Dynamic Product Ads for TikTok allow advertisers to use their product catalog to power and produce video, static image, and carousel ad creative at scale.
If you’re not familiar with Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs), let’s get you up to speed! They’ve become so effective at driving sales that 25% of all paid social ad spend goes towards DPAs.
“DPA is bigger than anyone thinks. People are usually shocked to hear that 1/4th of all digital ads in paid social were dynamic product ads. Most major retailers and most major DTC brands are relying on DPAs as a workhorse in their ad accounts." - Dan Pantello, CEO of Marpipe
Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) are personalized ads on social and shopping platforms that display products to users based on their browsing behavior, interests, or past interactions and are powered by data from your shop’s product feed.
To fully understand dynamic product ads, you’ll need to understand the engine that powers them first, product feeds.
A product feed is a file containing information needed to display your products across online marketplaces, search engines, and social media channels, like TikTok, that support commerce experiences.
If you’re unfamiliar with product feeds, read our guide to product feeds first and then come back here to dive deeper into dynamic ads on TikTok.
If you’re familiar with product feeds but haven’t set one up yet for your TikTok shop or ad account, check out TikTok’s support article.
Great. Now let's get back to the ads.
So far, we’ve referred to feed-powered catalog ads as Dynamic Product Ads; however, DPA is actually a name specific to and popularized by Meta (Facebook & Instagram). TikTok’s ad platform includes dynamic product ad functionality, but by a different name.
Originally, TikTok launched their equivalent to Dynamic Product Ads as Dynamic Showcase Ads (DSA). However, this ad format has become so popular that, as of September 2024, TikTok has rolled up dynamic product & catalog ads as a core feature of its TikTok’s main Video Shopping Ads. RIP to the DSA.
For this article and others, we’ll use both “dynamic product ads” and “catalog ads” as an umbrella term across all platforms.
Thinking about using TikTok's DPA ads? These are some of the game-changing benefits that come with them.
TikTok's user base is absolutely huge, with 1 billion people scrolling for hours on the platform every month; think of all that attention your company is missing out on. If you choose to advertise on TikTok, you get access to their entire user base. But they'll make sure you reach the right customers who want to buy your products rather than wasting your ad spend and just showing your catalog to random people.
TikTok’s catalog ads are programmatically generated, helping you and your team cut down 100s of hours in creative production time and ad campaign setup as you scale. You can now instead focus on maintaining and optimizing a robust product feed while setting high-level goals for the ad campaigns in your account.
TikTok doesn't just display your dynamic ads to a wide audience; they’re carefully tailored to each user based on their interests, location, behavior, age, and gender.
Whether you’re retargeting ad engagers and site visitors or reaching new audiences with a DABA strategy, the growing popularity of catalog-powered ads stems from their proven ability to drive conversions for brands like yours.
In 2017, few could have predicted the massive influence TikTok would wield over the digital world. Today, it’s one of the most powerful platforms for video advertising. If your business isn’t taking advantage of TikTok, you’re leaving money on the table because the reach you get with them is unquestionable.
Whether you’re looking to retarget past visitors, reach a new audience, or drive engagement through live product streams, you can do it with TikTok’s Video Shopping Ads.
Setting up video shopping ads for your catalog is a straightforward process
First, you must have a catalog with your products set up in TikTok, which requires at least four products available and approved for sales in order to run Video Shopping Ads. TikTok’s product feed specs include 9 required fields and 27 optional fields. For creative, TikTok includes both an image link field supporting 10 images as well as a video link field. TikTok supports up to 20 million products in just one product catalog!
Next, log in to TikTok Ads Manager, setup a new campaign, and set the advertising objective to Product Sales. Under the Product Source section of your ad campaign, select the product catalog you just set up.
Finally, choose from a standard ad creative format such as single video, carousel, or TikTok’s custom template video. Furthermore, you can also leverage the Video URL field within your product catalog.
Complete the remaining steps to define the audience, budget, and other parameters for your ad campaign, and you’re ready to publish your new catalog ads campaign!
Don’t let the name confuse you — TikTok actually offers both video and image formats within its Video Shopping Ads.
Video shopping ads are the most popular format that TikTok has made available to their advertisers.
These video shopping ads appear directly in users’ feeds as they scroll through the app. While they can easily skip past them, the ads showcase products to users who’ve already engaged with similar product content, making them far more likely to engage compared to a more broadly targeted audience.
You can serve static imagery within your catalog-powered ad with TikTok’s carousel image ads. This ad format allows advertisers to showcase multiple static images within a single ad unit, creating a scrollable carousel. Users can swipe through the images, and each image can have its own caption and link, giving advertisers the flexibility to highlight different products, features, or messages within one ad.
Since TikTok Dynamic Showcase ads are videos, they follow the required ad specs for videos on TikTok.
Now that you’ve mastered the technical ins-and-outs of TikTok dynamic product ads, your greatest challenge as a marketer on TikTok will be differentiation. On one end of the differentiation spectrum, a sea of brands chasing the latest meme trend; on the other end, brands defaulting to the standard product on white background image.
Marpipe makes it easy to create scroll-stopping DPA ads with generative AI tools, templates, and much more. The beauty of Marpipe is that our creative editor is powered by the same product feed that fuels your catalog ads.
Get started for free today!
