Cazoo drives growth with Automotive Inventory Ads

Enhancing car buying experiences online

Car buying is a process that makes many shoppers apprehensive, but imagine if buying or selling a car was no different from ordering any other product online? Cazoo is leading the online car retailer business in the United Kingdom by helping consumers seamlessly buy, sell, or finance a car entirely online for delivery or collection.

Whilst online certainly has the benefits of speed and efficiency, one challenge for Cazoo is how to promote the features of the cars they have in stock. As Mike Grethe, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Cazoo explains: “It’s not as simple as a line of t-shirts where there’s little variance. We need to match an individual make and model with all of its standard and optional features to a specific browsing customer.”

Microsoft Advertising Automotive Inventory Ads provides a solution for Cazoo to create visual experiences in search and entice potential customers to explore the advertised vehicle and more on the Cazoo website.

Leveraging previous experience from Shopping Ads

Mike and the digital team at Cazoo are veteran experts in search with a lot of previous experience working in other verticals including Retail. When Microsoft Advertising piloted the new feed-based format for the automotive industry, there was immediate recognition of what this could do for the Cazoo business.

“We’ve worked with Shopping Ads for years and identified how impactful they’re for retail,” says Mike. “We’ve learned a lot about feed-based ad formats so we wanted to leverage that experience and apply it to this new innovation.”

Cazoo has the added advantage of already using data feeds to work with other partners in the automotive industry. The requirements of working with multiple partners has set a blueprint for how the company operates. “We’ve built our tech stack to allow us to flexibly leverage data at scale, in keeping with our values of being data driven and customer obsessed,” says Mike.

So when it came to implementation, the feed for Microsoft Advertising was set up in a matter of hours. “It was very straightforward for us to get going with the product, from building the feed to creating the campaign structure and specifications—the process was intuitive and simple,” adds Mike.

Innovation that drives growth

Cazoo has been one of the fastest growing businesses in the United Kingdom over the past few years, pioneering the shift to online car buying. Driven by a desire to constantly differentiate and push the boundaries of the industry as it continues to transform the car buying and selling experience across the United Kingdom.

As Mike explains: “Automotive Inventory Ads is a new ad format that helps us understand how product-based search adverts apply to the automotive industry. It’s great that Microsoft Advertising is bringing this innovation to the automotive vertical."

The innovation of the ad format also creates a tangible experience for Cazoo’s prospective customers. With Automotive Inventory Ads, Cazoo can showcase high-resolution images of the cars they have in stock and supplement the visual ad with an array of data variables from the feed to create the perfect car shopping experience online.

Achieving great results while meeting growth targets

One year on and Cazoo has seen exemplary results as they test, refine, and optimize the strategy using Automotive Inventory Ads. Between July 2021 and July 2022, Cazoo has generated 11% more clicks with a cost per lead 15% lower and a cost per order 7% lower than other Microsoft retail paid search campaigns.

“Automotive Inventory Ads definitely give us an extra percentage to help us achieve our growth targets,” says Mike.

As a result, Microsoft Advertising has become a much stronger partner for Cazoo. “This has allowed us to improve not only our immediate performance but leverage insights across our wider marketing mix,” says Mike.