Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads: A Guide For Meta Advertisers (2024)

Many advertisers on Meta are looking for ways to provide personalized ad experiences to their customers. Advertisers aim to make consumers feel understood by offering personalized solutions instead of generic options.

But is there a way to offer an experience that understands the consumer entirely?

Well, you’re in luck; there is! The answer lies in using Meta Advantage+ catalog ads.

Meta offers Advantage+ campaigns, which use machine learning to analyze your target audience and show ads based on their preferences and activities, boosting conversion chances. Advantage+ catalog ads are included in this suite, helping advertisers create personalized ads for their audience.

In this guide, we shall explore Advantage+ catalog ads in-depth, understand how they work, and what they entail when used.

Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads (formerly called Facebook Dynamic Ads) is an advanced way of running your ad campaigns.

It uses machine learning algorithms to automatically use your product catalog and to display relevant products to interested customers based on their activity, interest, and history across Meta technologies or anywhere on the Internet.

They help generate product recommendations in different ad formats, such as carousel ads, image ads, video ads, and story ads.

You can easily create a product catalog and start a campaign to boost sales on your business’s website/app. When someone shows interest in your business, Meta can automatically generate and display a personalized ad on any of their devices—desktop, mobile, or tablet.

Advantage+ Catalog Ads Example:

Who Should Use Advantage+ Catalog Ads?

In case you’re wondering if using Advantage+ catalog ads is the right choice for you, we can help you navigate what kind of sellers will profit from them:

Who or what industries is it for?

Meta recommends that this type of ad format is suitable for all kinds of advertisers. We have curated a list of different industries who’ll benefit from this:

1. eCommerce and Retail Advertisers – from small businesses to established businesses
2. Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
3. Hotels
4. Travel Industry
5. Automotive Industry
6. Real Estate Professionals

Where are these catalog ads displayed?

When Should You Use It?

Advantage+ catalog ads are suitable for those who wish to tailor their advertising efforts to the needs and interests of their potential customers.

• If your focus is automation, then these ad campaigns can help promote all your products using machine learning. They extract the product from your product catalog and direct ads based on the customer’s history and activity on Meta or other online sources [website, apps, etc.]. You will save time and boost productivity.

• If your focus is personalizing ads, Advantage+ catalog ads can help you achieve this by understanding the customer’s nature and showing them ads they will likely click on. You can also use it for seasonal promotions or sales, which will help maximize your ad’s impact and reduce cost per conversion.

• And finally, if your focus is expanding ad reach, these ads can help you with enhanced targeting and retargeting options to scale your marketing efforts.

Targeting Options In Advantage+ Catalog Ads

Given its advanced AI capabilities, Advantage+ gives you an edge with its targeting options to reach existing or new customers. Here’s how it works:

Reach Broad Audiences

Best Practices For Broad Audiences

Here are the best practices that you must follow:

Audience Selection for Broad Audiences: Use ad targeting like location and demographics. Choose targeting expansion to reach a wider audience if it may improve results. Avoid Facebook lookalike audiences and excessive behavioral or interest targeting, as these can limit your ad’s reach.

Audience Exclusions: Exclude people who have recently purchased from you, ideally those who bought within the last ten days. Don’t exclude all website visitors; including some can help your ads reach those who are likely to engage.

Creative: Choose ads that appeal to new customers or those who haven’t visited your site. Avoid untested creatives. Use a fixed card (creative elements in carousel ads) only if it applies to all items in your product set, and avoid it for diverse product sets.

Bids: Focus on optimizing your ads for key events like Purchase, Add-to-cart, and Registration.

Retargeting Audiences

Retargeting audiences consist of interested customers who have interacted with your ads, website, or app in some way.Meta advantage+ for retargeting audiences helps you display ads to these existing customers. These ads act as a reminder to make a purchase or share new updates about your latest products.

Best Practices For Retargeting Audiences

Here are some of the best practices that you can follow:

Cross-Selling and Upselling: Reach customers who recently bought items through cross-selling or offer related or higher-value products through upselling.

Audience Exclusions: Audience exclusions focus on specific products. Exclude recent buyers and focus on new customers. If past buyers haven’t visited in a while, use a different Advantage+ catalog ads campaign to re-engage them.

