One vehicle, eight channels — what each format actually needs
The same RAV4 is a different ad on Facebook, in search, in an inbox, and in a text message. A tour of the formats and why their rules differ.
· The Automotive.ad team
A used 2022 RAV4 with one owner, heated seats, and a power liftgate at $27,950 is one set of facts. Publishing it well means arranging those facts eight different ways. Here is what each channel asks for and how the generator responds.
Facebook Ad
Three parts: primary text (125 characters before the fold), a headline (40), and a description (30). The primary text has to earn the click on its own, so the generator leads with the strongest fact — the price or the offer — and one or two concrete highlights. The headline carries the vehicle. The call to action lives in the description, once. Nothing is repeated across the three.
Instagram Ad
A single caption up to 300 characters. Instagram is the one place a hook can breathe, but a hook is still a fact, not a question: the price, the mileage, or the standout feature. Two short paragraphs, the call to action, the dealership, and up to three hashtags at the end.
Google Search Ad
Three 30-character headlines and two 90-character descriptions. Search is intent-driven, so the parts are dense and literal: the vehicle, the price, the dealership or city; then condition and highlights ending with the location, and financing with its conditions, the deadline, and the call to action. No adjectives that a searcher did not type.
Facebook Marketplace listing
A 100-character title and a description up to 1,500. Marketplace buyers scan titles, so the title is a comma-separated fact list: year, make, model, trim, condition, mileage, price. The description is plain paragraphs — condition, ownership, highlights, price, financing — ending with the dealership, phone, and disclaimers.
Vehicle listing description
Up to 2,000 characters for your own website and the inventory sites. This is where the Brand Kit’s tone shows most: complete paragraphs that say what each highlight means for the driver, then the offer, how to see the car, and the disclaimers verbatim at the end.
Social media post
Up to 500 characters for an organic post about an arrival, a price drop, or a special. One concrete hook, the key facts, the call to action once, the dealership name, and up to three hashtags.
Email promotion
A 60-character subject, 90 characters of preview text, and a body up to 1,500. The subject names the vehicle and the offer or price with no exclamation marks; the preview text adds a second fact instead of repeating the subject. The body opens with the vehicle and offer — no greeting — and closes with a signature and the disclaimers.
SMS promotion
160 characters, plain text, no emojis. The dealership name comes first so the recipient knows who is texting, then the vehicle, the price or offer, the deadline, and the call to action or a phone number.
Why fixed rules beat a blank prompt
Each of these formats has a right shape, and the shape is not a matter of taste — it comes from how the platform displays the text and how people read it there. Encoding the shape once, per part, means every run follows it, and it means we can check the output against it. The examples page shows all eight for the same RAV4; the formats reference lists every limit.