At the NADA Show in February, Cars.com announced a pilot program for a new artificial intelligence video advertising system designed to automatically create “shopper-ready video assets” for dealership inventory.

The first results from that program, which launched its first campaign in March, are now in.

The car-shopping marketplace said its internal data showed it served nearly 10,000 unique video assets during the past 30 days to active shoppers based on their unique vehicle search activity. According to a Cars.com case study, those videos drove a 35% increase in dealership website visitors and a 45% rise in influenced dealership foot traffic from the previous 30 days, leading to a 47% jump in influenced vehicle sales.

In a Cars.com news release, Dawn Reidel, director of marketing at Heiser Automotive, which operates five dealership locations in Wisconsin, said the influence of in-market video on sales “has been proven to us through our own in-house review multiple times. … We know our videos are getting to shoppers who are lower-funnel and ready to buy. We can see every month how many people watched our videos and then came to our store locations.”

Cars.com said its product allows dealers to automatically generate VIN-specific video ads for their complete new and used inventory to showcase the exact vehicles shoppers are actively searching for.

The system, powered by the company’s proprietary shopper behavior data, is designed to target high-intent buyers already in-market to maximize relevance, engagement and conversion, allowing dealers to scale video for hundreds of vehicles without added production time or cost.

“Cars.com is the only one in the industry combining real-time marketplace demand signals, premium media distribution and AI-generated VIN-level video — delivering a uniquely powerful, end-to-end advertising solution for our dealer customers,” chief commercial officer Lisa Gosselin said. “Our goal is to partner with our customers to understand how we can help solve pain points through data and technology. Early feedback is clear: Our new AI VIN video solution is hitting the mark.”

Cars.com said its video product offers a connection from the dealership’s Cars.com inventory feed to the AI video technology, as well as:

Automatically generated video: When a vehicle is added to a dealer’s inventory feed, the company said, AI combines its photos to create 3D renderings and pulls in data such as price, mileage, features and specifications.

OEM-compliant designs: Video is generated in OEM brand templates predesigned by Cars.com.

Social media: Videos are rendered in the sizes and formats needed for TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

Targeted videos: Cars.com said its proprietary first-party audience data is integrated with each platform’s ad serving to showcase inventory to shoppers who have been actively looking for similar vehicles. When vehicles are sold and removed from the inventory feed, they are automatically removed from their video advertising.