There are many kinds of Facebook Ads formats, however, they fall into two categories: dynamic ads and static ads. Both types of ads are set up in your Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager account.
For static ads, you use a combination of images, videos, and text to create your advert. Essentially, your final ad will look exactly like what’s in the Ad Preview section right before you submit your ads for approval.
For dynamic ads, these are not going to look anything like what’s in the Ad Preview section. What you’ll see in the preview is just going to be a placeholder. This is because the image, headline, description, price, and more, will depend based on your leads’ activity on your website or app. Facebook will be dynamically pulling the information from your data feed.
For instance, if user 1 was browsing through some jackets on your app, when they go into Facebook, they’re going to see dynamic ads for jackets. If user 2 was looking at some nice t-shirts, then they’re going to be served dynamic ads for t-shirts. User 1 is not going to see some t-shirt ads because he wasn’t looking at t-shirts.
To answer the question which type of ad is best for your business, the answer will depend on the type of business you have. Static ads are used by a vast majority of advertisers on Facebook because they only have a few products to sell. To use dynamic ads, you’d need to upload a product catalog to Facebook. If you only have 1 or 2 products, you don’t need to have a catalog.
Dynamic ads are used by businesses with a large inventory of products – whether it’s a few hundred, thousands or millions of products – businesses of this size will benefit from dynamic ads. While the initial setup of dynamic ads will take a considerable amount of time, the result is worth it. Once dynamic ads are set up, it’s pretty much on autopilot. You don’t need to manually update the price or your stock levels every day. You can do it one central location and your Facebook data feed will automatically reflect the new information.
To sum up, if you’re a business with only a few products to sell, use static ads. If you’re a large business with many divisions or markets, create dynamic ads to streamline and lower your ad costs.