Audience Segmentation: Segment your audience by how recently they interacted with different bids. Create separate ad sets for each group to manage bids and track performance. Customers who visited on the last day are often more valuable than those who visited 14 days ago.

How Does Meta Advantage+ Use AI?

Here’s how Meta Advantage+ Catalog ads produce a personalized ad:

1. The advertiser uploads their product catalog to Facebook, which includes all the products and the product information.
   
2. Once the product catalog is successfully uploaded, with the help of Advantage+, Meta will create ads for you automatically. You won’t have to manually create individual ads for each product anymore.
   
3. Meta uses information gathered by pixel tracking about user behavior to show personalized recommendations. This means shoppers will see products that match their interests.

   For example, when a customer views your product page, the pixel will track that event and feed the data to the Events Manager. Then, it will try to understand the user’s behavior on the platform or off the platform.

   Advantage+ will create ads based on that particular behavior it has gathered through pixel.

4. When a shopper shows interest in a product from your catalog, Advantage+ will automatically create an ad just for them.

Finally, Facebook delivers these ads across all devices, including mobile, tablet, and desktop. This way, your products can reach potential customers wherever they are.

Requirements For Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads

Let’s look at the preliminary assets that you need for producing catalog ads using Advantage+:

Product Catalog

Keep your product catalog (product feed) ready by creating and adding it on Meta Commerce Manager. You can add products to your catalog through the following ways:

1. Manually uploading product feed using .txt/.csv files
2. Using data feed URL
3. Partner platform integration – Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc.
4. Pixel integration
5. Supplementary feeds (only if it’s applicable in your case)

Ensure that the catalog is linked to a Meta business account. It’s a good practice to create product sets within your catalog to specify which products you want to feature in your catalog ads.

Facebook Pixel

• Have a Facebook Page for your business
• Have your Facebook pixel base code added to your website’s theme file
• Facebook Ads Manager is mandatory and must be set

Keep the conversion tracking ready for standard events (such as AddToCart, Purchase, and ViewContent) and their object properties.

Facebook SDK For Mobile Devices

To show Meta Advantage+ catalog ads to users who have visited your mobile app, you need to add the Facebook SDK for Android or iOS devices. These SDKs help Meta target the ads based on customer actions, like viewing a product or adding something to their cart. This setup is essential for making good recommendations to potential buyers.

In order to make the SDK work, you must add these three events to your mobile app:

The SDK setup is essential for making good recommendations to potential buyers.

The iOS 14+ Restrictions

Apple’s iOS 14+ block restriction limits audience tracking, which can benefit advertisers by allowing them to gain insights into their interested audience.

With limited audience insights, it will be difficult to understand your audience’s needs and may create a problem while recommending personalized ads.

• Use Aggregated Event Measurement to track website conversions. No setup is needed for website conversion campaigns. Check app eligibility if you’re using it for app re-engagement campaigns.

  Aggregated Event Measurement is a protocol for tracking web and app events from iOS 14 and above iPhone devices. It includes privacy protections like removing identifiers, using differential privacy, and aggregating data across users before measuring or delivering ads.

• To bypass iOS 14+ restrictions, utilize the Conversion API (CAPI). CAPI sends event data to Facebook via a server rather than a browser. It offers more accurate conversion tracking compared to browser-based pixel tracking.
  
• Consider alternative targeting strategies, such as broad audiences or targeting expansion.

Now, we shall delve into the process of creating Advantage+ catalog ads.

The first and foremost step is to create a catalog on Commerce Manager. This is necessary for ad sets. Let’s see how to create a catalog:

Create A Product Catalog

1. Go to Meta Commerce Manager > Assets. Scroll down and locate + Add Catalogue.

2. Select what type of catalogue you want to create. For this example, we have chosen “Online Products.”

3. After selecting “Online Products,” the screen will change to this:

Ensure the toggle is on for “Connection,” and the status of the inventory events, if any events are recorded, should be green. If no events were recorded, it will be red.

5. Next, you’ll be asked to set catalogue permissions in order to provide access to your team. You’ll either see a list of all the members or search for them by filtering their name or ID.

6. And now, for the final moment, upload your product inventory to Meta catalogs! You can either choose a data feed file or manually upload the products. If you are creating a Facebook product feed, you can upload the spreadsheet by using the URL from your server, hosting site, or Google spreadsheet.

