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If you’re running paid social campaigns and trying to figure out which ad format to use, it’s easy to get confused between carousel ads and catalog ads. They both feature multiple images. They’re both swipeable. And they both show up all over your Instagram feed. But while they may look similar, they’re built differently, and they serve very different goals.
Carousel ads give you total creative control. Catalog ads run on autopilot. One’s a curated story; the other’s a performance engine. And knowing how to use them, and when to use them, can make a serious difference in your results.
Let’s unpack the differences, show how brands are using both, and look at how one company, Twillory, crushed their ROAS by combining these formats in a smart, scalable way.
Carousel ads are swipeable, multi-card ads that let you display several images or videos in a single unit. Each card has its own headline, CTA, and destination link. Think of it like a custom slideshow for your brand. You control the narrative. You decide what’s on each card. You guide the user experience from start to finish.
This format is a favorite for brands that want to showcase multiple product features, highlight a series of benefits, or even walk users through a step-by-step process. It's all about visual storytelling. You’ll often see them used to introduce a new collection, highlight before-and-after results, or create an immersive journey that users can swipe through at their own pace.
Because carousel ads are fully manual, they’re perfect when you want to build an emotional connection or show off your brand personality. They work especially well on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, where people expect more visually driven, narrative-style content.
Catalog ads are a broad ad format that pull from your product catalog. It’s a structured feed of everything you sell, including images, pricing, availability, and descriptions. These ads can show up in a few different ways across platforms, but the key idea is the same: instead of manually building each creative, you're letting your catalog do the work.
Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) are a type of catalog ad. They're the delivery mechanism, essentially, how your catalog gets matched to individual users based on their behavior. DPAs work by automatically serving the most relevant product (or products) to each person, whether they recently browsed your site, added something to their cart, or looked at a similar brand.
So while you might hear people use the terms interchangeably, here’s the better way to think about it: catalog ads are the format, DPAs are how they’re distributed. Catalog = the what. DPA = the how.
When set up correctly, catalog ads can help you retarget shoppers, prospect new audiences with personalized recommendations, and scale your product marketing without building dozens (or hundreds) of separate creatives. Platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok all support catalog-based formats, and the results, especially when combined with clean product data and solid segmentation can be incredibly efficient.
If you’re trying to craft a narrative or educate your audience, carousel ads are your friend. Let’s say you’re launching a new product and you want to show off the key benefits, share a testimonial, and close with a limited-time offer. That’s a perfect use case for a carousel. You’re taking users on a journey, one that you’ve carefully designed and optimized.
They’re also great when you want more creative control. You can align each card with a different visual style, product use case, or brand message. Want to use bold headlines, animated gifs, or on-brand lifestyle shots? Carousel ads give you that freedom.
Just keep in mind that this format requires more time and effort to build. Every card has to be manually created, and performance insights usually come from A/B testing entire ads rather than individual components. Still, when done well, carousel ads feel more human, more engaging, and more like a brand experience than just another product plug.
Catalog ads are built for efficiency. If your goal is to retarget shoppers, scale your product exposure, or automate as much of the process as possible, this is the format you want. Once your product feed is synced and your campaign is live, you can let the algorithm do the heavy lifting.
This is especially useful if you have hundreds (or thousands) of SKUs. Rather than manually building dozens of ad variations, catalog ads pull directly from your inventory and adapt based on what your audience is doing online. If someone viewed a product but didn’t purchase, catalog ads can remind them. If someone is in-market for a certain category, catalog ads can surface your most relevant options.
They’re not as flashy as carousel ads, but they get the job done—especially when you combine them with performance creative tools that make the visuals pop. In fact, with platforms like Marpipe, you can apply modular design to your catalog ads and test out creative variations at scale without starting from scratch every time.
This is where a lot of confusion comes in. On Meta, for example, catalog ads often show up in a swipeable carousel-style format, but don’t let the layout fool you. Even though they look like a carousel ad, they’re still dynamically generated, and you’re not designing each card manually.
This hybrid format is where things get really interesting. With the right setup, you can use the storytelling style of carousels with the automation of catalog ads. Platforms like Marpipe take that one step further by letting you dynamically test templates, creative components, and messaging across catalog-driven ads so you get the best of both worlds: performance and polish.
Let’s bring this to life with a real-world example.
Twillory, a menswear brand known for comfortable performance dress shirts, wanted to level up their advertising strategy. They were facing a common challenge: their creatives were hitting a wall. Performance was starting to plateau, ROAS was slipping, and building new assets was taking too long.
They didn’t want to choose between creative quality and automation. So they didn’t. With Marpipe, Twillory launched a strategy that included both carousel and catalog ads, and the results were massive.
First, they used carousel ads to spotlight new products and unique value props. They designed each card to tell a cohesive story from the fit and stretch of the shirts to the moisture-wicking fabric and free shipping guarantee. These ads weren’t just about the product; they were about the experience of wearing Twillory.
At the same time, they scaled their catalog ads using Marpipe’s dynamic creative testing platform. They built modular templates that plugged into their product feed and tested hundreds of creative combinations, different headlines, product angles, backgrounds, CTAs, all optimized to drive conversions.
This one-two punch worked. Twillory saw a 127% lift in ROAS, unlocked new insights about what creative elements actually moved the needle, and scaled their campaigns faster than ever before—all while reducing the lift on their internal team.
It’s a masterclass in using both formats together. Carousel ads build brand connections; catalog ads closed the sale.
Honestly? You probably need both. It depends on your marketing goals.
Carousel ads are for storytelling, engagement, and creative control. Catalog ads are for scale, personalization, and conversion. They’re not competitors—they’re collaborators. And when you use them together, the impact multiplies.
Start with the format that matches your goal. Want to build awareness or explain your product in a compelling way? Carousel. Want to retarget site visitors or promote hundreds of products at once? Catalog.
And if you want to do it all—without manually rebuilding creatives every week—Marpipe can help. Our platform makes it easy to design, test, and optimize both carousel and catalog ads at scale. That means better results, less guesswork, and faster growth.
Carousel ads and catalog ads aren’t competing, they’re complementary.
The smartest brands know how to use both strategically. They tell a compelling story up top, then follow up with personalized product recommendations that close the loop. And with the optimization tool from Marpipe, you don’t have to pick one format, you can double down on what works. Drill into product sets like best sellers or highest AOV, then scale them across the formats that perform best. Want to turn your ad strategy into a conversion machine?
See how Marpipe helps brands test and scale high-performing ads.
