How to Create Profitable Facebook Catalog Ads [Tips + 2025 Updates]

Facebook catalog ads are one of the easiest ways to show the right products to the right people across Meta. 

They work, but they’re often underused or poorly designed. Most brands stop at uploading a catalog and letting the algorithm run with it. However, that’s not enough anymore.

Meta's feed is saturated with nearly identical product ads. When every competitor uses the same white-background product images pulled straight from their website, yours simply blend in rather than stand out.

This guide breaks down how catalog ads work, when to use them, and what you need to get better results. 

We’ll also show you how to make your feed stand out, especially if you’re tired of boring white-background ads that don’t reflect your brand. 

What are Facebook catalog ads?

Facebook catalog ads go by many names. 

You might hear them called dynamic product ads, product feed ads, or Meta Advantage+ catalog ads (which is what Meta now calls them).

The main idea behind Facebook catalog ads is to automatically promote your entire product catalog, without manually building individual ads for every product.

These ads require you to upload your product feed or catalogue into the Meta ecosystem first. 

Then, Meta uses machine learning to decide which products to show and to whom. The ads are usually served to people who’ve already interacted with your products or website, such as someone who added an item to their cart or spent time looking at a product page.

Meta calls it targeting based on 'interests, intent, and actions,' whether that’s activity on your site, Facebook, Instagram, or even off-site behavior that Meta tracks.

These product feed ads can be displayed as carousels, single (but dynamic) images, videos, or collection ads.

Where are you bound to see them?

They are available on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Meta Audience Network.

Catalog ads are most useful if you have multiple products or strong visual content. 

They are ideal for eCommerce brands, DTC stores, hotels, travel, real estate, or automotive businesses. 

However, we'll zero in on eCommerce brands and DTC stores for today's guide. 

Requirements for running Facebook catalog ads

Before Meta can start showing your products to the right people, there are a few things you need to have in place. Catalog ads aren’t plug-and-play, at least not if you want them to perform well.

Here's all that needs to be in place before you launch.

1. Your product feed

The product catalog is the brain behind your ads. It holds all the key information Meta needs to show your products in ads. 

You’ll upload it through Commerce Manager or a third-party feed tool, using a format Meta supports, like CSV, Excel, Google Sheets, or XML. 

The system can handle massive inventories, up to a million products per feed. If you have more than that, split them into separate catalogs, then upload.

2. Product sets

Once the catalog is in, don’t just leave it as one giant list. 

Use product sets to organize your inventory into groups, such as by category, price range, or discount level. 

You'll have more control later when you want to target specific segments or run seasonal promos when you separate your catalog.

3. The technical pieces

Beyond the feed, you’ll need a few technical basics in place. 

For starters, link your Meta Business Manager to your ad account. And then, install the Facebook Pixel on your website or store so Meta can track user actions, which will then be used to optimize the product feed ads. 

If you have an app, install the Facebook SDK and set up the correct app events.

4. Finally, ensure your catalog is properly matched to user behavior

Meta suggests aiming for a catalog match rate of at least 75%, which means most of the products people interact with on your site are present in your feed and eligible for ads. 

A lower match rate will cause ads to show irrelevant or out-of-stock items, and that’s a fast track to wasted spend.

And one last thing: don’t skimp on your visuals. 

Meta can automate a lot, but it can’t fix a bad product photo. Make sure your images are clean, high-quality, and consistent across your catalog. 

The algorithm can’t sell what doesn’t look good.

When to run Facebook catalog ads

Even though catalog ads are highly effective, they’re not ideal for every occasion. But in these #5 situations, they are the right call.

• Reach people who’ve shown interest in products on your website or app via retargeting.
• Prospect people who have shown interest in the type of products you sell but haven’t interacted with your website or store yet.
• Upsell and cross-sell products to customers who have already trusted your brand before by purchasing.
• Promoting time-sensitive offers like Black Friday or flash sales by using product sets filtered by price drop, discount, or sale to push urgency.
• Running location-based catalog ads for retail chains, a multi-location retailer, or a DTC brand with physical stores. You can dynamically serve products available in-store, localized to the user’s area, to drive foot traffic.

How to set up catalog ads on Facebook

Setting up catalog ads isn't complicated, but how you structure them affects everything from creative control to campaign performance.

Check out this article for a more detailed version, but here are the basics.

Start by uploading your product feed through Meta’s Commerce Manager. This is where you’ll build your catalog. Make sure your feed includes clean titles, images, pricing, availability, etc, and take the time to create product sets. 

