Explainer
Advantage+ catalogue ads explained: what they are, what you need and how they differ from Advantage+ sales campaigns
Advantage+ catalogue ads (Advantage+ catalog ads in American spelling, and formerly dynamic ads) are Meta ads that fill themselves with products from a catalogue you have uploaded, choosing different products for each person. You need a catalogue in Commerce Manager and a Meta pixel or app SDK that is connected to it and sends events carrying the same product IDs. They are not the same thing as Advantage+ shopping campaigns, which was the old name for Advantage+ sales campaigns, a way of automating a whole campaign.
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What is Advantage+ catalog ads?
It is Meta's name for ads whose products are picked automatically from your catalogue. Meta's Help Centre page about Advantage+ catalogue ads says they show people the most relevant products or services from your catalogue based on their interests, intent and actions online. They look like ordinary single image, carousel or collection ads, but the products in them are chosen for each person using events from your pixel or app SDK and signals from Meta's own apps.
On the names: Meta's British English pages write "catalogue" and its developer documentation writes "catalog", so both searches lead to the same product. The older name was dynamic ads. Social Media Today noted on 21 May 2024 that these catalogue product ads were previously known as dynamic ads, and the address of Meta's developer page for them still ends in "dynamic-ad".
What a catalogue and a product set are
A catalogue is the list of what you sell, held in Commerce Manager, with a title, image, price, availability and link for each item. Meta's page about catalogues lists the types you can create, including products sold online, travel, vehicles, property and professional services. It says you cannot switch the type later and recommends one catalogue per type.
A product set is a group of products inside a catalogue. Meta's page on product sets says every catalogue has a default set called All products, and that you can make more by applying filters (which update as products change) or by selecting products by hand. The set you choose decides which products an ad may show. The same page says a broader set may help performance because the delivery system has more to choose from.
What you need before you can run them
Meta's requirements page lists the setup in this order.
- 01
A catalogue with your products in it
Create it in Commerce Manager and add the products you want to advertise. Meta says the catalogue must sit in a business portfolio. - 02
A pixel or app SDK sending product events
For a website, Meta's page on required pixel events names three: ViewContent, AddToCart and Purchase. Each must carry a content_ids or contents parameter holding the product's ID as it appears in the catalogue. Our post on the Meta pixel covers installing it. - 03
The two connected to each other
In Commerce Manager, open the catalogue, go to Events and switch on your dataset, as Meta's page on connecting a pixel or SDK describes. This is what lets Meta match what someone looked at on your site to an item in the catalogue.
The Help Centre pages speak of the pixel and the app SDK. The Meta for Business page adds the Conversions API to the list of data sources that can share events such as add to cart or purchase.
The formats and objectives they work with
Meta's instructions for creating them list three ad formats, and five campaign objectives: sales, app promotion, leads, engagement and traffic.
| Format | What it looks like | Minimum products in the set |
|---|---|---|
| Single image or video | One product at a time, chosen for the viewer. | Not stated on the pages we read. |
| Carousel | A row of product cards people swipe through. | At least two unique, valid products. |
| Collection | A main image or video with four products beneath it. | At least four unique, valid products. |
The minimums come from Meta's page on product sets that are too small. The creation instructions add that people who tap a product are sent to that product's own link from the catalogue, not to the website address typed into the ad.
Retargeting versus reaching new people
Meta describes two main uses, and the difference is the audience you choose, not the ad.
| Use | Who sees the ads | What Meta recommends |
|---|---|---|
| Retargeting | People who viewed a product or added it to their basket on your site or app and did not buy. | Include a catalogue custom audience of viewers or basket-adders, and exclude recent purchasers. |
| Reaching a broad audience | People who have shown interest in your products or similar ones, even if they have never visited. | Target by location and demographics, go easy on interests, exclude people who bought in the last 10 days, and do not exclude every website visitor. |
Meta also describes cross-selling and upselling, which shows related or higher-margin products to people who have already bought.
Advantage+ catalogue ads versus Advantage+ shopping campaigns
They are different things, and the second no longer goes by that name. Advantage+ shopping campaigns were renamed Advantage+ sales campaigns in February 2025, as our post on Advantage+ campaigns in 2026 sets out. Meta's page about Advantage+ sales campaigns says its most advanced optimisations apply when a sales campaign uses Advantage+ audience, placements and budget.
| Advantage+ catalogue ads | Advantage+ sales campaigns | |
|---|---|---|
| What is automated | Which products appear in the ad for each person. | Who sees the campaign, where it appears and how the budget is split. |
| What it needs | A catalogue, plus events matched to its items. | A sales campaign with audience, placements and budget left automated. Meta's page lists no catalogue requirement. |
| Objectives | Sales, app promotion, leads, engagement and traffic. | Sales only. |
| Former name | Dynamic ads. | Advantage+ shopping campaigns. |
The two can be used together. Meta's catalogue ads page has a section on combining them, and the new setup described above puts the catalogue choice inside the sales campaign itself.
