We don’t need to spell out the benefits or magic of dynamic ads (Facebook’s retail-focused ad type designed to simplify the creation of relevant and timely ads based on the products people have visited on your website or app). But since knowledge is power, we’re sharing Kenshoo’s top do’s and don’ts for optimizing dynamic ads. In other words, we’re sharing ways to make dynamic ads work for you to meet your goals.

Let’s do this!

Campaign Structure Starts With Product Sets

• Create Product Sets to gain a better understanding of how your product categories perform, per audience.
• Leverage the “product type” or “Google product category” from the product feed to set filters based on specific products.
• Pay attention to Product Set overlap. For example, if you are filtering for “Men’s apparel,” then “Women’s” should be excluded, as the filter will pull in anything “Men’s”-related.
• Dedicate one campaign per Product Set. This will allow for a clean view of product set performance and help inform scale and efficiency decisions on a macro level.
• Don’t over-segment Product Sets. In the event someone only viewed one product in a category, it’s better to have a robust Product Set so that Facebook’s recommendation engine can suggest other relevant products.

Plan Your Targeting Strategy

• Use a nested user behavior structure to organize and prevent audience overlap. For example, if you’re targeting people who viewed a product in the last 7 days, you should exclude users who viewed the same product in the last 3 days. When using this tactic, make sure you’re still targeting users who viewed the products in the last 3 days separately.

Insider Tip: Nested audiences allow you to prevent audience overlap, spot performance gaps and make better optimization decisions.

• Test a longer user window for larger sales cycles — we’re talking 30 to 60 days — as these products involve more decision making and research (for example, household appliances).
• Perform tests among placements, including desktop newsfeed, mobile newsfeed, right-hand side, and Instagram.
• Don’t layer in Facebook native targeting variables like age or interests. Doing so could remove people from the audience who have shown intent by interacting with relevant product pages — and that would be a miss!

Optimize Your Bidding Strategy

• Bid up on “Add to Cart” as compared to “Viewed Product,” as the “Add to Cart” audience will be lower in the buying funnel and more likely to purchase.
• Set bid according to the user recency. Users who have more recently interacted with your products are more likely to convert, compared to those who viewed 30 days ago.
• Bid your true value when optimizing for Product Catalog Sales. This can be calculated by taking your Average Order Value from the last 7 to 14 days.
• Don’t switch to oCPM [Optimized cost per thousand impressions, which lets advertisers prioritize their goals] for product catalog sales before attaining the minimum. Facebook suggested conversions of approximately 15 per ad set.

Optimize Carousel & Static Ad Types

• Use carousel ads to obtain more real estate per page post and increase the opportunity for higher click through rates and conversions.
• Use static Post Text on carousel ads, such as a special offer or a free shipping call-out. If you select one of the dynamic attributes, the first card’s value will carry over all carousel cards and could be misleading. Keep in mind, other text options like Description and Headline are supported in dynamic creative.
• Test single product ads when you want to share more information per page post. For example, product descriptions are often character-heavy and become truncated on carousel ads.
• Don’t overuse call-to-action buttons on carousel ads. They can seem distracting to people clicking through each carousel card.

Test & Learn with Dynamic Ads

• Acquire new users by leveraging Search Product Listing Ads (PLA) with dynamic ads. Kenshoo and Facebook co-developed a hybrid product by creating Product Sets of top-performing products on PLA to use for dynamic ads on Facebook.
• Test cross-selling. Show complementary products to people who purchased another product type. For example, show wallets to those who purchased handbags.
• Test up-selling. Show higher-priced products to people who interacted with products within the same category. For example, show items of more than $100 to those who interacted with products of lesser value.
• Test Dynamic Templates. Testing is important when optimizing your dynamic ads. Some variables that you can test (but are not limited to) include showing the price vs. removing the price, as well as testing different call-to-action buttons (i.e. with or without “Learn More,” “Shop Now” and/or “Sign Up.”)

So there you have it. Kenshoo’s do’s and don’ts of dynamic ads — now go forth and be dynamic!

Kenshoo provides search marketing services to 142 of the Top 1000 online retailers in North America, according to Top500Guide.com.

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