A Meta product catalog is the foundation of every Dynamic Product Ad campaign. Here is how to set one up correctly from scratch.
A Meta product catalog is a container that holds information about the products you want to advertise on Facebook and Instagram. It stores your product titles, descriptions, prices, images, URLs, and availability - and makes that data available to Meta so it can serve the right product to the right person at the right time.
Without a catalog, you cannot run Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), collection ads, or any other format that pulls products automatically. Getting the catalog set up correctly is the single most important foundation for e-commerce advertising on Meta.
Go to business.facebook.com/commerce and click "Add catalog". Select "Ecommerce" as the catalog type, give it a name that reflects the market or brand (e.g. "Brand Name - DK"), and assign it to the correct Business Manager account. Avoid generic names - if you manage multiple markets or brands, naming conventions matter later.
Meta gives you several ways to get products into your catalog:
For most e-commerce stores running DPA at scale, a scheduled data feed is the right choice. It gives you full control over what Meta sees and makes troubleshooting much easier.
Your feed needs to include at minimum: id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, and image_link. Meta also benefits from additional fields like brand, google_product_category, sale_price, and additional_image_link. The more complete and accurate your feed, the better Meta can match products to audiences.
Make sure your feed URL is publicly accessible and updates on a schedule that matches how often your prices or inventory change. For most stores, a daily sync is sufficient.
Your catalog needs to be connected to your Meta Pixel (or Conversions API) so Meta can match website events to catalog products. Go to "Event Sources" in Commerce Manager and link the pixel associated with your store. This connection is what powers retargeting - without it, Meta cannot match "this person viewed product X" to the correct catalog item.
After your feed is connected, go to the "Diagnostics" tab in Commerce Manager. Meta will flag items that are rejected or need attention - common issues include missing required fields, image aspect ratio problems, mismatched prices, and unavailable products. Resolve as many errors as possible before launching campaigns. Rejected products cannot be served in ads.
Once your catalog is live, Campaign Builder lets you build and manage DPA campaigns directly on top of it - without manually configuring each campaign in Ads Manager. Feed quality issues, product set selection, and campaign structure are all handled from one place, so you can move faster and make fewer mistakes.
Ready to get started? Explore Catalog Ads on Campaign Builder - the fastest way to launch Dynamic Product Ad campaigns once your catalog is set up.
