How to customize your Meta Advantage+ catalog ads

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Meta’s Advantage+ catalog ads are one of the most profitable forms of advertising.

And yes, that’s right  — you already know them as dynamic catalog ads.

But how exactly do they work?

These ads use Meta’s machine learning algorithms in order to scale your ads when you have a large number of products.

They use all the data that Meta has on its users — their interests, browsing histories, searches, and click-and-catalog performance data — to automatically show your shoppers the most relevant listings.

And the best part?

With these ads, you no longer have to create individual ads for each and every item you sell. Instead of setting up 1,000s of ad sets manually, you can create a catalog with all of your products or services.

Based on how they target shoppers at different stages of their customer journey, there are two types of Meta Advantage+ catalog ads:

Advantage+ catalog ads for broad audiences or Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences (DABA ads) are prospecting ads that target consumers who have not yet purchased from your business or visited your website. However, these shoppers may have shown interest in brands similar to your own, or the types of products or services that you are offering.

Advantage+ catalog ads for retargeting or Dynamic Product Ads (DPA ads) for consumers who have expressed interest in specific products on your website to encourage them to make a purchase.

Since these are personalized ads, both these types of ads can be insanely profitable for stores

Meta’s advantage+ catalog ads and Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns.

Though these have deceptively similar names, Meta’s Advantage+ catalog ads are not to be confused with their Advantage+ campaigns.

While the Adv+ catalog ads refer to dynamic ads, the Adv+ campaign was launched by Meta in the beginning of 2022, as the next generation of dynamic ads.

With Advantage+ campaigns, Meta automatically creates tailored campaign settings, with a reduced number of manual tasks. All you have to do is add your best-performing creative (you can choose between catalog, image, and/or video). These campaigns use Meta’s advanced algorithms to automatically deliver shoppers the best creative, placement, and message mix to drive conversions.

On the other hand, when you’re using dynamic ads, you have to manually configure a campaign ad set, and ad, even though catalogs use Meta’s machine learning to deliver the best product listings to encourage shoppers to convert.

However, one of the biggest drawbacks of Meta’s Advantage+ catalog ads is that besides very limited stickers, Meta offers no way to customize them — and so you have a plain, boring, and often visually inconsistent product feed running as an ad!

So, how do you customize your Meta Advantage+ Catalogs?

With Meta’s ability to target efficiently hampered by iOS14, and the growing focus on Instagram Shops, it is now really important to test all creatives, including your dynamic ads.

But how do you do it? Is it even possible to design your dynamic ads let alone test them?

YES!

A number of tools like Socioh, Hunch, Marpipe, and others offer a way to enrich your product feed. Each promises the ability to design your product and test your dynamic creatives.

Let’s take a look at some of the important features you should look for when choosing a tool to customize your advantage+ catalog ads:

1. Get the perfect creative, every single time: Say goodbye to badly fitted, inconsistently-sized images or white borders in your lifestyle images.

With Socioh’s auto-fit options and variations for images with different WHR (width-height ratio), you get perfectly fitted product images so you never again have an ugly catalog ad.

Socioh Branded Catalog made by apparel brand Clothing Arts
Branded Catalog by apparel brand Clothing Arts

2. Choose any product image: Have secondary images (such as lifestyle images) in your feed you want to showcase? Choose any image from your product feed to create your catalog.

With Socioh, you can select your non-primary images in your catalog in one single click. What’s more, you can even create multi-image catalogs to show off your products. See examples of lifestyle images in Meta catalog ads made via Socioh.

Branded Catalog made by Burga, a d2c brand seling phone accessories
Branded Catalog by phone accessories brand Burga

3. Remove product backgrounds: Want to remove white backgrounds from your products so you can make your images stand out? You can use custom backgrounds to create visually stunning catalogs.

Use Socioh’s one-click background-removal tool to create catalogs that are perfectly on-brand — at scale! Try it!

Dynamic Catalog ad made by Buyceps, using Socioh's Branded Catalog tool
Branded Catalog by Buyceps, a brand that sells health and nutrition supplements

4. Add dynamic rules to communicate valuable information: Want to share discounts, cut prices, or other key information with your shoppers? Dynamic mapping options help you create catalogs that are automatically updated every time any product information changes.

With Socioh, your catalogs are always synced. You won’t have to worry about out-of-date prices or sold-out products again!

Auotmated dynamic ad made by Brumate using Socioh's Branded Catalog tooll
Branded Catalog by Brümate, which sells drink accessories

5. Showcase your social proof: Add reviews, media coverage and ratings in your catalogs to showcase just how popular your products are!

Socioh integrates with popular review platforms Yotpo, Judge.me, Junip, and Stamped.io — so you can pull in reviews for each product in just one click. Use a different platform? No problem — upload a .CSV file and you’re all set!

Adv+ Catalog Ad made by athleisure brand Noli using Socioh
Branded Catalog made by athleisure brand Noli

6. Add promotions, coupon codes, and more: Highlight any promotions or offers, showcase your bestsellers, or even show inventory on products that are selling out to convert shoppers faster.

Socioh’s intelligent automation lets you show relevant information directly onto your catalog design with easy, one-click shortcuts. Have specific metadata you want to add to your catalog? We’ve got you covered.

Brumate catallog ad made using Socioh's rule-based automation capabilities
Branded Catalog made by Brümate for their Cyber Monday promotion

7. Display BNPL options: Do you offer your customers Buy Now Pay Later options? Highlight affordability with BNPL stickers.

Use Socioh’s ready-to-use BNPL templates to showcase the exact amount of the first installment, so your customers find it hard not to shop from you.

BNPL template made by Korriko using Socioh's Branded catalogs
Branded Catalog by pet accessories brand Korriko

8. Test your dynamic creatives: With tools that let you customize your Adv+ catalog ads, you can now iterate on design so you and your creative team can focus on creating ads that convert.

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Socioh’s Smart Switch tool is designed to help advertisers switch their catalog designs and test dynamic ads at scale— all without losing campaign learnings. Learn more here.

Amazing, right? But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Not only do Socioh’s Branded Catalogs offer advertisers a massive opportunity by providing on-brand templates and rule-based automation for dynamic ads they also offer a complete creative toolkit to help DTC brands scale their Facebook and Instagram ads effectively. See more examples of catalog ads created by real brands using Socioh.

Want to see how to use Socioh’s Branded Catalogs to design your product feed for yourself? Book a demo or log in to your Socioh dashboard and send us a message — we’d be happy to get you started.

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