Catalog Ads: Product Catalog Ad Creative and Dynamic Product Ad Specs for Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest
A catalog ad assembles itself from your product feed, which makes the feed the creative. Adscreator turns each product URL into the on brand images and copy that feed needs, at every size the platforms serve.
Flat pricing, no credits · Updated August 2026
Generating ad set
Preparing the studio…
|
✓ Resized for every placement in one pass.
Live preview with sample products. Try it, then get started with your own.
Direct answer
Catalog ads are ads assembled automatically from a product feed, so the platform decides which products to show each person instead of you designing one ad per product. Meta calls them Advantage+ catalog ads, previously dynamic product ads or DPAs; TikTok and Pinterest run equivalent formats from the same kind of feed. Because the creative is pulled from feed fields rather than uploaded per ad, the specs that bind are feed specs. Meta requires product images of at least 500 x 500 pixels as JPEG or PNG up to 8 MB, and caps the title field at 200 characters with 65 recommended to avoid truncation. TikTok requires nine feed fields and images of at least 500 x 500 for square placements. Pinterest shopping ads follow its standard image ad specs, which recommend 1000 x 1500 at 2:3.
The problem
Catalog ads fail quietly, because nobody ever looks at them. You upload a feed, the campaign is approved, products start serving, and the creative decisions get made by whatever your ecommerce platform happened to export two years ago. That is usually a white background pack shot at 800 pixels, a title written for a category page rather than a feed, and a price that is right. It passes every validation check the platform runs, so no error ever appears. What you cannot see is that the same product is being served against competitors who put a lifestyle image, a badge and a legible price into the frame, and your listing is the plain one. The second failure is scale. A team will happily spend a week on the creative for one hero campaign reaching a few thousand people, and spend nothing on the 900 SKU feed that quietly serves ten times the impressions, because there is no obvious way to make 900 images without a design queue that costs more than the products are worth.
How Adscreator handles it
Adscreator produces the per product creative a catalog feed needs, without a design round per SKU. Paste a product URL and it pulls the product data, then returns on brand images in the crops each platform serves: square at 1080 x 1080 or larger for Meta and TikTok, 1000 x 1500 at 2:3 for Pinterest, plus 4:5 and 1.91:1 versions for the placements that prefer them. Every image comes out in your own colors, type and logo rather than as a bare pack shot, so a feed built from them reads as one brand across hundreds of listings. Copy is written to the field limits that actually apply, so a feed title lands inside the 65 characters Meta recommends before truncation rather than the 200 it will technically accept. You export the files, host them, and point image_link at them from your own feed; Adscreator never connects to your ad account or your catalog. Pricing is flat monthly with no per asset credits, which is the part that decides whether covering a whole catalog is realistic, because a 900 product feed costs the same to build for as a nine product one.
specs
Product catalog feed specs on the three platforms that run catalog ads.
Figures below come from each platform's own developer and advertising documentation, checked in August 2026: Meta's commerce platform catalog field reference, TikTok Ads Manager catalog product parameters, and Pinterest Business help. Read the feed text limits column carefully, because these are catalog field limits and they are not the same numbers as the ad copy limits published for single image ads.
| Platform | Required feed fields | Product image minimum | File type and cap | Feed text limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta (Facebook and Instagram) | id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link, brand | 500 x 500 minimum. Build 1080 x 1080 or larger for the placements Meta actually serves | JPEG or PNG, up to 8 MB | title 200 maximum with 65 recommended to avoid truncation, description 9,999, brand 100, custom_label_0 to 4 100 each |
| TikTok | sku_id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link, brand | 500 x 500 minimum for square 1:1 carousel placements | JPG or PNG. TikTok publishes no file size cap | TikTok publishes no character limits for title or description |
| Shopping ads follow the standard image ad specs rather than a separate catalog spec | 1000 x 1500 at 2:3 recommended | PNG or JPEG, 20 MB on desktop and 32 MB in app | title 100, description 800 and never displayed |
Three things in this table catch people out. Meta's 500 x 500 is an acceptance floor, not a quality target: a 500 pixel image is accepted into the catalog and then upscaled across placements that serve well above it, which is why feeds full of technically valid images still look soft. Pinterest's 800 character description is never shown to a human on the home feed, the search feed, or on an ad viewed up close, so it feeds relevance matching only. And TikTok genuinely does not publish a title limit or a file size cap in its catalog parameters article, so treat any specific number you see quoted for those elsewhere as unverified and confirm it in Ads Manager before a bulk upload.