Note that the spreadsheet can be in CSV, TSV, XML (RSS/ATOM), or XLSX file format.

Ensure that you have added a data source. If you have not done so, go to Catalogue > Data Sources on Commerce Manager. Select what kind of data source you need.

Use the most suitable way you want to connect your product feed to Commerce Manager.

Your product catalog has been successfully created!

Create An Advantage+ Catalog Ad Campaign

Now, let’s dive into the main part: Creating an Advantage+ Catalog Ad Campaign.

The setup process is similar to running mainstream ad campaigns, with a little difference in a few areas. Let’s directly jump into the creation process of a catalog ad campaign using Advantage+:

Campaign level

1. Go to Meta Ads Manager > Campaigns > + Create.

2. Choose your marketing objective between Sales, Traffic, Engagement, and app promotion. We’re selecting Sales for the example. When creating your ad, select your catalog based on your goal—whether it’s app promotion, engagement, leads, or traffic. Keep in mind that dynamic audience options aren’t available for these objectives.

   Note: If you’re on Commerce Manager and have made the catalogue, check if everything is set, and then click “Create an Advantage+ catalog ad.” The same page will appear as described below.

5. Scroll further down and select Advantage+ campaign budget. Depending on your ad budget, set a daily budget, campaign bid strategy, and budget scheduling.

Next, you can also create A/B testing to check how your ads are performing.

Also, understand audience segments for reporting purposes. We shall explore this a little later. Click next.

Ad Set Level

6. Give your ad set a name & select a goal for the catalogue sales.

7. Next comes the important part – selecting the products you want to promote.

Select what products you want to display in the ads. It can be all or a select few. You can also create a product set with filters by clicking on the + sign next to the catalog list.

Set up your audience location.

9. Next, we have audience selection. You can either choose the original setup or utilize the Advantage+ audience setup. If you use the Advantage+ audience, you can personalize the audience even more by selecting age and demographics and selecting a custom or lookalike audience.

10. Now, it is time to focus on ad placement by using Advantage+ placement.

This entails the following:

• Brand Safety and Suitability
• Inventory Filter
• Publisher Block Lists
• Content Type Exclusions
• Topic Exclusions for Facebook In-Stream Videos

Ad Level

11. After the ad set level, we dive into the ad level, where you create your ad using Meta Creative.

You gave your campaign a name, then give your ad set a name and finally you have to gice the ad a name.

So start off by giving it a name.

14. Then, choose your ad format – single image or video, carousel ads, collection or opt for multi-advertiser ads.

15. Time to explore the Ad creative. This is where you can customize your ad and add text or CTA buttons.

Edit the creative according to your requirements. You can crop product images, add a frame, or even provide a catalog info label.

16. You can also enable Advantage+ Creative to enhance your ads by using advanced settings. If you don’t want to use Advantage+ Creative, you can even opt for manual creative ad format.

Jump To Learn Advantage+ Creative for catalogues in detail.

Setting Up Meta Pixel For Advantage+ Catalog Ads

In this section, we will explore adding Meta Pixel in-depth:

1. After setting up at campaign, ad set and ad level, fill in the other requirements as you scroll down. Finally, towards the end, you’ll reach the tracking portion.

To specify the tracking, you can even customize the URL parameters of your ad campaign in order to improve the tracking.

Publish Your Catalog Ad

Once you have created your ad campaign. Click publish on the bottom right of the screen.

And with that, you can successfully publish your first Advantage+ catalog ad!

While you’re here, you can also learn how to set up Facebook ad campaigns for Shopify stores!

Understanding Advantage+ Creative For Meta Catalog Ads

Using ‘Ad Creative’ for Facebook ads is a way to produce visually appealing ads for your customers. As a part of the Advantage+ campaign suite, Creative also uses the Advantage+ technology (called the Advantage+ Creative), which helps optimize the product images and videos and align them with your audience’s interests. You can access it on Meta Ads Manager.

A part of this is the Meta Advantage+ creative for catalogues (formerly dynamic formats and creative). It enables you to create relevant ads and deliver personalized versions to each viewer.

Using Advantage+ Creative For Catalog Ads

Before we understand this feature, you must know the different creative ad options offered for creating catalog ads. These include the following:

• Video assets – Upload a video of your products. You can also use creative automation to boost ad delivery.
  
