How car dealers can leverage Facebook’s new Marketplace tools – Bob Lanham, head of automotive retail

Facebook is rolling out some new changes to its marketplace platform which aim to make automotive advertising and retailing easier and more efficient for car dealers and consumers. Joining us today is Facebook’s head of automotive retail, Bob Lanham, to discuss the social media platform’s latest changes in further detail.

Due to new developments in resource allocation, Lanham explains that car dealers will no longer be able to use third-party catalogs to list their vehicles on Facebook Marketplace. However, car dealers can still list their vehicles manually on the platform. Additionally, audio platforms have become widely popular over the past year and Facebook is bringing an audio creation tool directly inside the Facebook app.

This tool will enable users to create short-form, creative audio clips for capturing everything from anecdotes to testimonials. Podcasts are also coming to Facebook, along with live audio rooms in Messenger.

Circling back to Facebook Marketplace, Lanham shares with us some highlights from Facebook’s latest earnings call. Currently, there are over one million active shops and 250 million consumers interacting with them every month. In fact, more than one billion people visit Marketplace every month. In order to meet this demand, Facebook launched a WhatsApp business API that is already sending more than 100 million messages per day.


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