How to Create Dynamic Ads on Facebook

Setting up individual ads for every single product in your online store is a guaranteed way to lose hours of your week. With Facebook's dynamic ads, you can automate that entire process, showing the right products to the right people at exactly the right time. This guide will walk you through setting up your catalog, a step-by-step campaign creation, and the best practices for getting powerful results.

What Exactly Are Facebook Dynamic Ads? (And Why You Should Be Using Them)

Facebook dynamic ads reach people who have already shown interest in your business by automatically showing them products from your catalog they’re likely to want. Instead of creating a separate ad for each of your 100 t-shirts, you create one ad template. Facebook then automatically pulls images, names, pricing, and other details from your product catalog to populate the ad, personalizing it for each person who sees it.

Here’s why they’re so effective:

• Personalization on a Massive Scale: Dynamic ads are masters of relevance. They can show ads for the exact product someone just viewed on your site, remind them of items left in their cart, or suggest similar products they might love.
• Epic Time-Saver: Once you set up the campaign, it works for you. You add new products to your catalog, and they automatically get included in your live ads without you having to lift a finger in Ads Manager.
• Powerful Retargeting Machine: This is an always-on system for bringing back high-intent shoppers. Someone looked at a pair of sneakers? They’ll see an ad for those sneakers in their feed later that day. It’s effective, automated, and one of the best ways to increase conversion rates.
• Discover New Customers: Dynamic ads aren’t just for retargeting. You can use them for broad prospecting to find new customers who have shown interest in products similar to yours across Facebook and Instagram, even if they’ve never heard of your brand before.

The Three Things You Need to Get Started

Before you jump into Ads Manager, you need to have a few foundational pieces in place. Getting these right from the start will make the entire process much smoother.

1. A Facebook Business Manager Account

This is the central hub where your ad account, Facebook Page, Pixel, and product catalogs all live. If you’re running ads for a business, you should already be using Business Manager (now called Meta Business Suite). If not, head to business.facebook.com to set one up.

2. The Meta Pixel (or Conversions API)

The Pixel is a small piece of code you install on your website. It’s what connects your website's activity to your Facebook ads, tracking actions (or "events") that users take. For dynamic ads, the Pixel needs to track key e-commerce events like:

• ViewContent: Someone views a specific product page.
• AddToCart: Someone adds an item to their shopping cart.
• Purchase: Someone completes a checkout.

This data tells Facebook who has seen which products, enabling the "dynamic" part of the ads. Setting up the Conversions API alongside the Pixel is also highly recommended for more reliable tracking.

3. A Product Catalog

The catalog is the engine of your dynamic ads. It’s essentially a file containing all the information about every product you sell. Think of it as a detailed spreadsheet that Facebook uses to build your ads. Each product in your catalog has attributes like ID, title, description, landing page URL, image URL, availability, and price.

Step-by-Step: How to Set Up Your Product Catalog

Getting your product catalog set up correctly is the most important step. Don't worry, it's more straightforward than it sounds, especially if you're on a major e-commerce platform.

Step 1: Go to Commerce Manager

Inside your Meta Business Suite or Business Manager, find the "Commerce Manager" tool. This is where all your catalogs and products are managed.

Step 2: Start the Catalog Creation Process

Click "Add Catalog" and select your business type. For most people reading this, you’ll choose "E-commerce (Products)."

Step 3: Add Your Products to the Catalog

Facebook gives you a few ways to upload your products. The method you choose mostly depends on how many products you have and what platform your store is built on.

• Platform Integration (The Easiest Way): If you use a platform like Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce, this is your best option. You can directly connect your e-commerce store to Facebook Commerce Manager. This automatically creates a catalog and keeps it synced. Any price changes, new products, or out-of-stock items will update automatically.
• Data Feed File (The Most Common Way): This involves uploading a spreadsheet file (like a CSV, TSV, or XML file). You can set it up to fetch the file on a regular schedule (e.g., daily) from a URL, like a hosted Google Sheet. This keeps your catalog up-to-date without manual re-uploads.
• Manual Upload: If you only have a handful of products, you can add them one by one right inside Commerce Manager. This is fine for getting started, but it's not scalable.

Step 4: Connect Your Pixel

This is where the magic happens. In your Catalog settings, go to "Events" and connect your Meta Pixel as an event data source. This allows Facebook to match the people visiting your product pages (tracked by the Pixel) with the correct items in your catalog, making personally-targeted ads possible.

Step 5: Create Product Sets (Smart &, Recommended)

Product sets are smaller groupings of items from your main catalog. They let you run more strategic campaigns. Instead of showing people products from your entire inventory, you could create sets for specific campaigns. For example:

• Bestsellers
• New Arrivals
• Menswear Under $50
• Handbags &, Accessories
• Items on Sale

You can create these based on rules (e.g., Category = "Shoes") or by manually selecting products. Creating sets gives you much more control and relevance in your campaigns.

Creating Your First Dynamic Ad Campaign

With your catalog set up and your pixel firing, you're ready to build the campaign in Ads Manager.

Step 1: Choose the Right Campaign Objective

In Ads Manager, click the green "Create" button. For your objective, choose Sales. A few years ago, this was called "Catalog Sales," and you may still see that in some interfaces, but Sales is the current standard.