In a catalog ad the feed is the creative, not the ad
This is the one structural fact that explains almost every catalog ad mistake. In a normal campaign you design an ad, upload it, and it runs. In a catalog campaign you upload a feed, and the platform builds a different ad for every person from the fields in that feed. Nobody on your team ever sees the finished ad, because there is no finished ad: there are as many as there are products times audiences. That has a direct consequence for which specs matter. The character limits published for a Meta single image ad, the 125 characters of primary text and the 27 character headline, are not the limits doing the work here. The headline in a catalog ad comes from the title field in your feed, and that field allows 200 characters with 65 recommended before truncation. The image comes from image_link, which has its own 500 x 500 minimum and 8 MB cap, and not from anything you upload in Ads Manager. So the practical audit is not to open the ad and look at it. It is to open the feed, sort by title length, and read the twenty longest and the twenty shortest. Anything over 65 characters is being cut somewhere, and anything under about 25 is probably a bare SKU name doing no selling at all. Then sort by image URL and spot check the resolution. That audit takes twenty minutes and it is the highest value twenty minutes available on a catalog campaign, because it applies to every impression the feed will ever serve.
The 500 x 500 minimum is an acceptance floor, not a quality target
Meta states 500 x 500 pixels as the minimum for image_link, and TikTok states the same 500 x 500 for square carousel placements. Both numbers are widely repeated as though they were recommendations. They are not. They are the point below which the platform refuses the image. The placements those images then serve into run considerably larger: a square feed placement on Meta is served at 1080 x 1080 and above, and the same product image can appear in Stories, Reels and right column crops on the same day. A 500 pixel source upscaled to 1080 is visibly soft, and it is soft in a feed where the ad directly beside yours may be a native post shot on a recent phone. Nothing in the platform will tell you this is happening, because the image passed validation. The workable rule is to treat 1080 x 1080 as your floor and build at 1440 x 1440 where the source allows it, keeping the file inside Meta's 8 MB cap, which is generous enough that this is rarely the binding constraint. Where this gets expensive is that ecommerce platforms often export whatever the product page uses, and product page images are frequently sized for a thumbnail grid. It is worth checking what your feed is actually pointing at rather than what your product pages appear to show, because the two are often different files.
Catalog ads versus carousel ads: they are not alternatives
These two get compared as though you pick one, and the comparison is confused because a catalog ad frequently renders as a carousel. The distinction is not the shape of the ad, it is where the content comes from. A carousel ad is a format: two or more cards you build and upload, in a fixed order, showing whatever you decided. A catalog ad is a source: the platform pulls products from your feed and assembles them per impression, and it may present them as a single image, a carousel, or a collection depending on placement and what it thinks will work. So the real question is not carousel or catalog, it is whether you want to control which products appear or let the platform decide. Control wins when you have a specific narrative, a launch, a bundle, a sequence that has to run in order, or fewer than roughly twenty products where personalization has little to work with. The platform wins when you have real catalog depth and behavioral signal, because it can show a returning visitor the thing they looked at instead of the thing you guessed. Most stores of any size should run both, and the honest reason they do not is that a catalog campaign feels like it needs no creative work, so it gets none. That is exactly why the plain feeds lose to the ones where somebody built the images deliberately.
Why changing a product image does nothing until you change the URL
Meta's catalog documentation states this plainly and almost nobody reads it: if you change the image later, the new image must use a different URL or the change will not be recognized. Meta caches the image against the URL string. Overwrite product-1234.jpg on your server with a better photograph, leave the filename alone, and the catalog keeps serving the old one indefinitely. This is the single most common reason a creative refresh on a catalog campaign appears to do nothing. A team replaces images across a feed, sees no change in delivery or performance, and concludes that catalog creative does not matter, when in fact the new creative never shipped. The fix is a versioned filename or a query string, so product-1234-v2.jpg rather than product-1234.jpg, applied at the point where you generate the feed so it happens automatically rather than by someone remembering. It is worth running the check even if you have never deliberately refreshed images, because the same caching behavior affects any image your ecommerce platform regenerates in place, which several do during theme changes and bulk edits. Pull three image_link URLs out of your live feed, open them, and compare them to what is on the product page today.
what it uses
The features behind catalog ads.
questions
Catalog ads: the questions people ask.
