest cost. Having great feeds and, now, highlighting dealership pricing will help performance moving forward. If you’re not sure if your ad feeds are optimized for Dealership Pricing, contact us for support.
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Google Adds New Search Ad Experiences Powered By AI
On the latest Google Marketing Live event, Google revealed how paid ads will appear in the new search experience with AI overviews, along with introducing a few new features that heavily incorporate AI.
We hypothesized about this a few months ago, but here our takeaways from the keynote:
1. Google will be showcasing paid ads that aim to guide consumers through complicated buying decisions using AI assistance, tailoring advice and recommendations based on a user’s search.
What this means for advertisers:
We anticipate higher conversion rates, but a potential decrease in site traffic.
Ensure your product feeds are high quality including detailed titles and descriptions
Diversify your campaign types
Ensure the use of impactful creative
2. New immersive Shopping & Ad Experiences to engage customers
What this means for advertisers:
Similar to the above, with the ability to get more information without ever leaving the Search Engine Results page, you may see a decrease in traffic, but you should also experience higher conversion rates.
New features will continue to roll out like uploading photos to get recommendations.
3. New Tools to create Performance Max creative at scale with AI powered image editing
What this means for advertisers:
This gives you the ability to turn one photo shoot into a whole new set of creative without a lot of lift.
Take your best performing product and showcase it in new light.
Be careful to stay on brand and review all imagery prior to publishing.
So what's next?
Google’s ads above and below the AI-generated overview sections have already rolled out, and soon Shopping ads will roll out next. Ads from existing Search and Performance Max campaigns have the opportunity to appear within the AI Overview, and your search team already has access to the new tools for making new creative.
About Green Line Automotive:
Green Line Automotive is an automotive digital advertising agency created for automotive dealerships. Our mission is to deliver tier-one automotive advertising expertise, technology, and service to the tier-three dealers. We give you an advantage over your competition by giving every dealership the best in technology coupled with a fully customizable approach.
Annual Growth: Search CPCs and Social Media CPMs on the Rise
April has been an especially challenging month for our clients across auto and ecommerce, as the economy continues to rock consumers, with interest rates still at an all time high, and as we continue to approach election season.
Coming out of Q1, are April CPCs still sharply rising and is it isolated to any specific channel, and what can we do about it?
On the Social side of things, META has been relatively flat YoY, but the last two weeks of April have started to creep up; it’s possible as we head closer towards the summer and the start of the election season we may start seeing these begin to rise, but overall, things have been stable.
The main story is TikTok. As clients and advertisers begin to diversify their media spend away from META and Google, TikTok CPMS are rising. CPMs increased 13% in 2023 vs 2022, and have seen further increases of about 50% from September 2023 through Q1 of 2024. We expect this trend to likely continue further into 2024.
Paid Search, specifically Google, is mirroring more of the TikTok trend unfortunately. Since September 2023 when Google reportedly raised prices to help meet their revenue targets, CPCs have started climbing and haven’t really stopped.
April was no different as CPCs were up 13% YoY, leading advertisers to spending just to reach the same click levels they were at last year. In fact, Q1 ad spend increased 21% YoY, meanwhile due to actual demand, competition, and rising costs, total click volume on Google actually decreased.
With clicks continuing to decline, and costs going up, the latest news coming out of the DOJ’s anti trust trial, is hammering home that Google really does have the power to control prices as they are proving that over the years they have been changing the algorithm to raise prices through algorithm tuning to increase profits and not always at the benefits of the end user.
So what are advertisers to do?
At Green Line Digital, we’re working with our clients to make sure we:
Diversify ad spend between channels & tactics
Make every dollar count and focus on the right KPIS per channel
CVRT to “offset” - find ways to improve conversion rates to make up for higher CPCs
Learn fast & pivot from one strategy to the next
About Green Line Automotive:
Green Line Automotive is an automotive digital advertising agency created for automotive dealerships. Our mission is to deliver tier-one automotive advertising expertise, technology, and service to the tier-three dealers. We give you an advantage over your competition by giving every dealership the best in technology coupled with a fully customizable approach.