When your catalog is ready, head to Ads Manager and click Create. 

Choose Sales as your campaign objective. From there, you’ll need to decide where to apply your catalog. This choice directly affects how flexible your ad setup will be.

If you select the catalog at the campaign level, the entire campaign becomes locked to that catalog. 

All ad creatives will pull dynamically from the feed, and you won’t be able to manually upload individual images or videos. 

It’s an efficient and fully automated approach, but it limits creative input.

If you want more control over your visuals, choose the catalog at the ad level. 

This unlocks more flexibility. You can still use dynamic product ads but mix in static creatives, tailor messaging for different ad sets, or test formats that aren’t strictly tied to the product feed. 

It’s useful for brands that want to layer in storytelling or seasonal messaging without losing the scale benefits of catalog ads.

Now it’s time to move into the ad set stage, where you’ll define your audience, budget, placements, and optimization goal.

• Audience: Here, you can use custom, broad, or lookalike audiences depending on your objectives. With Advantage+ catalog ads, Meta will also help refine your reach using its machine learning.
• Budget: Choose your daily or lifetime budget based on how aggressively you want to scale. You can start small while testing, then increase once you know what’s converting.
• Placements: Meta recommends automatic placements, especially if you're running Advantage+ campaigns. That setting allows your catalog ads to appear across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Meta Audience Network.

Next, at the ad level, you’ll configure how the creative is pulled from your catalog and which product set in particular. This is where you also preview what your ads look like.

Facebook will dynamically swap in different products based on your audience, so you want to ensure formatting, text length, and visuals all look right across different SKUs.

Once you’ve checked everything, click Publish.

From here, Meta takes over. Your ads will start delivering based on real-time user behavior, pulling from your live product feed to serve the most relevant products to the most likely buyers.

Most catalog ads look boring… but there’s a fix for that

Most Facebook catalog ads look the same. They feature a plain white background, a floating product, and, in many cases, no context or personality in the image. 

It gets worse if you're selling a popular product. There's little for a shopper to connect with. It all blends in.

Yes, Meta will try to show your ads to the right people at the right time, but the creative still does the selling. 

So much so that campaigns with strong creative outperform weak ones by up to 35% according to a Nielsen study.

You don’t have to settle for the generic look.

Cropink can help you turn a plain product feed into branded, high-converting ads without designing each one manually. 

You upload your catalog once and set a few visual rules (like your fonts, brand colors, layout, or image style), and Cropink automatically maps that design across every product in your feed.

So instead of a plain white boring background, your catalog ads start looking like this:

You can layer in details like pricing, discount codes, lifestyle backgrounds, or color variations to make your ads feel more personal. 

And because Cropink is built for Meta Advantage+ catalog ads, it updates dynamically as your feed changes, so your ads always use the most up-to-date creatives. 

Advanced audience segmentation for catalog ads on Facebook 

You can run two types of Facebook catalog ads depending on who you're trying to reach:

• DPA (dynamic product ads) for people who’ve already interacted with your brand
• DABA (dynamic ads for broad audiences) for reaching new potential customers

We’ll differentiate them later. 

First, let’s look at the must-have audience types when running catalog ads on Facebook.

Here are the #4 types of catalog custom audiences to set up:

Viewed or added to cart but not purchased
Best for retargeting
Example: People who browsed specific product pages or added items to cart but didn’t complete checkout

Previous purchasers
Best for upselling or cross-selling
Example: Show higher-tier products or related items to people who have trusted your brand before

Broad audience (interest-based or lookalikes)
Best for prospecting
Example: People who haven’t interacted with your brand but have similar traits to your customers

Custom segment based on behavior (e.g., frequent visitors, high spenders)
Best for refined cross-sell or high-value upsell strategies
Example: Offer premium bundles to users with high purchase frequency or cart value

You can build these using Catalog Sales > Custom Audiences in Ads Manager, or directly in the audience section while creating your campaign. 

Facebook will then dynamically serve products from your catalog based on how each person has interacted with your store, or how similar they are to your ideal customer.

Now, let’s look at the differences between DPA and DABA ads

Bottom of the funnel DPA 

DPA campaigns target people who’ve engaged with your site or products. That includes actions like viewing items, adding to cart, or browsing collections. Facebook then shows them the same or similar products from your catalog.

This kind of ad works best for users close to buying and just need a nudge.

Top of the funnel DABA

DABA campaigns are for people who haven’t interacted with your brand yet, but might be interested based on their online behavior. 

