How to Set Up Meta Advantage+ Catalogue Ads

Advantage+ catalogue ads, still widely called dynamic product ads, build an ad from each product in your catalogue and show it to the people most likely to buy it. Setting them up is mostly about getting three things to agree: your catalogue, your pixel events and your campaign. When they don’t, the ads either won’t deliver or show the wrong products.

This guide goes through the setup in order. Meta’s menus change often and differ between accounts, so we describe what each step needs to achieve rather than every click. If a label in Ads Manager doesn’t match, look for the step’s purpose.

A note on names: the product has been called dynamic ads, dynamic product ads and Advantage+ catalog ads. Meta’s Help Centre now titles its pages “ads showing product media”. They’re all the same thing. If you’re new to them, start with what dynamic product ads are and how they work.

Before you start

Meta’s developer documentation lists the prerequisites:

A Facebook Page for the business.
The Meta Pixel base code on your site, or the Conversions API sending the same events.
Access to Ads Manager.

You’ll also need a product catalogue in Commerce Manager. That’s step 1.

Step 1: create the catalogue and connect your feed

In Commerce Manager, create a catalogue for ecommerce products. Then give it products. The common routes:

A platform integration, such as Shopify’s Facebook and Instagram sales channel.
A scheduled feed: a URL to a product feed file that Meta fetches on a schedule you set.
A feed tool or partner that sends products to the catalogue through Meta’s API.

Whichever you choose, check the basics against Meta’s catalogue field reference: a unique id for every product, a title, a price with a currency code, an image_link to a JPEG or PNG of at least 500 x 500 pixels, a link to the product page, and availability. Our Meta catalogue ads specs post has the full list of limits.

Get the IDs right now. The id in the catalogue is what your pixel events need to send back. If your catalogue uses SKUs and your site’s pixel sends Shopify variant IDs, Meta can’t match them, and retargeting won’t work.

Step 2: send the right pixel events

Meta’s documentation for catalogue ads lists three standard events, each of which needs either content_ids or contents:

Event	When it fires
`ViewContent`	Someone views a product page
`AddToCart`	Someone adds a product to the basket
`Purchase`	Someone completes an order

The documentation is clear that the IDs must match the IDs in your product catalogue. For a product with variants, that usually means sending the variant ID if your catalogue lists variants, not the parent product ID.

Then connect the pixel to the catalogue as an event data source in Commerce Manager. Meta says the Events Data Sources tab can take up to 24 hours to show tracked events. When it does, check the match rate. A low match rate almost always means the IDs don’t line up.

Step 3: build product sets

A product set is a filtered slice of the catalogue. You don’t need one to start, since you can advertise the whole catalogue, but they give you control:

Exclude products you don’t want to advertise: out of stock, low margin, gift cards.
Split by category, price band or brand, so each can have its own budget or creative.
Group sale products, using a custom label in the feed, for promotions.

Product sets filter on catalogue fields, so the cleaner your feed, the more useful your sets. Five custom labels, custom_label_0 to custom_label_4, are there for exactly this kind of grouping.

Step 4: create the campaign

In Ads Manager:

Create a campaign with the Sales objective.
Choose the setup that uses your catalogue, and select the catalogue from step 1. In manual sales campaigns this is a catalogue setting at campaign level.
Set the budget. Catalogue ads need enough budget to get through the learning phase, so a few well-funded ad sets usually do better than many small ones.

Step 5: set up the ad set

At the ad set level you choose which products and who sees them:

Product set: all products, or one of the sets from step 3.
Audience: retargeting people who viewed or added products to their basket, or a broad audience that lets Meta find new buyers for your products. Many advertisers run both, as separate ad sets. Retargeting relies entirely on the pixel matching from step 2.
Placements: Advantage+ placements let Meta use Feeds, Stories, Reels and more. Think about how your product images will look in a full-screen 9:16 placement before you include them.

Step 6: create the ad

Catalogue ads can run as a carousel, a single image or a collection. In the ad you set:

Format. Carousel shows several products at once and is a common choice for retargeting.
Text. Primary text and headline can include catalogue fields such as the product name or price, so the text changes with the product.
Catalogue creative options. Advantage+ creative for catalog includes settings such as dynamic overlays, which add catalogue information like the price on top of the image, and image touch-ups, which fit images to the placement. Meta’s documentation explains that when no image matches the placement’s ratio, the image may be cropped, padded or both. We compared these options with designing your own in Meta catalogue ad frames and overlays.

Before you publish, open the previews for each placement and click through several products. Look for cropped products, unreadable prices and titles cut off mid-word.

Step 7: check it’s working

In the first few days:

Delivery: is the ad spending and leaving the learning phase?
Products: in the breakdowns, are the products being shown the ones you’d expect?
Catalogue diagnostics: Commerce Manager shows rejected products and event matching problems. Fix them at the source, in the feed or on the site.
Prices: pick a few products and compare the price in the ad with the price on the site.

Making the ads look like your brand

Out of the box, catalogue ads show your product photos as they are. That’s often fine for retargeting. For prospecting, or when your photos are plain packshots, a branded design can help: your colours, your type, the price and sale details laid out properly for each format.

You can do this with Meta’s overlays, or by sending branded images to the catalogue. Our DPA templates post covers the layouts, and Meta Andromeda: what it means for catalogue ads explains why distinct creative matters more than it used to.

The DPA Creative Editor renders one template for every product in your feed, in square, portrait or story, and sends the images to your Meta catalogue through our catalogue sync or your feed URL.

Frequently asked questions

What do I need before setting up Advantage+ catalogue ads?

A Facebook Page, a product catalogue in Commerce Manager, and the Meta Pixel (or the Conversions API) sending ViewContent, AddToCart and Purchase events with product IDs that match your catalogue.

Which pixel events do catalogue ads need?

Meta's developer documentation lists ViewContent, AddToCart and Purchase, each with content_ids or contents. The IDs must match the IDs in your product catalogue.

How long until Meta matches pixel events to my catalogue?

Meta's documentation says the Events Data Sources tab in Commerce Manager can take up to 24 hours to show tracked events.

Are Advantage+ catalogue ads the same as dynamic product ads?

Yes. Dynamic product ads were renamed Advantage+ catalog ads, and Meta's Help Centre now files them under ads showing product media. The way they work is the same: Meta builds each ad from a product in your catalogue.

How to set up Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads, step by step