Meta’s catalogs ads: Why Expand Your Product Feed?

Why we’re all in on performance branding – and how it can transform your growth.

Get More from Your Meta Money, Part 8: Test Catalog Ad Creative Types

“Sale?” Percentage-off? How do you know what sale types encourage people to buy?

Bryan Karas

March 27, 2024

In this multiple-part series, we’re highlighting how you can become a savvier Meta marketer by minimizing cost and maximizing results.

Our most recent article kicked off our tips on Meta Advantage+ catalog ads. Why stop a good thing?

Today, we dive into testing the ad format’s creative types.

A Use Case Example: Home Audio

Imagine it: You’re roaming through your favorite big box store. You kinda need a speaker for your living room. But, it’s not at the top of your priority list at the moment and you would have no problem with buying it some other time.

Then, something catches your eye at the end of the aisle: a sale sign. Not only that—it’s a featured product from a brand you adore. You’re not quite ready to buy, so you wander along.

But later, you hit the official home speaker section, and three speakers are on display. The one in the middle looks a lot like the other two—same features, similar design—but it has a big 30% off sticker on it. FOMO kicks in, so buying this speaker today becomes a priority for you.

Enter Digital Advertising

There is a digital advertising parallel here: seeing the standalone speaker is a lot like seeing a single image ad, while the carousel format allows you to juxtapose differently priced items next to each other, highlighting best offers with ‘sale’ and ‘N% off’ tags.

Maintaining a mix of different formats can help get this shopper from discovery to sale. For instance, large single-image/video close-ups could introduce the product. Then, the advertiser could put things into perspective through a carousel of ads, where this product could be shown as being 30% off versus similar products in its category.

Choose your own adventure: Which item do you ultimately place in your shopping cart? Which one does anyone place in their shopping cart?

The Ad’s the Thing

Okay, so that may have been a trick question—because the answer is “it depends.” It depends entirely on the shopper. One person may be drawn to the sale, another to the percentage-off offer.

Using this logic in the digital advertising arena, we have a great reason to design a Meta catalog ads test to see which sale resonates the most with our potential customers. It’s important to test different formats, e.g., single-image ads versus carousel ads. Or, if you have a big backlog of videos, then test video carousel ads, too.

A note: I generally prefer carousel ads—we’ve seen great results with those. But for some products, single-image ads work better. The moral of the case study: You won’t know what drives the best CPA unless you test.