Facebook uses machine learning to identify these signals. So, if someone browses similar products elsewhere or engages with related topics, Facebook serves them items from your catalog.

They are ideal if your strategy is to grow brand awareness or discover new buyers.

DPA vs. DABA

Use DPA when you want to close sales, and DABA when you want to find new buyers.

Changes to audience targeting in Advantage+ catalog ads in 2025

If you've used Advantage+ catalog ads with the sales objective, you may have noticed a recent change; audience types are no longer available. 

This audience selection is no longer an option.

But don’t worry. You can still reach the right people using custom audiences.

Instead of choosing from preset options, you'll now create your own custom audiences based on user behavior (like website visitors, people who viewed products, or added to cart). 

You can then include or exclude these audiences when setting up your ad set.

Budget optimization strategies for Facebook catalog ad campaigns

Running Facebook catalog ads without a clear budget strategy is like shooting in the dark. 

You might hit something, but you won’t know why or how to do it again. 

To make your ad spend work, you need to know where your money is going, what role each campaign plays, and how to build toward long-term growth, not just quick wins.

These are our top #4 strategies to make that happen.

1. Use broad audiences to feed the funnel

Dynamic ads with broad targeting can serve both prospecting and retargeting functions. 

They bring new people into your ecosystem while simultaneously retargeting users through advanced matching. 

Sometimes, they even identify users who’ve interacted with competitor products.

Although these ads may have a higher cost per result, they help feed your funnel. 

If you already have strong bottom-of-funnel campaigns running, they can help turn those new visitors into buyers and balance out the higher upfront cost over time.

2. Build a testing mindset into your budget

Your best-performing campaign won’t come from guessing. 

It will come from testing. So yes, test the titles, audience segments, and your creatives to uncover what works for your brand.

3. Set different bids based on audience value

Someone who just viewed a product page yesterday is likelier to buy than someone who browsed your site last month.

Therefore, segment your audiences by recency and behavior. 

Assign higher budgets or bids to segments with the highest buying intent. This helps you spend more on the people most likely to convert.

4. Allocate more spend to proven performers

Once a campaign or ad set shows consistent results, increase its budget gradually, 10 to 20% every few days. Doing it this way helps you scale without resetting Facebook’s learning phase.

Do not dump large amounts of budget into new campaigns right away. Let the algorithm learn before scaling.

FAQs

What are catalog ads on Facebook?

Catalog ads (also called dynamic product ads) automatically show your products to people who've shown interest in them across Meta platforms. They pull from your product feed and use machine learning to display the right products to the right audience based on their behavior and interests to the right audience.

What is the difference between carousel ads and catalog ads?

Carousel ads are a format that shows multiple images in a single ad unit. Contrarily, catalog ads are a campaign type that pulls products from your feed and can appear as carousels, single images, videos, or collections. A carousel can be one format used to display catalog ads.

Should I use Advantage+ catalog ads?

Advantage+ uses Meta’s technology to automatically show your ads to the right people. It makes running ads easier and can improve results, especially if you want to advertise a large catalog.

Final thoughts

Catalog ads are among the most effective ads for brands with extensive product catalogs. 

However, they're also prone to looking boring and similar to competitors. 

This visual sameness can hurt your performance because when shoppers see identical white-background product images from multiple brands, yours won't stand out.

The solution is adding branded design elements that make your products instantly recognizable. 

Our data shows this approach works dramatically better than standard catalog ads. 

That said, breaking through the sea of sameness doesn't require redesigning each product image manually. You can use a product feed ad automation tool.

Cropink is one of the most affordable and efficient in the industry. 

It helps you enrich your catalog ads so they're easy to differentiate and capture customer interest. In fact, when Cropink implemented enriched catalog ads for one of our clients, we saw:

• 3× higher conversion rates
• 9× higher ROAS
• 4× higher average order value (AOV)

Cropink can help you automate adding design elements like price, color, lifestyle images, or discounts to make your catalog ads more engaging and personalized. 

Try it for free today. The first 100 products are free, and you get our full features.

Sources

1. Facebook. Data feed fields and specifications for catalogs in Commerce Manager
2. Facebook. Tips for product recommendations in Advantage+ catalog ads
3. YouTube. Meta Catalog Ads VS DPA... What's The Difference?
4. Facebook. Study examines 57 Meta ‘levers,’ identifies top 4 for driving media effectiveness
5. Social Media Examiner. Successful Facebook Ads on a Small Budget