Companies spent a total of $11.5 billion on Facebook marketing in 2020 (Statesman) And the competitive race continues: in order to convey your message to the user.
you need to either invest even more money in advertising or optimize the existing promotion channels on the Internet. One way to do this without blowing up your budget is through Facebook Dynamic Ads. Let’s take a closer look at what it is and how to increase its effectiveness.
What are Facebook Dynamic Ads
Dynamic Ads on Facebook ( Dynamic Ads for Broad Audience, DABA) are advertisements based on a previously uploaded product catalog (feed) that are shown to a potentially interested audience.
Healthy! Facebook gives fullinstructions for creating a data feed. We recommend using it, because the data is updated in the process of changes on the platform.
How it is formed and looks
How Facebook dynamic ads work and look, we demonstrated in our case on promoting the Ombre menswear brand. Here is a slide from the presentation, where we see the process of gathering signals by the Facebook system and displaying ads from the catalog based on generated interest.
Who suits
The format is ideal for, but not limited to, online stores. Product catalogs are very versatile and can be used in almost any niche. Advertise with DABA:
- Real estate (developers, realtors, aggregators);
- Auto (manufacturers and dealers);
- Tourism (hotels, tour operators and agencies, airlines );
- Education (courses, recordings of programs and broadcasts, educational materials);
- Streaming platforms (movies, TV shows), etc.
Why you should use
Top reasons to start using Facebook Dynamic Ads:
- Attracting a new audience that is most likely interested in your products;
| Example: You are running a dynamic ad for an online bookstore. Facebook analyzes user preferences (what communities they belong to, what posts they like, what they write in comments, as well as data from external sources). Accordingly, in the ad, a person will see an advertisement for a specific book from an online store, in which he is most likely to be interested. |
- Improving the quality of leads – people will see the products they need;
- Retargeting – catch up with advertisements of those who left the site without a purchase or abandoned the cart ;
- Upselling – target those who have already made purchases and increase profits at lower costs;
- Scaling – creating hundreds of advertising creatives does not require setting up each ad individually.
How to Prepare and Run Facebook Dynamic Ads
- Connect your Facebook Business Manager business account.
You can run dynamic ads from a personal account, but then only you will have access to the campaign. To give access to other people, connect with the business manager.
- Install the Facebook pixel on your website.
A pixel is a “bug” in the website code that collects data about user behavior and generates analytics based on it. Thanks to the installation of the pixel, you will be able to receive information about users who made a purchase, put the product in the basket, viewed products, registered on the site, ordered feedback and visited certain pages of the site.
The pixel is configured using the Events Manager tool. Connect the new data source by selecting “Internet” from the list. Connection method ― Facebook Pixel. Next, give it a name and specify the URL of the site from which the information will come.
The next step is to add the pixel code to the site. Get help from facebook partners, or do it yourself. The system will generate the pixel code, and you copy it to each page of the site.
Facebook takes care of your comfort: the code is copied by pressing a button, there is a video instruction nearby, and if you are not doing this alone, you can send instructions to colleagues by mail directly from the manager with one click of the mouse.
Next, you need to set automatic advanced matching. Turn on all options so that subsequent ads have a greater reach.
The final step in setting up a pixel is setting up standard events. The system must understand what user actions it should analyze. In order to work with dynamic product advertising (DABA), 3 standard events are required: ViewContent, AddToCard, and Purchase. They collect information about who viewed a particular product, added it to the cart, or bought it. Use the Facebook event customization tool to write a code for each event that will read the pixel.
At this stage, we also recommend contacting ourOmbre case study on the DABA launch.
Then be sure to check if the pixel works as expected. An extension for Google Chrome will help with this. Facebook Pixel Helper.
- Compose a feed.
A feed is a list of products with their attributes in a spreadsheet format. The system uses this data when generating personalized advertisements.
There are many file formats that are used to describe the content of a site. For example XML, YML, Excel, TXT, CSV, and others. Facebook prefers CSV, TSV and XML. Moreover, the platform even provides a ready-made template for filling the feed. If you fill it out incorrectly, the advertising campaign will not start, so check the list infeed debugger.
Some of the most common feed upload errors include:
- The server or file storage is blocking Facebook’s request to retrieve the document;
- The file URL refers to a file that is not available for download;
- The URL leads to a page with a 404 or 503 error;
- The URL is not in the correct format or is not in the Content-Type column;
- The feed is presented in a format that Facebook does not support (which ones are supported, we wrote in the previous paragraph);
- The feed fields are filled in incorrectly (all text content is spelled out with capslock “THIS IS SO”, titles are spelled incorrectly, there are typos, there are no required fields for your assortment type). Above, we gave a link to the data feed template, use it to avoid gross design errors;
- Goods in the table are repeated;T
- The file exceeds the allowed size ( 100 MB for a single download, 8 GB for a scheduled download).
