If you’ve been in the digital advertising game for a while, you’re probably very familiar with dynamic ads – if not, go check out our guide to dynamic product ads.
Back in 2023, Meta started pushing more machine learning into its targeting and bidding with the launch of Advantage+ Catalog Ads. It’s the evolution of dynamic ads: more signals, more automation, and more ways to let Meta match the right product to the right person.
With Advantage+ Catalog Ads, you can build campaigns that promote every product in your catalog, personalize delivery based on user behavior, and let Meta’s system optimize towards the highest-value conversions.
In this guide, we’ll cover how Advantage+ Catalog Ads work, how they differ from older setups, and what you can do to get better results from them—especially when you pair them with Marpipe for creative and feed management.
What are Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads?
Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads is the new name and upgraded version of what used to be called Dynamic Ads. Instead of building separate ads for each product, you connect a catalog and let Meta automatically generate and deliver personalized ads from that product feed.
You can create multiple ad variants for a single product and multiply that across your entire catalog. In practice, you end up with dozens of unique creatives per product all feeding a single campaign, giving Meta a much bigger creative surface to test and optimize.
Meta recommends 20–50 unique ads per product. Most teams aren’t set up to produce that volume manually, which is why tools matter. You can get started with Marpipe for free to easily create those variants using an intuitive creative editor and AI tools for background removal, messaging, and layout—without burning out your design team.
Once your ads are live, Meta shows them across Facebook, Instagram, and other placements. They’re not shown to just anyone—delivery is based on signals like browsing behavior, on-site events (via Pixel/CAPI), and past interactions with your products.
Requirements & Setup Checklist
Before you turn on Advantage+ Catalog Ads, make sure you’ve got the basics in place:
A Meta Business Manager and ad account
A product catalog with a valid feed (titles, images, prices, availability, etc.)
Meta Pixel and/or Conversions API on your site, or app events via SDK
Key events firing correctly (view content, add to cart, purchase)
Proper domain verification and conversion configuration
If you’re on Shopify, you can connect your product feed directly—but it’s worth cleaning and enriching that feed first. Marpipe gives you a free feed management tool to do that, so you’re not pushing messy data into Meta from day one.
The Different Types of Catalog Ad Formats
There are two main catalog ad formats in the Meta ecosystem: single-image and carousel. Both pull products from your catalog, but they behave a bit differently.
Single-image catalog ads show one product from your catalog at a time. The product is chosen dynamically based on the person’s behavior and likelihood to convert.
If someone has been browsing sunglasses across your site and other properties, they’re more likely to see a specific pair of sunglasses from your catalog rather than a random assortment. Single-image formats work well for focused product pushes, higher-ticket items, or where you want a simple “one product, one message” layout.
Carousel Ad Formats (Collection Ads)
Carousel or collection-style catalog ads show multiple products at once. Instead of one product per impression, you get a small “shelf” of items the user can scroll through.
This is ideal when:
You have a broad category to promote (e.g., “new arrivals,” “fall collection”).
You want to show a mix of hero products and supporting items.
You’re retargeting people with a handful of products they’ve interacted with.
Meta pulls products into these units dynamically, based on user behavior, catalog rules, and performance.
How Do Advantage+ Catalog Ads Work?
Once your account is set up, Advantage+ Catalog Ads are built around a very simple idea: you feed Meta structured product data, and it handles the matching, delivery, and optimization.
At a high level:
You upload a product catalog This can be done via CSV/XML feed, a direct app integration, or via your ecommerce platform.
If you’re on Shopify, you can connect your store directly.
Before you do, it’s smart to clean up your feed (titles, descriptions, images, and key attributes) using a tool like Marpipe’s free feed management tool. It integrates deeply with Shopify, so you’re editing close to the source of truth.
You create an Advantage+ Catalog campaign In Ads Manager, you select the Sales objective, choose your catalog, and enable Advantage+ catalog ads. You define budget, placements, geo, and other basics.
Meta pulls in your product feed and creative It uses the data you’ve supplied (images, prices, attributes) plus any creative variants you’ve built in Marpipe (templates, overlays, video, etc.).
AI and machine learning handle the delivery Meta’s systems use behavior signals—site visits, in-app activity, engagement, and purchase events—to decide who sees which products and which creative variants at any given moment.
Performance feeds back into the system As the campaign runs, Meta sees which combinations of product + creative + audience behavior drive the best results, and it optimizes towards those.
Your main levers become: feed quality, creative volume and quality, and how you structure your budget and exclusions.
