Facebook is changing things around Marketplace that will impact car dealerships today, as reported by The Verge. The update was first spotted by a Reddit user, Meta announced that it will make dealerships' ability to list cars limited on Marketplace.
Starting January 30, 2023, dealerships will be unable to list vehicles from their business page. This is the social media platform's way of making dealerships buy Marketplace ads. However, this may make dealers post free listings from a personal Facebook profile, which will make it even more difficult to distinguish legit listings.
An excerpt from the email they sent states, "Starting on January 30, 2023, Meta will no longer support the ability for sellers to create vehicle and real estate / rentals listings using a Facebook business Page, along with the Vehicles Tab and Manage Inventory tab in markets where this feature is currently available."
What makes things even more confusing is that based on the support page of Meta, they don't explicitly discourage the use of personal profiles for dealerships. Instead, it describes other ways dealerships can reach their audience without posting Marketplace listings from their business page, and one of the solutions is to create listings for cars, home sales, and home rentals from a personal profile.
The Influx of Fake Listings on Marketplace
The new feature raises eyebrows as it looks like it will not resolve the issue of fake listings on Facebook Marketplace. In fact, there are already a lot of dealerships who guise themselves as real individual when posting their listings on Facebook Marketplace. Even though the listings should have a "dealership" label below the photo of the listing, the tag is usually missing.
Also Read: Facebook Partners With DoorDash To Improve MarketPlace Deliveries
Where the 'New Rule' Will Apply
This new feature will apply to several countries like the US, Canada, France, Mexico, the UK, Brazil, Indonesia, Germany, and Australia. The rule will also extend to real estate and rental listings, but will be limited to those in the US.
How Buyers Feel
Following the announcement, car buyers on Reddit discussed the new feature. A lot were thrilled because this helps them find vehicles within their budget more efficiently. Additionally, many customers feel positive about this as this will help eliminate spam listings on the platform.
With this, all existing listings businesses posted on their Facebook business pages will be deleted after January 30, 2023. At the end of January 2023, car dealerships and sales will have to use solutions specifically created for them. Facebook reassures that they are continually investing in innovative solutions to deliver on the future needs of the automotive sector today.
If you want to know more about the strategies and solutions for dealers on Facebook, you can check out their Dealer Marketing Hub here.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by April Fowell
