Sarah Edwards

by Sarah Edwards | Social Advertising

Facebook Dynamic Product Ads, also commonly referred to as DPAs, are a great way for ecommerce advertisers with large product catalogs to get in front of consumers with the most relevant products. This ad type allows you to show specific product ads to users who have previously expressed interest in your products or in similar products.

There are two types of DPAs currently available through Facebook – remarketing and broad audiences, also known as prospecting. When set up correctly, DPAs are an extremely effective tool that you can use to acquire and retain new customers. For one client, we actually found that DPAs generated double the ROI compared to both search shopping ads and static Facebook WCA remarketing.

When setting up DPAs, you might encounter errors due to the technical details required for launch. Here’s an easy step-by-step guide to help you avoid and troubleshoot any errors with DPA set up.

Step 1: Place Your Pixel

Check to ensure the Facebook pixel is coded to track dynamic events. The most important of these are product group or category and the product ID, or SKU.

Use Facebook Pixel Helper to ensure your events are coded correctly to fire dynamic products. If you get a yellow warning that says the pixel can’t match products, proceed to step 2.

Step 2: QA Your Setup

Ensure the product groups and IDs that are being fired by the SKU are identical to the ones that are being matched by the feed. This step is crucial. We often see development teams adding additional items to the pixel, which cause the product categories and IDs to fail to connect. This can mean an additional {}, [], “” – all of which can be red flags for proper feed and pixel connection.

How do you get a pulse on your feed to pixel match rates? Log into Business Manager and toggle to Ads Manager > Product Catalogs.  Once you’re there, toggle over to Product Events, which will outline each of your events and their respective match rates.

In the example below, you can see that the add to cart event fires, represented by the red line. However, the blue line is negligible, indicating there are no products matching to the pixel. In this case, you should check back on the pixel to make sure it is matching to the feed correctly.

Step 3: Create Product Sets

After all feed and pixel issues are completed, work to create products sets within Ads Manager > Product Catalogs that are relevant to how you’d like your creative to be served to the users. Some common examples are listed below:

  • Product sets by product category: This is very important for retailers. For example, you wouldn’t want to serve a man a DPA that’s filled with maternity wear.
  • Product sets by price point: This is a common way to tap into upselling. Consider the typical price point of your product. If your typical price point is $20, consider having product sets with products ranging from $21 to $30 and $31 to $40, geared towards current customers to upsell them.
  • Product sets by size: This is important if your product feed has products broken out by size. If so, work to incorporate product sets into your planning strategies to serve a carousel of mixed product rather than a carousel of the same product of different sizes.

Step 4: Create Your Audiences

Now, it’s time to begin driving traffic to your creative. Since you’ve already created your product sets, the next step is to identify the site behavior you want to capture. We typically break this out into two main categories, view content and add to cart. Within each of those strategies, it’s important to nest them to break out each individual event by user intent. For advertisers looking to get their feet wet with a small investment into DPA strategy, here is our recommendation:

  • Add to cart – 3 Days
  • Add to cart – 4-7 Days
  • View content – 3 Days
  • View content – 4-7 Days

Additionally, you’ll want to exclude purchasers from these audiences. Since we know that DPA encourages your most loyal customers to come back to the site and purchase, we recommend going forward with a purchase audience window between three and seven days.

Don’t be scared to put DPA to the test and watch it out-perform your expectations!

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