When filling out the feed manually, remember that you will also need to make updates yourself. But the process can be automated with the help of CMS – a site content management system.
Important! If you intend to do everything manually, you can also skip the feed step and go straight to manually adding products to your catalog in Facebook Ads. This option is suitable if you have up to 50 products. If you have more line items, Facebook will offer you other upload options.
- Create a directory.
Catalogs are added to Facebook Ads using the Catalog Manager. They allow you to divide the assortment into groups in order to fine-tune your advertising campaign.
In the Catalog Manager window, select the Create Catalog option.
Determine the type.
Facebook provides 2 sources of product listings: self-loading, and synchronization with e-commerce platforms. In the same menu, you need to give a name to the directory.
Fill the catalog with products manually (up to 50 items), using a feed, a pixel, or by integrating with a partner platform (Shopify or BigCommerce).
- Set up an advertising campaign
To run dynamic ads in Facebook Ads, select the Catalog Sales objective and select the relevant catalog (if there is more than one).
Next, define your daily budget and bidding strategy.
Decide which audience your ad will reach. You have two options available – retargeting (who previously interacted with you) and targeting a wide audience (everyone, including those who are not yet familiar with your site or application).
Select the event that will be considered as the result of the advertisement.
Add as many ad descriptions as possible and a call to action.
Increasing the effectiveness of dynamic advertising in Facebook Ads
There are several ways to get the most out of dynamic Facebook ads. And we will tell you about them.
- Optimization and cost management
You can optimize a DABA campaign even at the stage of its creation. To do this, select the appropriate type of optimization for ads.
Then select the event type.
- Setting up dynamic remarketing on Facebook
Facebook Dynamic Remarketing is an ad that runs on Facebook Ads that automatically generate ads for different products and targets users who have already interacted with the company’s products.
| Example: a user on the website of an online store of household appliances put a coffee maker in the basket, but at the time of placing the order he was distracted, and he changed his mind about making a purchase. In subsequent sessions, remarketing will catch up with him and show an ad for the coffee maker he was interested in. |
Setting up dynamic remarketing on Facebook is a lot like running dynamic ads. Only at the last stage, when defining the audience, select “Retarget ads to people who interacted with your products on and off Facebook.”
Moreover, you can test different audience retargeting options.
Important! The advantage of Facebook remarketing is that you are not tied to a site cookie. Advertising of goods is shown to a specific user, regardless of which device, browser, application he uses to log into his account. This is very relevant given the recent iOS 14 update.
We recommend reading more about the iOS 14 update that will affect Facebook ads, in general, the platform help. Spoiler: Facebook will start using measurement based on aggregated event data.
- Use audience selection options.
At the stage of choosing an audience, you can use the promotion to a custom audience, creating different combinations of different parameters for display.
Please note that the remarketing option “Selling more expensive or additional products or services” works well. Users get acquainted with goods from one group of positions, and then with the help of advertising from another.
You can immediately set an age threshold – over 23 years old, in order to be accurately shown to a solvent audience. But if there is no clear understanding of why it is necessary to set age limits, then it is better not to do this.
You can also use the cross-selling technique by showing complementary product groups in your ads (phone – headset, clothes – shoes and accessories, etc.).
- Use the image adjustment function.
Although ad creatives for dynamic ads are generated from a product catalog, there are some customizations that you can apply. You can diversify the creative with a frame, brand logo, graphic element (“sale”, “black Friday”) or add additional information under the image – price, discount.
Important! Keep in mind that most of the impressions are on mobile devices, so the logo or other graphics should not overload the image with the product.
- Don’t stop advertising.
While Facebook dynamic ads work, they learn. The more data the system collects, the better the quality of leads that come from ads will be, and the more profitable their cost will be. If you stop advertising, then all optimization will fail and the system will have to re-collect information about the appropriate audience.
- Make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly.
Since the majority of traffic from Facebook ads comes from mobile devices, the quality of the mobile version of the site plays an important role in conversion. Therefore, before launching the promotion, check the page loading speed on mobile, the display of all elements and text, and also eliminate factors that distract from the target action.
Findings
Facebook dynamic ads are a great way to reach customers for your business. The format is suitable for those who;
- There is a clear positioning;
- Wide audience and stable traffic to the site;
- Landing pages are mobile-friendly.
For companies operating in specific narrow niches, this method of online promotion is definitely not suitable, since, with a lack of traffic to the site, advertising will not be effective enough.
Do you want to get an individual online promotion strategy for your business that will start working immediately after implementation?