• Categories – This helps advertisers show their products while matching customers’ interests. Customers will see four categories that fit their likes and buying intentions.
  
• Overlays – Easily add price or discount tags on specific products.
  
• Ad targeting options – With enhanced targeting, you can easily remarket products or reach new customers.

Advantage+ Creative for catalogues automatically tailors your ad format, creative, and destination for each customer while using your catalog and helps improve your overall catalog ads.

Here’s how you can effectively use it:

• The ad will first appear in either carousel or collection format, with the possibility of including other formats like video assets in the future. It will select the best format for each ad impression depending on the interest of the customer.

• For the collection cover, you can choose an auto-generated video from the Advantage+ catalog or upload your own image/video. This applies to the collection format.

• For descriptions in the carousel ad format, you can add details like free shipping or price, and the system will decide which text to display based on customer relevance.

This feature helps make your ads more personalized and relevant. Now, let’s focus on Meta’s design guidelines for an enhanced ad experience.

Creative Guidelines For Meta Catalog Ads

Check out individual guidelines for different kinds of ads:

For Images:

For Ad Copies:

For optimal performance, it’s important to optimize your catalog ads. Let’s see how you can do it:

For Product Catalogs

• For items with variations like sizes or colors, set them up in your catalog to ensure they display correctly.
  
• Keep all items in a single catalog for easier management, better match rates, and consolidated data, improving ad performance. Only one catalogue can be connected per commerce account for Shops.
  
• Group items into product sets to narrow down selections for ads and feature collections in your Facebook or Instagram shop.
  
• Ensure all items comply with policies and have valid data, or they won’t appear in ads or Shops.
  
• Link a pixel or SDK to your catalog to run Advantage+ catalog ads. For effective targeting, aim for a catalogue match rate above 75%.
  
• Limit frequent changes to product data, as this triggers reviews and temporarily makes items unavailable for ads. Safe fields for editing include price and availability.
  
• Ensure team members or partners have the right permissions in Business Manager for catalog access.

Optimizing Meta Catalog Ads For Product Recommendations

• Keep your product data current. Ensure prices and availability match what’s on your website. Mark out-of-stock items or archive them to avoid displaying them in ads.
  
• Use a large product set. A bigger set improves the selection of suitable items, as products outside the set won’t be included in recommendations.
  
• Check for errors in your Meta pixel and catalog. Misconfiguration or product errors can prevent relevant recommendations in ads.
  
• Optimize for purchase and registration events. Recommendations perform better when focused on goals like purchases or registrations rather than actions like content views or adding to a cart.

Conclusion

To summarize, Advantage+ catalog ads are the right fit for your ad campaigns for a personalized and enhanced targeting experience. They not only use the power of machine learning but also maximize productivity by displaying Meta catalog ads to relevant consumers.

So, sit back and relax while Advantage+ does the job for you!

FAQs

How do Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads work?

Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads automatically generate ads using the products listed in your catalog. They leverage Meta’s machine learning to show the most relevant products to users, optimizing ad performance by considering factors like user engagement history, browsing behavior, and purchasing patterns.

Is there a difference between Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads and Meta Catalog Ads?

Yes, there is a difference between Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads and Meta Catalog Ads. Advantage+ Catalog Ads use automation and machine learning to optimize ad targeting and creative elements, reducing the need for manual management.

In contrast, Meta Catalog Ads require more hands-on setup, where advertisers manually create dynamic ads based on user behavior. While both are effective, Advantage+ focuses on performance optimization through automation, while Catalog Ads offer more advertiser control.

What do I need to set up Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads?

To set up Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads, you’ll need:

A product catalog uploaded to Meta (via Facebook Commerce Manager or Shopify integration). A Meta Business account. A connected Facebook Pixel or Conversions API to track user activity and optimize ads. Even SDK can be added for mobile devices (iOS & Android).

How can I optimize Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads for better results?

How does Meta’s AI optimize my ads in Advantage+?

Meta’s AI learns from real-time user behavior and engagement data. It adjusts your ad delivery based on which products, creatives, and placements resonate most with users. The AI continually optimizes which products are displayed, helping improve click-through rates and conversion outcomes.

What is the cost structure of Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads?

Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads operate on a cost-per-impression (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis, depending on your campaign settings. The final cost is influenced by your budget, audience targeting, and how competitive the ad space is at the time.