DPA vs DABA: Which Option Do You Choose?
Within the Advantage+ ecosystem, there are two main ways to run catalog-based campaigns: Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) and Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences (DABA).
Dynamic Product Ads (DPA)
DPAs are for retargeting. They’re designed for people who already know you and have interacted with your products—visited a product page, added to cart, or purchased.
Example:
Someone browses a pair of jeans on your site but doesn’t buy. A DPA campaign can show that same pair of jeans (and related products) in their feed as a reminder to come back.
DPAs are usually your most efficient bottom-funnel campaigns. They work best when your events and product catalog are clean and your creative clearly reflects what the user saw previously.
Dynamic Ads Broad Audience (DABA)
DABA is for prospecting. Here, you’re telling Meta, “Find people who look like they’d be interested in these products, even if they’ve never heard of us.”
Example:
You sell men’s suits. Someone has been browsing formalwear content on Meta properties, but never visited your site. DABA lets Meta show them a set of products from your catalog that match that intent.
DABA works well when:
You have a broad enough catalog to give the system options
Your creative is strong enough to stand on its own for cold audiences
You give the campaign enough budget and time to learn
Most brands end up running both: DPAs to capture demand, DABA to create it.
Targeting and Audience Controls in Advantage+ Catalog Ads
Advantage+ Catalog Ads lean heavily on Meta’s automation, but that doesn’t mean you have zero control.
You can still:
Define basic targeting parameters like location, age, and language
Build and exclude custom audiences (e.g., recent purchasers, certain segments)
Use catalog-based custom audiences (viewed product, add to cart, etc.)
Control which products enter the campaign via product sets and feed rules
The key shift is mental: instead of micro-managing individual interests and lookalikes, you focus on giving Meta a clean, enriched feed and clear guardrails. The system then uses its own data to decide which products to show to which people.
Best Practices for Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads
A few practical guidelines that tend to move the needle:
1. Start with a clean feed
Fix broken images, thin titles, missing prices, and mismatched variants. Use Marpipe’s free feed tool to do this work once and then maintain it, instead of constantly firefighting errors in Meta.
2. Give Meta enough creative to work with
Meta’s recommendation of 20–50 creatives per product isn’t a throwaway line. The more combination options the system has, the more likely it is to find winning pairings. Use Marpipe to generate on-brand templates and variants at scale instead of manually recreating everything.
3. Avoid over-segmentation
Resist the urge to split your catalog into dozens of tiny campaigns. It usually slows learning and fragments your data. Start broad with clear exclusions, then only split when you have a very specific reason.
4. Let campaigns exit the learning phase
Don’t change budgets or structures every day. Give Advantage+ time to accumulate data and stabilize before making big changes.
5. Watch the funnel, not just ROAS
Look at view content → add to cart → purchase, not just top-line return. If you see strong view content but weak add to cart, you may have a product/offer problem. If add to cart is strong but purchases lag, look at checkout flow, shipping, and pricing.
Reasons to Choose Meta’s Advantage+ Catalog Ads
Meta’s Advantage+ Catalog Ads remain one of the most efficient ways for ecommerce brands to turn product feeds into performance—especially when you combine them with a proper creative and feed workflow.
A few advantages worth calling out:
Automation where it actually helps
Once your catalog is set and your events are firing, Meta handles a lot of the heavy lifting around who sees what and when. You get out of manually building and rotating endless static ads.
Budget control
You can still define minimum daily budgets and cap spend according to your comfort level. Automation handles targeting and optimization, but you remain in control of how much you’re willing to put behind it.
Cross-channel reach
You get access to multiple placements across Facebook and Instagram with one catalog. As Meta expands its surfaces, your catalog campaigns can follow without rebuilding everything from scratch.
Straightforward setup
Once the prerequisites are in place, turning on Advantage+ Catalog Ads is relatively straightforward: choose your catalog, define your goal, set your budget, and publish. From there, your job is to improve feed quality, creative, and structure over time.
Benefits of Meta Advantage+ Ads
Get Better Results With Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads on Facebook
Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads are one of the strongest levers you have if you’re running an ecommerce brand on Facebook and Instagram. They turn your catalog into always-on, personalized ad inventory.
If you want more control over how those ads look and perform, without adding more paid tools to your stack, start by:
From there, you can use Marpipe to build more and better creative variants, plug them into your Advantage+ Catalog campaigns, and give Meta’s AI the kind of inputs that actually move performance.
Boost ad performance in days with a 7 day free trial.
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