What are catalog ads?
Catalog ads are ads built automatically from a product feed rather than designed one at a time. You upload a catalog of products with their images, titles, prices and links, and the platform assembles an ad per impression, choosing which products to show each person based on their behavior. Meta, TikTok and Pinterest all run a version of the format. The creative comes from the feed fields, not from anything you upload in the ad itself.
What are dynamic product ads?
Dynamic product ads, often shortened to DPA, is the older name for what Meta now calls Advantage+ catalog ads. They are the same thing: ads generated from a product catalog and personalized per user, typically used to retarget people who viewed a product and to prospect with a broad product set. The terminology changed when Meta consolidated its automated products under the Advantage+ label, but the feed requirements and the underlying mechanic did not.
What size should product catalog images be?
Meta requires a minimum of 500 x 500 pixels for the image_link field, as JPEG or PNG up to 8 MB, and TikTok requires 500 x 500 for square carousel placements. Treat both as acceptance floors rather than targets. Build at 1080 x 1080 or larger, because the placements these images serve into run well above 500 pixels and an upscaled source looks soft next to native content. Pinterest recommends 1000 x 1500 at 2:3.
What is the character limit for a catalog feed title?
On Meta the title field accepts up to 200 characters, but 65 is the recommended limit if you want to avoid truncation in the places the title is displayed. The description field accepts up to 9,999 characters, and brand and each custom_label field accept 100. TikTok does not publish character limits for title or description in its catalog parameters documentation. Pinterest allows a 100 character title and an 800 character description that is never displayed.
What is the difference between catalog ads and carousel ads?
A carousel is a format and a catalog ad is a source, so they are not alternatives. A carousel is a set of cards you build, upload and order yourself. A catalog ad pulls products from your feed and lets the platform assemble them per impression, often rendering as a carousel but sometimes as a single image or a collection. Choose a built carousel when the order and the products matter; choose catalog when you have depth and want personalization.
How many products do you need for catalog ads?
There is no hard minimum, but personalization needs something to choose between, so a catalog of only a handful of products gives the algorithm almost nothing to optimize. Advertisers generally find catalog campaigns start to earn their place somewhere in the tens of products and improve with depth. Below that, a built carousel or a single image ad usually performs better, because you can make deliberate creative decisions that a thin feed cannot support.
Do catalog ads need a pixel or Conversions API?
For retargeting, yes. Showing someone the specific product they viewed requires product level events reaching the platform, which means a pixel with product IDs that match your catalog, a Conversions API integration, or both. Broad prospecting from a catalog can run without that signal, but it loses the mechanic that makes the format work. The most common setup failure is product IDs in your events not matching the IDs in your feed, which silently disables personalization.
Can you use your own creative in catalog ads?
Yes, and this is where most of the available advantage sits. The images the platform serves are whatever image_link points at in your feed, so you control them completely. Nothing requires them to be plain pack shots. You can point the feed at branded compositions with your colors, type, logo and a legible price, and the platform will serve those instead. Remember that changing an image requires a new URL or the platform keeps serving the cached one.
▪ keep reading
Catalog ads are one route to market for a store. The ecommerce ad creative generator covers the wider ecommerce build, the product ad maker covers single product creative in depth, and the Shopify ad maker covers the workflow when the catalog already lives in Shopify.
Feed specs sit alongside placement specs. Meta ad sizes covers the 1440 series Facebook and Instagram now recommend for the placements a catalog ad lands in, carousel ad specs compares the card rules on every platform, since a catalog ad usually renders as a carousel, and social media ad sizes lines every network up in one table.
Running the same feed elsewhere? The Pinterest ad maker and TikTok ad maker handle those platforms end to end, and the dropshipping ad maker and Amazon ad maker cover catalogs that live on someone else's platform.
▪ more use cases