Send us the listing photos for one unit and you get a finished vertical video back, cut for your own Instagram, TikTok and Facebook Marketplace posts, plus a landscape version you can push into an AutoTrader.ca or Kijiji Autos listing through YouTube. Nobody drives out to your lot, nothing gets scheduled, and the whole thing is usually done inside 24 hours.
Dealer counts from IBISWorld (2026) and CADA. Average price and the video lift are AutoTrader.ca's own published figures, the lead number from its October 2022 analysis.
Any honest pitch to a Canadian dealer has to start by admitting something. AutoTrader.ca sells a product called Stitch Video that assembles a listing video out of the material a dealer has already uploaded, so the video slot on the country's largest marketplace is not an empty slot waiting for us. Pretending otherwise would fall apart the moment a dealer principal opened their own TRADER dashboard.
What a marketplace generates for you lives inside that marketplace and disappears the day you stop paying for the package. The file we hand back is yours to keep, so the same clip runs on your Instagram account, your Marketplace post, your website and in a text to a buyer without asking anyone for permission.
A marketplace has no reason to build a 9:16 reel for your own social channel, because every view that happens on your channel is a view that did not happen on theirs. That gap is where a small independent lot in Ontario or Alberta can still out-post a franchise group without hiring anybody.
Every order comes back in both shapes, so if you would rather run your own clip in the listing than the automatically stitched one, the 16:9 version is already sitting in your folder. Getting it into the listing takes one upload to YouTube, and the section below walks through exactly how each portal handles that.
Canada is not a smaller copy of the American market. The three places your buyers look behave differently from Cars.com and from each other, and each one takes video in its own way, which is why we deliver two cuts instead of one.
The country's largest vehicle marketplace, run by TRADER Corporation, which has belonged to AutoScout24 in Munich since December 2024. Together with its French-language sister site AutoHebdo.net it reports 26 million visits a month, more than 450,000 listings and 5,000 dealer partners. Video reaches a listing through the Custom Video product, and that product imports a YouTube link rather than a file, so the landscape cut goes up on your channel first and the link goes into the ad second.
The channel most independent lots use to reach private buyers in the lower price bands. Kijiji reported more than 50 million visits and over 6 million unique visitors a month across its automotive properties back in November 2021, and no newer official figure has been published since. Its ad form has a Video field under the description that also takes a YouTube link, and it shows buyers a Watch YouTube video option beneath the ad text.
The third large marketplace, and the one whose Deal Rating puts your price position in front of every shopper. CarGurus publishes plenty about photo requirements and nothing public about video inside a listing, so we will not claim a video slot exists there. What helps on CarGurus is a complete, clean set of images and a reel that pulls buyers to you before they ever start sorting by Great Deal and Good Deal.
One detail that trips people up: if you upload the vertical cut and YouTube files it as a Short, the link you copy contains /shorts/ and Kijiji will not accept it. Swap that part of the address for /watch?v= and the same video goes in without complaint. We flag it because it is the exact point where most dealers give up on video in a Kijiji ad.
The reason to bother with any of this sits in AutoTrader.ca's own merchandising data. Its analysis of listings between January and July 2022 found that used vehicle ads carrying eleven or more photos drew 205 percent more vehicle detail page views and 185 percent more leads than ads with ten or fewer, and a separate October 2022 analysis put listings with video at 22 percent more lead volume. In a survey the company ran over November and December 2021, 42 percent of vehicle shoppers said interior and exterior walkaround videos were helpful to them. Those numbers are the marketplace arguing its own case, but they line up with what a full inventory feed looks like from the buyer's side of the screen.
Canadian dealers lean on Facebook Marketplace harder than most people outside the country expect, and a moving post there behaves very differently from four still photos. The same file covers the rest of your social presence without a second export.
This is where a lot of Canadian units actually move, especially the trade-ins that are front-line ready but not worth a full marketplace package. A vertical clip in the listing shows the body, the interior and the kilometres in a few seconds, which cuts down the how-many-owners messages before they start.
Vertical video is still the cheapest reach available to a small business, and a lot with fresh arrivals every week has an endless supply of subject matter. The clip arrives already cut 9:16, so it goes up without cropping and without anyone at your shop standing in front of a camera.
Drop the file onto your inventory page and the shopper watching it is already past the first three questions by the time they call. You get a plain video file plus an embed link, so it plays on your pages instead of sending traffic somewhere you do not control.
When a lead goes quiet, a link to the video does more work than another price paragraph. Sending motion to somebody who is comparing three similar units across two cities is the cheapest way to be the lot they remember when they finally book a time.
A template written for a different market frames every car the same way. Canadian inventory has its own centre of gravity, and the shots that matter here are the ones a buyer worries about after five winters of road salt.
The most searched and the most sold vehicle on AutoTrader.ca in 2025, and the F-Series took the country's overall sales crown for the fifteenth year running with 138,470 new registrations. On a Canadian lot the pickup is the baseline, not the exception, so the box, the hitch and the bed liner get their own beats in the cut.
