Are your Facebook Ads Dynamic?

Is your business e-commerce? Or are you a bricks and mortar retailer? Are you using Facebook dynamic ads to promote and sell your products? If not, here’s why you could think about doing this.

What are Facebook Dynamic Product Ads?

This is Facebook’s own description. In summary, dynamic ads look very similar to the other ads you see on FB and Instagram but, instead of you creating one ad or ad set which gets served up to an audience, you create a template. This way, FB can utilise its tracking features to serve up a unique ad it thinks will most interest your potential customers.

You have in fact almost certainly seen these types of ads. Remember when you were last browsing e.g. a pair of new shoes? Then when you went on to Facebook, you suddenly started seeing lots of ads for shoes? Well, that was dynamic advertising at work! Facebook works with your brand to put the most relevant ads before the audience mostly likely to purchase.

And here’s where it gets clever! You could have a product catalogue of 000s of products, FB will still only choose the products it thinks will most interest your audience. So, you might have a catalogue that includes: pet products, toiletries, and handbags. If FB’s tracking indicates that your audience is a dog owner, then dynamic ads will serve them up ads for dog products. Smart, eh?

Who are Facebook Dynamic Ads best suited for?

Businesses which have a product catalogue of more than about 10 different products. If you have less than ten products to sell, or if your products are very similar — e.g. one handbag style in different colours — you might just want to keep things simple with a single carousel ad.

What about Facebook ad Retargeting — How does this work with Dynamic Ads?

Actually, it’s pretty awesome!

With dynamic ads your retargeting is powered by your live, real-time product feed working with the Facebook pixel. This means that you will only ever retarget with products that you actually have in stock and which your customer can buy right now. Compare this to having to constantly tweak and update non-dynamic ads as your daily catalogue changes. And because your retargeting is led by the Pixel — as opposed to manually creating Custom Audiences — it is always on point.

Are there any drawbacks to using Facebook Dynamic Ads?

The biggest negative with dynamic ads is that because you won’t be creating individual ads or ad sets, this may make ad management a little bit more complicated. It can also affect your analytics and data, as this won’t be as detailed as if you’d created individual ads. A good Facebook Ads Specialist should be able to work around this.

Also, all Facebook ads have a lead in period — basically a window where Facebook works out where to serve up your ad for maximum results. Normally it’s about 48 hours, but it can harder to properly predict with dynamic ads. On this basis, it’s advisable to think about your campaign’s timeframe and costs for this period as you may not be getting any ROI.

Are Dynamic Ads More Expensive than Regular Facebook Ads?

Not necessarily. The biggest issue with them is — as with any Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising — your budget being eaten up by low value clicks. For example, say you have a product catalogue that carries items ranging from, let’s imagine at one end, plastic pot plant holders at £5, and at the other, ceramic hair straighteners at £200. You will naturally want to sell more of the expensive item BUT it may be easier for Facebook to serve your ad up to the people more likely to buy the cheaper item. They more clicks on this ad you get, the quicker your budget depletes whether or not you sell anything.

Are Dynamic Ads hard to set up?

If you’re confident running your own ads and you’re using a well-known e-commerce platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce, then integrating this with Facebook is not difficult. Either app will have a step-by-step walkthrough you can easily follow.

If you’re not using one of these platforms, then you will need to manually create a catalogue of your products to upload. You can do this with e.g. Excel. You will need to import this into Facebook and then follow FB’s step-by-step guide for next steps. Facebook’s Commerce Manager is very helpful.

Pro Tip when using Facebook Dynamic Ads!

Choose your first image carefully. This is the image that your audience will see in their feed and it pretty much determines if they will engage with your ad. Facebook gives you two options here; you can either let their algorithm choose for you, or you can specify your own image. I would test both and see which gives you the best results. And don’t forget that approx. 95% of your audience will be viewing your ad on a mobile, so don’t make your image too busy or cluttered!

I hope this is helpful and if you’ve never considered using dynamic ads, then maybe this has encouraged you to try them?