Product catalogs and the ad library

Keep a Meta product catalog for ads that show each person the products they are most likely to buy. Search the public ad libraries to see what other advertisers run.

A catalog ad is one ad that covers many products. You do not make an image per item. Meta builds a card for each product and picks which ones each person sees, based on what they browsed. The same catalog can also power Facebook and Instagram Shops and a WhatsApp Business catalog.

#Do it in the dashboard

#Build a catalog

Open Ads, then Catalogs, and pick your Meta ad account.
Choose New catalog, or open one your Meta business already has.
On Products, choose Add product. Each product needs a Retailer ID (SKU), a name, a price, a link and an image.
Many products? Use Feeds and uploads to pull a product file from a link every hour, day or week. Or use Bulk changes.
On Product sets, choose New product set and add conditions, such as one brand or everything on sale. An ad promotes a set, not the whole catalog.

Catalog ads are not in Create ad yet. Ask your AI to build one from your product set.

#Search the ad library

Open Ads, then Ad library.
Pick Meta or LinkedIn.
Type Keywords and the Countries. Open Filters for more: page IDs, status, media type and languages on Meta, or the Advertiser and dates on LinkedIn.
Choose Search.

#Or ask your AI

Put my Shopify products in a Meta catalog, make a product set for the "Summer" collection, then build a catalog ad for that set at $25 a day. Create it paused and show me first.

For the ad library:

Search the Meta ad library for ads about "meal prep" running in the UK, and summarize the hooks and offers you see.

#Good to know

Catalogs and catalog ads work on Meta only (Facebook and Instagram).
A catalog ad needs a Meta ad account with a pixel. See Conversions and pixels.
Your Meta login needs permission to manage catalogs. Without it, Meta refuses.
The Retailer ID is your SKU. It cannot change later.
Deleting a catalog removes every product and takes it off any ads and WhatsApp numbers that use it.
Meta's ad library covers political and issue ads in every country, and all ads shown in the EU and UK. For other countries it only returns political and issue ads.
LinkedIn's ad library lists ads that ran on LinkedIn since June 2023.