Second on AutoTrader.ca for both searches and sales in 2025, with 75,573 new registrations that year. All-wheel drive is the filter Canadian shoppers actually use, so if the unit has it, the badge shows up early in the video instead of buried in a spec list nobody reads to the end.
Third for sales on AutoTrader.ca in 2025 and 55,987 new registrations. This is the unit that sells on trust rather than excitement, which means the video spends its time on the interior condition, the heated seats and the service history instead of chasing a hero shot.
Fourth for sales on AutoTrader.ca in 2025, with 42,759 new Ram 1500 and Heavy Duty registrations combined. Nearly every used lot in the Prairies carries one, and the questions are always the same: rust, tow package, and whether the block heater cord is still in the grille.
Third for searches and fifth for sales on AutoTrader.ca in 2025, and the strongest model in urban Ontario according to the same analysis. It covers the car segment the trucks and crossovers leave out, and it is usually the unit where a clean set of winter tires closes the deal.
Every cut we build for a Canadian lot gives room to the three things buyers here ask about first. Clean rocker panels and wheel wells answer the salt question, the winter trio of block heater, remote starter and heated seats answers the January question, and the odometer reading appears in kilometres so nobody has to convert anything in their head.
The moment an OMVIC-registered dealer in Ontario, an AMVIC licensee in Alberta or a VSA licensee in British Columbia hears the words AI video, the first thought is a compliance problem. That reaction is correct, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring adjective.
The OMVIC advertising guideline under the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act states that where an advertisement includes an illustration of the vehicle, it should be of the actual unit being offered, colour and model year included. If a different image is used, the ad has to represent the make, model, trim and condition accurately and make clear that it is not the vehicle on offer. Ontario's all-in price rule sits alongside it: an advertised price has to contain every fee, with only HST and the licensing fee left out.
So we drew the line where the regulator drew it. Framing, lighting, pacing, music and camera movement are presentation and we work on all of them. Paint colour, wheels, trim level and model year are the vehicle and we do not touch any of them, and we never render a stand-in car in place of the one on your lot. If you ask us to burn a price into the video, we use the all-in figure you supply, because a price on screen is an advertised price like any other. Federally, the Competition Act treats false or misleading representations seriously enough that penalties for a company reach 10 million dollars for a first finding and 15 million for a repeat, and the Competition Bureau has been explicit that AI-generated and manipulated content falls inside its interest.
This is how we work, not legal advice. Your own advertising still has to satisfy your provincial regulator, and the wording above reflects the published OMVIC guideline as we read it.
We are not pitching Quebec on this page, and the reason has nothing to do with the market being small. A dealer advertising to Quebec consumers works under the Charter of the French Language, whose remaining provisions came into force on 1 June 2025, and an English voiceover with English captions is not a usable advertisement under it. Building you something you cannot legally run would waste your money, so until a French version of this service exists we would rather say so plainly than sell into it. If you operate in Quebec and want to be told when that changes, write to us and we will keep the note.
The difference between this and a capture service is the calendar. Nobody has to be free at the same time, so a unit you photograph during recon can be a finished video before it hits the front line.
Five to ten images, roughly half exterior and half interior, exactly the set you already shot for the ad. Add the kilometres, the trim and the all-in price if you want them on screen, and the upload takes about two minutes.
The system handles the edit, the music and the captions, and you get the 9:16 reel and the 16:9 version back within roughly 24 hours. If a single shot lands wrong, you re-roll that three-second slice yourself rather than waiting on an editor.
The vertical file goes straight to Marketplace, Reels and TikTok. The landscape file goes to your YouTube channel with the stock number in the title, and that link is what AutoTrader.ca and Kijiji want in the listing.
No retainer and no contract. The first sample is free, and after that you only pay for the units you actually put on video.
One unit, both cuts, the simplest way to test the idea on a single listing before you commit to the lot.
Ten units in one bundle at a lower rate each, which suits a lot that puts a handful of fresh arrivals on the front line every week.
Twenty-five finished videos in one go, at the lowest price per car we offer. Enough to cover a whole lot without paying for each one separately.
Billing is in US dollars and runs on Visa, Mastercard or Amex, so the amount that lands on your statement depends on the rate and any foreign transaction fee your card carries. We say that up front rather than printing a CAD figure we cannot hold. Interac e-Transfer is what most Canadian businesses would reach for and it needs a Canadian business account at a participating institution, which we do not have, so it is not on the table today. If you are registered for GST or HST, give us your number with your first order and we will put it on the invoice.
Something missing? Email hello@aicarvideo.com and you will hear back the same day.
What a walkaround needs to show, and how the same beats get built out of still photos.
Read it PricingThe honest breakdown across freelancers, agencies and a flat rate per unit.
Read it ComparisonWhere a person with a camera still wins, and where the calendar decides it for you.
Read it ServiceWhat done-for-you car video looks like when software runs the edit instead of a crew.
Read itPrefer the short version of the whole offer? The main page covers the product without the Canadian detail.
Send the photos from one vehicle and you get both cuts back within about 24 hours, ready for Marketplace, Reels and a YouTube link into your listing. If it works for you we talk about the next ten, and if it does not you have spent nothing and still keep the file.
