What you need to know about dynamic ads

What we’re talking about here are ads where the creative – images, copy and layout – are dynamically generated based on data captured on a particular audience.

It’s all about serving the right message, to the right person, at the right time, on the right platform.

How can dynamic ads help you achieve that?

There are two ways…

First, by dynamically retargeting your website visitors based on their behaviour.

Second, by identifying new prospects based on their characteristics.

Dynamic ads for retargeting

Dynamic ads can help you show the right message, image and product based on the behaviour of people who have previously visited your website.

So, for example, dynamic ads might show someone who had viewed a particular holiday resort on a travel company’s website to then be shown to them on Facebook.

Nowadays, advertisers go further than this.

They can adapt the message based on how long ago visitors went to the website or create a specific message for users who added the product to the basket but did not purchase.

You could use dynamic retargeting to upsell (get a higher end version of the same product) or cross-sell (sell a complementary product).

Depending on the elements you decide to track and that are relevant to your business you can tailor the creative elements to the user: product colour, product price, product size, shipping fee, availability, discount offers, etc.

Tailoring the creative can drastically improve your conversion rate, just by making your message relevant to each user.

Dynamic ads for prospecting

Dynamic ads for prospecting work in the same way.

But instead of analysing users behaviour on your website, Facebook will use all user information from their behaviour on Facebook itself, on partner websites and partner apps, and anywhere where the Facebook Pixel has been implemented.

Why is this so powerful?

While previously you were only talking to your previous customers and website visitors…

… now you can reach all of your potential customers by letting Facebook’s algorithm find these potential customers for you.

This kind of advertising isn’t based on assumptions but on actual live data that would have taken your marketing team a lot of time and effort to process.

How to get the best out of dynamic ads

Be innovative with this new ad format to supercharge your paid media performance.

It’s important to go beyond your core audience with your targeting strategy.

Don’t be afraid to start with a broad audience – it’ll enable Facebook to test different audiences and define the most promising audience sets.

Uploading your product catalogue – essentially a data file that helps categorize your products and their attributes – is a key part of the process.

Make use of the latest technology like web scraping tools to create and maintain your feed seamlessly and reduce updating times (for latest discounts, availability, etc.) for your marketing team by using dynamic web versions of the product feed, as information gets refreshed automatically.

The beauty of this is that once you’ve set your campaign up, it will continue working for you for as long as you want, finding the right people for each product and always using up-to-date pricing and availability.

Who is dynamic advertising for prospecting good for?

It’s great for large retailers with tens or even hundreds of products, like travel companies and airlines.

Facebook actually recommends 1000+ products in your catalogue.

Why?

It’s because Facebook will try to show your ads to a lot of users before it has enough data to show which users will be interested in what.

So… you need a large pool of data and a lot of web traffic for Facebook to work that out.

The more diversified your products are the more likely Facebook will be able to identify different pools of users for different products.

Travel companies are one example of the type of advertiser that can get the most out of dynamic ads.

For example, dynamic ads for hotels might look at people who are interested in specific destinations and push hotels in that area to them.

Latest industry specific dynamic Facebook products

Facebook dynamic ads were originally meant for retailers.

But, the function has now been adapted to different industries, with new templates rolled out to provide more relevant information to the users for each type of product/service.

Travel companies promoting hotels, for example, can leverage cross-device intent signals to automatically promote relevant hotels from the inventory with unique creatives on Facebook.

Dynamic elements can include hotel name, brand, city, country, neighbourhood, check-in/out dates, etc.

The tip of the iceberg

And these are only features that are available through Facebook business manager.

Using the API, any other external source of data that is relevant to your business and customers could be used to improve your message relevance in real time.

It might be that the weather forecast, live sport scores, exchange rates or competitor prices have some impact on your product sales in which case you can factor these in too.

What’s not to love?

Dynamic ads have the potential to trigger a much higher click through rate and help you improve your conversion rate significantly by making your ads relevant to your audience, at any time.

You don’t need to know specifically who your potential clients are.

Facebook’s algorithm will work it out for you based on its findings and not assumptions, allowing you to identify a new user profile that you just wouldn’t have through traditional targeting.

We have a team of social ad experts ready to supercharge your online ads. Find out more here.