9 Ways to Make Thumb-stopping Catalog Ads (DABA, DPA) with Customizable Templates

Digital advertising is one of the most efficient ways to drive highly relevant traffic to an eCommerce store – and Meta is the biggest ad platform around.

Since the iOS 14.5 update (the infamous ad-pocalypse), there has been a growing emphasis on the quality of ad creatives. Advertisers now spend a lot of time and energy creating cost-efficient, and high-return ads.

And one of the more popular ad formats these days is the dynamic catalog ad!

The dynamic ad has been gaining traction with advertisers because it provides data-driven targeting for all products in a store, at scale.

What does that result in? Cost-efficient, and high-return ads.

Meta’s dynamic catalog ads are a powerful way to showcase your products to potential customers who have shown interest in them. They automatically display the most relevant products from your catalog based on the customer’s browsing behavior, preferences, and location.

Socioh’s LLAs are still performing very well for most of our users.

Learn more about dynamic product ads (DABA, DPA) here.

Traditionally, however, dynamic ads have always looked like this:

An example of a handbag store
An example of a jewelry store

Boring and generic right?

Moreover, the only way to communicate your marketing messages is to heavily rely on the ad caption, headline, and description – which can easily get lost in a scroll!

So, what do you do? 

This is where Socioh’s Branded Catalog tool steps in. It allows you to fully customize & automate your dynamic ads – without losing any learnings!

Branded Catalogs – Customizing Your Dynamic Ads

‍Socioh’s Branded Catalogs enhance your dynamic ads by giving you complete control over the dynamic ad creative.

Hone in on your messaging & design to create highly relevant ads for your customers.

All of this in minutes, without losing any campaign learnings!

Wondering how to create dynamic ads that stand out with Socioh’s Branded Catalogs?

Here are 9 unique ways you can spruce up your dynamic catalog ads and boost your ROAS today.

9 different ways you can customize your Facebook Dynamic Ads using Socioh:

1. Automate image fit

Problem: If your primary product images are not square (1:1), ugly white bars appear on the sides of the images in the catalog. This can happen for products images, as well as secondary lifestyle images in your product listing.

Solution: Eliminate the white bars and customize your catalog designs with marketing messages, automation or graphic elements, to best fit your product images.

Here’s how brands like Noli Yoga, and Clothing Arts use lifestyle images to boost their conversions:

Noli Yoga and Clothing Arts using lifestyle images in their catalog ads

2. Secondary product images

Problem: Traditionally, catalogs show only the first image of the product listing, which is usually the product image on a plain white background (from the product page). There’s no way to showcase secondary images or lifestyle shots.

Solution: Select any secondary image from your product listings or upload custom images directly to Socioh to use in your catalog.

Australian jewelry brand, Stone Hilda uses secondary lifestyle images and Socioh’s auto-fit feature to position & place their lifestyle images perfectly, at scale.

Stoned Hila using lifestyle images in their catalog ads

3. Highlight multiple images

Problem: Let’s take an apparel store. These stores usually have multiple product images on the product page – showing the products from various angles, with different fittings, or in different environments. But the dynamic ad only shows one image at a time.

Solution: Showcase multiple images right in your dynamic ad so your shoppers are better informed about the products – whether it’s fitting & styling for apparel or different locations for the placement of a sofa.

Here’s how Plant Faced Clothing, a streetwear brand, used mosaic-style catalog ads to enhance its product feed:

By Plant-Faced Clothing

Korriko, a pet supply store, stands out by using a unique, two-image design with product & lifestyle images in their dynamic ads:

By Korriko

Check out other D2C brands using Branded Catalogs to show off their lifestyle images.

4. Category-specific targeting

Problem: Standard dynamic ads include all your products in one catalog, reducing opportunities to target specific audiences.

Solution: Your catalog doesn’t have to include all your products. Choose specific categories in your catalog to target audiences only interested in those products. This makes your ads highly relevant, profitable, and spend-efficient.

For eg., Ted Baker ran a catalog ad with only men’s apparel and targeted only male customers.

