Facebook Categories for Dynamic Ads | How-to + Expert Tips
Facebook recently released a new ad format: Categories for Dynamic Ads.
Here’s a quick review of what Categories for Dynamic Ads are, the potential advantages, and a quick guide on how to set them up.
We’ve also got some pro tips from our experts for those looking to use a similar feature to create highly customizable Product Set Ads.
What Are Facebook Categories for Dynamic Ads?
Categories for dynamic ads can display multiple items in a single ad unit pulled from categories within your product feed.
According to Facebook, Categories for Dynamic Ads allow you to:
“…show people different types of items you sell in a single ad unit. Rather than showing individual items, you can segment the items in your ads by specific categories (for example, swimwear) or brands (for example, Facebook).”
Marketing multiple products together in a set is particularly useful for retail brands.
What Are the Advantages of Categories for Dynamic Ads?
Being able to serve multiple items in a single dynamic ad on Facebook has several advantages for retail brands:
- Promoting a lifestyle or items that go well together (theme)
- Building your brand image through more product imagery
- Giving users a chance to shop without leaving their feed
“Facebook users don’t want to leave Facebook. They’re there for social interaction. With dynamic products sets and Categories, we are able to bring the shopping experience to Facebook users and give them a chance to interact with multiple products — all without leaving their Facebook feed.“
-Gavin Magoon, Retail Search Manager, CPC Strategy
Not only does this type of ad show more items in an interactive carousel, it also helps create a theme and reinforce your brand’s lifestyle imagery.
How to Set up Categories for Dynamic Ads in 2 Easy Steps
You can set up the Categories feature for Dynamic Ads in 2 simple steps.
- Go to your catalog and choose to show items by brand, product type or Google product category.
2. In Ads Manager, create a headline for each category that appear in your ads and a destination URL for those that interact with your ad.
Your categories are now saved and are available for use for your future campaigns. If you need more help with setting up Categories, you can check out more details in Facebook’s Help Center.
Note: Any changes to your categories will also affect your catalog.
Pro tips: Create Dynamic Product Set Ads with “Show Individual Items” Feature
You can also use “show individual items” feature to create Dynamic Product Set Ads. Our internal experts like this feature because it offers more customization compared to the Categories feature.
Some of our experts are seeing solid results using this feature.
Gavin says, 
“With Dynamic Product Set we were able to triple our conversions — all without losing relevance score in our ads and maintaining the same level of spend and visibility that our ads were getting previously with static image ads”
Hitting those high conversion rates requires careful attention around the structure of your Dynamic Product Set Ads.
Here are some of Gavin’s tips for those looking to test this feature:
Tip #1:
“When paying for impressions you want to maximize the effectiveness of your ads when they are seen. With Dynamic Product Set Ads we are giving Facebook users a chance to interact with our products. Avoid having repetitive product images in your ads. Make sure your carousel ads have a good selection for users to look at.”
Tip #2:
Gavin also advises using multiple product sets and multiple audiences to gather data that will help you optimize future campaigns.
“Add the card for going to the site at the end of the carousel so Facebook users can keep exploring your products if they don’t see anything they like in the ad. Make sure you continue to test your product sets against different audiences and using that data to refine your targeting.
That wraps up our tips for using Dynamic Product Set Ads.
If you want to showcase multiple products to fit a category or theme in an interactive way, then consider giving these ad units a try.
Want to learn more about Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads?
Check out:
How to Set Up Facebook Dynamic Product Ads
and
When To Use Facebook Dynamic Ad Retargeting vs Traditional Retargeting.
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