Retargeting 201 – The Basics of Facebook Dynamic Remarketing               

In our continuing Retargeting series, we’ll focus below on Facebook Dynamic Retargeting Ads. Million of marketers, small to large, roll ads on Facebook’s successful advertising platform to help connect the right products with the right people, maximize their advertising expenditures, and help consumers get connected to relevant products.
Facebook’s Dynamic Ad Retargeting is one of the most successful online advertising retargeting programs. The beauty of Facebook Dynamic Retargeting is that the platform serves ads of relevance and interest to the user. And it allows marketers better measurement of their campaigns in tracking customers on mobile, desktop or tablet devices.

Does a ‘More Social Feed’ Help or Hurt Advertisers?

Until recently, the display ad program and dynamic retargeted ads worked splendidly for marketers. But in early January, Facebook announced changes to its user feed that highlights more social interactions between friends and family, rather than news stories and publisher content. Some are wondering if the switch will help or hurt brand advertisers on Facebook.

One theory holds that advertisers will have to pay more to continue to bring ads to people on Facebook; after all, there’s still that massive market of some 2 billion people on the global platform. But others feel that ads will have a better chance of connecting with people, with less ‘noise’ in Facebook feeds from publishers. And that’s where Facebook Dynamic Retargeted Ads can help a marketer – in making that customer connection.

Facebook Dynamic Retargeting

In Facebook’s Dynamic Ads program, Facebook shows retargeted ads for products that people have actually looked at or searched for online. When online visitors browse your website for products, these same people will see retargeted ads on their Facebook feeds for the same products in the ensuing days, provided you have a retargeting campaign set up with Facebook.

How Dynamic Retargeting Ads Work

With dynamic retargeting ads, Facebook will track your customers’ online clicks and site visits, and generate a personalized ad for each customer to showcase a product that was viewed earlier. Facebook puts the ad together for marketers, pulling in a product image, price, and

Availability, and describes these as “personalized ads without the manual work.”

Here’s the basic process for a brand to set up Facebook Dynamic Ads for retargeting efforts.

• 1. Log into Facebook Business Manager

  – Set up your account and then claim your business assets. These would be Facebook business or community pages, ad accounts and product catalogs. Presumably, you’ve already taken this step of owning a Facebook page, and you already have ad accounts and product catalogs.

• 2. Create or upload a product catalog

  – Facebook needs access to a product catalog. You’ll need to list every product you want to include in an ad, along with important information (including a product ID, product description, link to the product on your website, and product category, among other things). You’ll have to create this spreadsheet as an XML or CSV file and upload it into your account.

• 3. Create a customized audience pixel

  – Before you create a campaign, you have to install Facebook Pixel on every page of your website. The pixel consists of a few lines of code that get attached to your web pages for Facebook to track the products that your web visitors are seeing. To install this, Go to Facebook’s Business Manager Settings tab in Ads Manager. Then, under People & Assets, click ‘Pixels’. Create your Facebook Pixel, and agree to the terms, then click Next. Once you’ve created your Facebook Pixel, click Set Up Now to install the pixel on your web pages.

• 4. Create an ad template

  – Choose a preferred ad template to generate dynamic ads. You can put in placeholders, like product name and product description. When you’re ready to launch an ad, Facebook will enter the correct information into each spot.

By using Facebook’s Dynamic Retargeted Ads, marketers can re-engage with prospects and site visitors in meaningful, relevant ways. Having already looked for products on your site, web visitors may find that getting ads on Facebook’s platform seems almost better than a gentle reminder to return to the website and make a purchase.