By Ted Baker

5. Promotional messages & FOMO

Problem: Your marketing messages are limited to your ad captions and headlines. There is no way to visually differentiate your dynamic ads during seasonal shopping periods like Black Friday, or Mother’s Day.

Solution: Add sale stickers, offers, and marketing messages directly on your dynamic ad to create FOMO, and accelerate conversions. Design, iterate, and catch your audience’s eye.

Here’s how Canadian clothing brand, Boutique 1861, used inventory count automation & slashed prices to create urgency during their Black Friday sale:

By Boutique 1861

Schedule your promotional designs in advance – without losing any ad learnings! Learn more about Smart Switch here.

6. Discounted pricing

Problem: There is no way to design & highlight product-level discounts in your dynamic ad creative effectively. Meta’s stickers are too basic and allow very little control. You could add the discount details in your ad caption or description, but this is easily missed by shoppers.

Solution: Automatically include the old price, sale price & discount percentage for each product, so you can reduce wasted clicks.

Here are some unique ways to use strike-through pricing & discounts in your catalog designs:

7. Background removal

Problem: Some products are difficult to differentiate in the social media feed. Like bicycle tires, or nutritional supplements. And when they’re on a plain white background? They rarely catch the eye.

Solution: Automatically remove plain backgrounds from your products and replace them with on-brand backgrounds in just a few clicks. Add powerful imagery, textures, or gradients to make your product feed stand out.

Look at how the health supplement store Alpha Lion replaced white backgrounds in their catalogs with dramatic, on-brand colors and elements.

By Alpha Lion

8. User reviews (UGC)

Problem: For new customers, it’s often difficult to trust brands they’ve only recently discovered via promotions. So how do you convince and convert those leads?

Solution: There’s nothing better than great word of mouth. Highlight authentic 5-star reviews for each product in your dynamic catalog ad – imported directly from your review app.

You can also combine user reviews with multiple product images, and voilà – this is how pet supply store, 2 Houndz, created stunning designs that convert using their product reviews and multiple images.

By 2 Houndz

Socioh natively integrate with Yotpo, Stamped.io, Junip, and Judge.me but also support CSV uploads.

9. Rule-based automation

Problem: Context is key. With a regular product feed, there is no reliable way for you to communicate product-specific information, like product names, product sizes, color variations, etc.

Solution: Price, product titles, user reviews, custom meta fields — you name it. You can automate any data from your product listing into your catalog, to create stunning and context-rich dynamic ads.

Specialized uses product titles, compare-at prices, current prices, and product variants in this catalog featuring Bike Shoes, helping their DPAs stay on-brand and communicate value to their customers.

By Specialized

And there is so much more you can do with Socioh including multi-language catalogs, multi-currency catalogs, highlighting BNPL offers, etc.

The possibilities are endless.

Edit your DPAs without losing ad learnings!

Let’s say Mother’s Day is around the corner.

You’ve got a killer sale planned but the moment you edit your DPAs caption or headline, your campaign learnings are lost. 

How do you avoid resetting your campaign learning for your dynamic catalog ads?

With Smart Switch.

You can schedule your sales in advance or run an endless loop of changing designs – with no learnings lost.

You can also test & iterate designs, run flash sales, update branding, etc., all without any downside to ad performance.

Check out everything Smart Switch can do in this blog.

8-figure D2C brand increased its dynamic ad CTR by 70%.
See how and try it for yourself.

Is Socioh the right choice for your catalog ads?

Socioh is a toolkit for the hands-on advertiser, whether you’re an agency or you run ads in-house.

But Socioh will work only as well as you do.

If you invest some time and energy into understanding the tool and setting it up correctly, you can outperform most advertisers.

If, however, you are looking for a ‘set and forget’ model, then Socioh may not be the right app for you.

We believe that while automation is required to save time and enable functionality, compelling advertising needs human direction.

But you don’t have to do it alone. We’re here to help you along the way. We believe that our product can make you successful, and we work with you to help you set up for success.

If you don’t get results, you get a refund. No questions asked. Get Started NOW.

is a digital advertising platform for eCommerce brands. Our Branded Catalog is the industry leader in dynamic catalog advertising and product feeds.