Step 2: Point to Your Catalog at the Ad Set Level

After setting your campaign budget (Advantage Campaign Budget is a good choice here), move to the ad set level. This is where you connect the campaign to your product feed. You’ll see a section called "Catalog." Select the product catalog you just created. If you built any product sets, you can select one here.

Step 3: Choose Your Audience (Retargeting vs. Prospecting)

This is the most powerful part of the ad set. You get to decide who you want to show your dynamic ads to. You have two main options:

A. Retargeting Warm Audiences

This option finds people who have already engaged with your brand. Choose "Retarget ads to people who interacted with your products on and off Facebook." You can then get very specific:

• Viewed or Added to Cart but Not Purchased: This is the classic dynamic retargeting setup. It serves ads to people who showed strong buying intent but didn't finish the process. Set your timeframe (e.g., in the past 14 days) to keep it relevant.
• Added to Cart but Not Purchased: A smaller, but even higher-intent audience.
• Upsell Products: Show higher-end products to people who viewed or purchased items in a specific product set.
• Cross-sell Products: Show complementary products to people who recently made a purchase. For example, show lens wipes and camera bags to someone who just bought a camera.

B. Finding New Customers (Broad Audience Prospecting)

If you select "Find prospective customers even if they haven't interacted with your business," Facebook will go to work finding new people for you. It uses its data to target users who have behaved similarly to your existing customers or have shown interest in products like yours across the platform. This is a brilliant way to acquire new, highly qualified customers without relying on traditional interest or lookalike audiences.

Step 4: Configure Your Ad Creative

Finally, at the ad level, you design the template. You aren't creating a one-off ad, you're creating a flexible shell that Facebook will populate with your products.

First, choose your format. Carousel is a fantastic starting point for dynamic ads, as it lets you showcase multiple products in one ad. Collection is a powerful mobile-first format that creates an instant storefront experience when tapped.

Next, pull in data from your catalog using dynamic fields. In the text fields, you can add dynamic placeholders by clicking the little "+" icon:

• Primary Text: Start with some compelling copy that works for any product. For example: "Still thinking it over? Your next favorite is waiting for you."
• Headline: Use a dynamic field to pull in the product's name. It will look like {{product.name}}.
• Description: This is a great place to showcase the price: {{product.price}}.

You can even add dynamic information directly onto the images. Using the "Edit Creative" tool, you can add a catalog info overlay that BOLDLY displays the price or a percentage-off discount on top of each product image. This little trick can really make your ads stand out.

Best Practices to Make Your Dynamic Ads Shine

Building the campaign is one thing, optimizing it is another. Follow these tips to get the best performance.

• A High-Quality Catalog is Everything. Your ads are only as good as the product data feeding them. Use high-resolution, clutter-free images. Write clear, benefit-driven product titles and descriptions. Make sure your pricing and availability are always accurate.
• Segment Your Retargeting. Don't just lump everyone into a 30-day "viewed or added to cart" audience. Consider making separate ad sets for different time windows. The ad copy you show someone who viewed a product 3 days ago should be different from the copy for someone who viewed it 28 days ago.
• Use The Right Copy For The Right Audience. Your ad copy for a prospecting campaign targeting cold audiences should be different from your retargeting copy aimed at warm audiences. The first introduces the brand, the second reminds the customer.
• Always a Call to Action. A clear call to action, or CTA, is essential. Use a "Shop Now" button and make sure your URL links directly to the right product page. The less a customer has to click their way around a website, the fewer people who drop off before buying.
• Exclude Recent Purchasers. It costs you money and annoys customers to show them ads for a product they've just bought. Using the audience settings (or the custom audience settings), you can exclude anyone who's made a purchase within the previous X number of days, usually between 7-30 days ago. It's an easy setting to turn on and is too frequently forgotten, which is a waste of any advertiser's money. Make sure recent purchasers are excluded from your marketing audiences to maximize the effect of your investment!
• Don't Be Afraid To Experiment and Improve. Don’t guess what’s not performing to optimization. Instead, experiment and continually work on improvements. The best advertisers test everything: the offer, your bidding strategy, try a Single Image vs. a collection format, and don't just test your audiences, experiment with new audiences too to understand why they're underperforming. Facebook makes testing so easy that all advertisers get a chance to benefit from what might turn out to become revolutionary results, because the next big ad or strategy could be only a test (or a small insight!) away.

Final Thoughts

Dynamic ads take a little more work to set up on the front end, but the payoff is massive. They put your personalization efforts on autopilot, saving you time and delivering highly relevant ads that drive sales for both retargeting and prospecting. They are a must-use tool for any e-commerce business running ads on Meta's platforms.

After your dynamic ads bring in traffic and build your customer base, keeping your organic social feed active and engaging is vital for cultivating that brand relationship. At Postbase, we designed a platform to remove the friction from your daily social media workflow. When you have powerful advertising funnels working for you, you need an equally simple tool for planning, scheduling, and engaging with your community, not one that fights you on basic tasks. With our visual content calendar and rock-solid publishing, Postbase takes care of your day-to-day organic strategy so you can stay focused on the bigger picture.

```