AutoTrader.ca, Kijiji, Facebook, Google and your own website all put your cars in front of shoppers. Only one of them lets you keep the shopper. Here is what each channel is good for, what it holds back, and how to make every one of them point home.
By YaroslavPaid media
A shopper in Moncton who wants a used truck does not go to one place. She scrolls AutoTrader.ca on her lunch break, checks Kijiji that evening, sees a truck in her Facebook feed on Saturday morning, and searches your dealership's name on Google before she drives over. Every one of those places showed her your truck. Only one of them is yours.
I run paid media at FastTurn, so most of my week goes on two questions: where did this shopper come from, and where did they end up? Below are the five places used-car buyers in Atlantic Canada look, what each is good for, what it keeps for itself, and how to make each one send people back to your own vehicle pages. There is no public number we would trust for how shoppers in the four provinces split their time, so this is not a ranking. It is a map.
Every channel below can put your car in front of a buyer. The difference is what happens next: who owns the page, who sees the first message, and whether you can follow up from your own system.
AutoTrader.ca: shoppers already comparing cars like yours
the listing page, the cars beside yours, and the link home unless your package includes it
Kijiji: local reach and a dealership page with your whole stock
the listing page, next to private sellers
Facebook: reach in the feed and on Marketplace, through paid ads
the conversation, when the ad opens a vehicle page on Facebook
Google: the shopper who searched your name or your town
the profile, the reviews and the layout; the website button is yours
Your own website: only the shoppers the other four send you
nothing; the car, the conversation and the lead are yours
AutoTrader.ca describes itself as Canada's largest online automotive marketplace, and the shopper there is in comparison mode: filter by filter, with your car in a list beside everyone else's. You get serious shoppers; the page is built to keep them comparing.
It can also keep more of the deal. TRADER's used-vehicle packages include tools that let a shopper work out financing and a trade-in value on AutoTrader.ca itself. And "Link to Dealership Website (from VDP)" is included in the top package (Pro) and listed as a paid extra on the other two (Go and Smart). Ask your rep which you have before you assume shoppers can click through to you.
To show up well:
Kijiji calls its Cars & Vehicles category one of Canada's most visited automotive marketplaces. Your cars sit next to private sellers: you look more professional, and you are compared with the neighbour's asking price.
One detail that is easy to miss is the account type. Kijiji says listings posted under an Owner account are not eligible for dealer-only features. A dealer account gets you a dealership page with your whole inventory and contact details, your logo in search results and on listings, staggered posting across search pages, and a website link on your listings and dealership page. If your lot still posts as an individual, that link home is what you are missing.
Here the rules have changed, so precision matters. Since January 30, 2023, Meta no longer supports creating vehicle listings from a Facebook business Page, and Canada is on its list of affected markets. The same Business Help Centre notice says reaching audiences through ads is not changing.
The route Meta documents for dealer stock today is paid: automotive inventory ads, built from a catalogue of your vehicles. The click can open the car's page on your website, or a vehicle page on Facebook itself, built from your catalogue, where the shopper contacts you through Messenger, a lead form, a phone call or a visit. Meta's announcement says that version gives access to ad slots at the top of the Marketplace vehicle feed and on consumer vehicle listings.
That is the control question in one decision. The on-Facebook page keeps the shopper inside Meta's apps, and the conversation starts in Meta's inbox, not yours. If you choose it, someone has to move every one of those conversations into your CRM the same day.
Either way, Meta's feed reference is strict. Every vehicle needs a link to its listing on an external site, in practice your own vehicle page. Vehicles marked unavailable are not shown, so your sold status has to be right at the source. For Marketplace, a vehicle needs at least two images and more than 500 kilometres.
Some lots have salespeople posting cars from personal profiles. Before you allow it, read Meta's current rules yourself, and ask: when that salesperson leaves, where do those conversations go?
A shopper who is close to buying will often search your dealership by name, if only for the address and hours. That search shows your Google Business Profile, and Google has a separate guide for car dealers. Three rules worth knowing:
Showing cars for sale on the profile itself is, in Google's words, a new feature pilot with an interest form. Do not build a plan on it.
The free vehicle listings Google used to show in search have been retired. The paid replacement, vehicle ads, is available in Canada, runs through Merchant Center and Google Ads linked to your Business Profile, and sends the click to the vehicle page on your website. Even Google's paid route ends on your page.
For a shopper who found the car somewhere else, your website is where they come to check the details, ask a question or apply. It matters more than its traffic suggests, because that is where the decision happens.
It is also the only place where you control the whole visit: the price and how it is explained, financing and the trade-in on the car's own page, an answer at 10 p.m. (see after-hours leads), and the lead itself, with the shopper's words and consent in a system you own (see who owns your CRM data).
The paid routes on Google and Meta both point back at your vehicle pages; ads from your live inventory covers how to build them from the cars you actually have. If those pages are slow on a phone, show a sold car or hide the price, every channel above pays for it.
Google's URL builder guide explains the tags in full.
On the sites we build, inventory syncs from the dealer's own feed, and the paid media I run is built from that same feed: real cars, at the listed price, with every click landing on that car's page, tagged by channel. Leads go into a CRM the dealer owns. Paid media is quoted per market after the lot check, because what works in Charlottetown is not what works in Halifax.
If you would rather have someone look for you, the free lot check covers what a shopper sees when they search your name or a used car in your town, and whether every car on the lot is on your site with its real price, photos and kilometres. Yulia calls to walk you through it, and you keep the teardown whether or not we ever work together.
Rules change. This article explains, it is not legal advice; check the source before you act on it.
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