At Meta, we worked side by side with automotive brands of every tier, from OEMs to dealers, testing what really moves car buyers on Facebook and Instagram. Now, with Gravta's Human-AI studio, we bring what works to your models.
Always-on, or one project at a time. For every tier, from OEMs to dealers.
OEMs we worked with at Meta: BMW · Nissan · VW · GM · Ford · Stellantis
Gravta × Daqar. Led by Rapha Vasconcellos, former global VP of Meta's Creative Shop, and Vini Prego, former automotive creative strategist at Meta.
Buying a car used to start at the dealership. Today it starts on a phone. People discover new models on Instagram and Facebook, dig into features in Reels, compare trims in the comments and check prices long before they book a test drive.
For automotive brands, that means Meta is no longer only a place to build awareness. It's where the consideration happens, and where many buyers make up their minds.
Sources: Auto Brand Loyalty Study, Meta-commissioned online study of 1,285 US current auto owners 18+ likely to consider a new car for their next purchase, Nov 2021. New Automobile Buyers Consumer Journey Study by Kantar Profiles, Meta-commissioned online survey of 1,141 US respondents aged 18–64, 2022.
If the showroom is the feed, it's open to billions of people every day. That's a bigger audience than any dealership, TV spot or auto show will ever reach. Years of work with OEMs on Meta taught us how to turn that reach into buyers. Now those lessons work for you.
Automotive marketing stands on decades of craft: the launch film, the beauty shot, the media plan built segment by segment. That craft still matters. But Meta's AI doesn't read a media plan. It reads creative. In milliseconds, it decides which ad each person sees, based on what the ad is about and who it seems to be for.So the creative itself becomes the targeting.
The same SUV can win a young family, a weekend adventurer, a daily commuter and a recent grad buying a first car. Give each one its own reason to buy, from inspiration to practical features like safety, space or tech, and Meta's AI finds buyers you'd never have targeted.
Campaigns built for one narrow segment, or for one moment of the journey, leave reach on the table. Diverse creative for broad audiences gives the algorithm more signals, reaches more people who are actually in market and brings more lower-funnel results: leads, configurator visits and test drives.
Many automotive ads show the vehicle and little else. To Meta's AI, a feed of hero shots looks like one ad, across brands too. People-first creative tends to perform better: a real driver, a real moment, a real reason. In the auction, assets with people and a genuine idea stand out, and win the impression.
A TV spot cut down for Reels gets scrolled past. Hooks in the first seconds, made for sound off and vertical screens: social-first assets drive more results than adapted ones.
| Vehicle-only, adapted assets | Diverse, people-first, social-first assets | |
|---|---|---|
| What's on screen | The car, the road, the logo | A person, a moment, a reason to want the car |
| How Meta's AI sees it | Near-duplicates, across the category | Distinct signals |
| Who it reaches | The same narrow pool | New pockets of in-market buyers |
| What it delivers | Rising costs as ads fatigue | More reach and more lower-funnel results |
Even the best launch film wears out on Meta. The more people see the same ad, the less it works, and the faster your budget burns through it. That's why automotive brands need a steady flow of new, distinct creative, not one hero asset.
A few of the programs our team led during our years at Meta, for some of the biggest automakers in the US.
We mapped about 50 ways people in one region live with the car, from a stadium soccer match to a hiking trail. A generative AI workflow gave each one its own scene and headline, in the brand's voice. One asset became a full regional campaign, without a new shoot.
We rebuilt BMW's social around tiered creators, across paid and organic, to reach new audiences, including women and AAPI communities. The results changed how the brand allocated budget and structured its creative vendors.
In creative workshops with Nissan's CMO and agencies, we turned each reason to buy the car into social-first ideas for every stage of the funnel, measured with Brand Lift and Conversion Lift. Nissan teams in Europe and Asia later adopted the framework.
Ads for the Nissan Juke, BMW creators and a Nissan dealer.
Gravta brings the studio: a full-stack video strategy studio, founded by senior leaders across advertising, entertainment and tech, with a Human-AI workflow built to produce high-craft creative at the pace Meta demands. Daqar brings the automotive side: how people buy cars, how each tier works, and years of building Meta creative strategy for car brands.