The commonest catalogue problems Meta documents
Items that will not show. Meta's troubleshooting page for products not appearing says to open the catalogue in Commerce Manager, go to Products and filter by issue. The causes it lists include:
- A policy rejection. The item breaks the Advertising Standards or Commerce Policies; you can request a review.
- Out of stock. Out-of-stock products do not appear in ads.
- A missing required field: title, description, price, availability, product link, condition or image link.
- An image problem, such as a broken link, a file over 8 MB, an image that is too small, or your site blocking Meta's crawler. A replaced image needs a new link, or the catalogue will not notice the change.
- A price outside the supported range of 0.50 to 10,000.
Not enough products in the set. If valid products fall below the minimum for the format, Meta says ads may be paused. Variants of one product count once, and so do products that share an image.
Events not matching. Catalogue match rate is the share of product IDs Meta receives from your events that it can match to catalogue items. Meta's page on viewing it recommends keeping it above 75%, ideally above 90%, and says it covers 28 days with a delay of up to 48 hours. Its match rate troubleshooting page gives these checks:
- The IDs in your events exactly match the IDs, or group IDs, in the catalogue.
- The products with those IDs still exist in the catalogue.
- The parameter is spelled content_ids, with an s, even for one product.
- Several IDs are sent as a list of separate values, not as one string with commas inside it.
- If you send content_type, it says product for single IDs and product_group for group IDs.
The same page says match rate may be paused if the catalogue has not been used for advertising in 28 days, and that event counts in Events Manager are normally higher than in Commerce Manager, which shows only events it could match.
Sources
- Meta Business Help Centre, About Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Changes to catalogue campaign setup in Meta Ads Manager, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta for Business, Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, About catalogues for products and services, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Create and edit product sets in your catalogue, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Advantage+ catalogue ad requirements, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Required Meta pixel events and parameters for Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Connect a Meta pixel or app SDK to your catalogue in Commerce Manager, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Create Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Troubleshoot not enough products in product set or product set is empty, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Best practices for retargeting with Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Best practices for reaching a broad audience with Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, About Advantage+ sales campaigns, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Troubleshoot products not appearing in your ads or shop, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, View catalogue match rate for Advantage+ catalogue ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta Business Help Centre, Troubleshoot catalogue match rate issues, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Meta for Developers, Advantage+ Catalog Ads, undated, read 13 October 2026
- Social Media Today, Meta adds video to its automated catalog ads, 21 May 2024
Questions people ask
What is Advantage+ catalog ads?
Advantage+ catalog ads (catalogue ads in British spelling, formerly dynamic ads) are Meta ads that fill themselves with products from a catalogue you upload to Commerce Manager. Meta chooses which products each person sees, using events from your pixel or app SDK and signals from its own apps.
Are Advantage+ catalogue ads the same as Advantage+ shopping campaigns?
No. Advantage+ shopping campaigns were renamed Advantage+ sales campaigns in February 2025, and they automate the audience, placements and budget of a whole sales campaign. Advantage+ catalogue ads automate which products appear in an ad. A sales campaign can use both.
What do I need to run Advantage+ catalogue ads?
Meta lists a catalogue in Commerce Manager with your products in it, a Meta pixel or app SDK sending ViewContent, AddToCart and Purchase events that carry your catalogue product IDs, and a connection between the two. The catalogue must be in a business portfolio.
Why are my catalogue products not showing in ads?
Meta's troubleshooting page lists policy rejections, out-of-stock items, missing required fields, image problems and prices outside the supported range. Ads can also be paused when a product set has fewer than two valid products for a carousel or four for a collection.
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Keep reading
- Advantage+ campaigns in 2026What makes a sales, app or leads campaign Advantage+, and what happened to shopping campaigns.
- The Meta pixel explainedThe code that sends the product events a catalogue depends on.
- Advantage+ creative enhancementsThe automatic changes Meta can make to an ad, including catalogue ones.
- Meta ad sizesImage shapes for each placement, for the ads you design yourself.
Mockingbird is an independent product from Onwards Analytics and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Meta. Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Meta Ads Manager and the Meta Ad Library are trademarks of Meta Platforms, Inc. Meta changes its tools often; check Meta's own help pages for the current detail before you rely on it.