One team, from the reason to buy to the finished ad.
| High-craft, Human-AI production | Creative strategy, from OEMs to dealers |
| AdNeura™ maps those motivations, audience by audience | Assets built on what motivates each buyer |
| Scales every asset fast, in every Meta format | People-first, creator-led ideas |
In travel, Gravta produced 1,300 localized video ads for Vrbo in 6 weeks. The same engine, now pointed at your models, regions and dealers.
Model launches, national campaigns, always-on creative for every model in the lineup, and creator programs across paid and organic.
Regional offers and sales events, localized at scale with GenAI, in the brand's voice.
Fast, inventory-led creative for Facebook and Instagram that turns the cars on your lot into ads people want to watch.
Co-Founder & Creative Leader, Gravta
Rapha spent eight years at Meta building Creative Shop, the team that helped the world's biggest brands make ads for Facebook and Instagram. He co-founded it in Latin America, led it across Asia-Pacific and became its global VP in New York. He then led Netflix's Product Creative Studio as VP before co-founding Gravta.
Rapha on LinkedIn
Founder, Daqar
Vini spent eight years at Meta as a creative strategist, much of it deep in automotive across North America. In New York, he worked with OEMs including BMW, Nissan, VW, GM, Ford and Stellantis, across every tier from national campaigns to dealers, with a focus on creators and on scaling creative for Facebook and Instagram. Before that, at Meta in Singapore, he led creative strategy for eCommerce, disruptive brands and global CPGs.
Before Meta, he worked at Google and at agencies including Ogilvy and Dentsu. His work has won at Cannes Lions, D&AD, One Show, Effie and WARC.
"Car brands don't lack great creative. They lack enough different creative. Meta can only sell the reasons you show it."
Every model, region and dealer has a different challenge. We dig into yours first, then build the answer. Always-on or one project at a time, for every tier.
Find the creative gaps holding your Meta campaigns back.
Turn the images and footage you already own into social-first assets, for always-on or new campaigns.
For paid and organic.
One asset, adapted for every region and dealer.
We read your account and your assets: what's working, what's fatiguing, which audiences and reasons to buy are still missing.
Daqar maps the reasons to buy for each model and audience, and AdNeura™ finds the untapped angles. Together they become people-first ideas for every stage of the journey.
Gravta's studio produces every concept in every Meta format (9:16, 4:5, 1:1), with first concepts in 5 days. We refresh before fatigue sets in and scale what wins.
Daqar leads automotive strategy and concepts. Gravta's studio produces them at scale. One team, one point of contact.
No. We plug in as the creative engine for Meta.
Not by default. Most brands keep their own team or agency running campaigns. If you need media buying too, we run it with trusted partners.
Running genuinely different ideas (different angles, people, moments and motivations) so Meta's AI can find more of the people who would buy your vehicle. For automotive, it means giving one model many reasons to buy, instead of one ad for everyone.
They tend to look alike, to the algorithm and to people. When assets look like near-duplicates, Meta treats them as largely the same ad, which limits reach and raises costs as they fatigue.
Andromeda is Meta's ad retrieval system. It uses your creative to decide which people to show your ad to. For car brands, that makes creative quality and variety central to who sees your models.
Watch performance, not the calendar: rising frequency, falling CTR and rising cost per lead are fatigue signals. At higher spend, creative can fatigue in about a week, so a steady flow of new concepts matters more as budgets grow.
Yes. We work with every tier: automakers (Tier 1), regional dealer advertising associations and dealer groups (Tier 2) and car dealerships (Tier 3).
Yes. We often start with your existing assets and turn them into social-first creative, before any new production.
Yes. Creator-led content is one of the strongest levers for automotive on Meta, for both paid and organic.
You do.
Get a free creative review of your Meta ads: where your assets look alike, which audiences and reasons to buy you're leaving on the table, and where new creative would have the most impact.
Thanks — we'll be in touch.
We've got your request and will get back to you within 3 business days.