Last updated Oct 11th, 2022
The traditional method of creating ads is broken.
There are too many choices - should you choose a single image, a carousel, or a video?
Which CTA would work on your audience? Should your description be long or short? Is your ad copy resonating with potential buyers?
If you choose unwisely or don’t have enough resources to put behind rigorous A/B testing, you may not see enough conversions.
And then there’s the question of personalization at scale.
There’s one solution to combat all these issues: Dynamic Creative Optimization.
Table of Contents
1. What is Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)?
2. Should you use Facebook Dynamic Creative?
3. What kind of dynamic ads can you set up?
4. How to set up: step-by-step
5. Best Practices
6. Benefits of Facebook’s DCO
It’s vital to define what dynamic creative is since DCO and dynamic creative are used interchangeably.
Dynamic creative is an ad unit that has a combination of elements that can be changed and assembled on the fly. While Dynamic Creative Optimization allows you to swap those ad components to create a winning combination that resonates the most with your audience and aligns with your campaign’s goals.
For all practical intents and purposes, Dynamic creative/Dynamic Ads and Dynamic Creative Optimization are the same in the context of Facebook ads.
DCO or dynamic creative optimization was a core feature of Facebook’s Power 5 ad tools released in 2019 to improve conversions from ads.
DCO enables advertisers to test which ad performs best by dynamically delivering different combinations of creatives to the target audience. You can use a combination of 10 images or videos, 5 titles, 5 text variations, 5 descriptions, and 5 CTA buttons.
Facebook’s dynamic creative feature uses the assets you upload and treats them as individual components to create multiple ad variants and test them across different audience segments.
According to Facebook, “When it comes to the creative, it is never one size fits all. Great creative finds the perfect match between your ad and your audience.”
You offer up a range of 30 components, specify who you want to reach, and your budget and Facebook takes care of the rest. It saves time, money, and effort.
Could you run the same test manually?
Yes!
But, it will require heaps of effort and will cost you ad dollars that you can save with Facebook’s dynamic creative.
So, what can you test?
You can have:
Facebook determines different ad combos based on the ad performance but also takes into account user fatigue and ad frequency.
DCO is perfect for advertisers looking to use automation to save time and usually wasted ad dollars. It also appeals to smaller businesses without a dedicated team for performance marketing or enough resources to churn out multiple ad variants.
But if you want to have even more granular control, Facebook’s DCO might not be a good fit for you. Keep reading and you’ll see why.
If you are unsure of the copy and creative that will resonate with your audience, use Facebook’s dynamic creative.
Product insights are the foundation of dynamic ads.
Some instances of when this tool can come in quite handy are:
What are some business objectives that you can set up for dynamic creative optimization?
1. Brand Awareness
2. Reach
3. Traffic
4. App Installs
5. Video views
6. Lead Generation
7. Conversions
When you set up your ad (we’ll show you how), you have to choose from one of the above objectives. Based on that, Facebook will display the right combo to help you achieve that objective.
Pro Tip: Need a quick win? Start using DCO at the bottom of the funnel and work your way up.
Dynamic ads are intended for retail and e-commerce businesses.
You upload a product catalog and let Facebook generate ad variants and test them dynamically on your target audience. But Facebook has taken it up a notch by introducing specific dynamic ads meant for the travel, automotive, and real estate industry.
Psst... Facebook has also recently become flexible with betting ads. We have a playbook to set up dynamic ads for betting that you can download for free.
Facebook helps you connect your travel business to the right travelers by using specific details like dates, destinations, and properties and creating dynamic ads at scale.
Read how G Adventures got back into the game after the pandemic with Hunch.
There are a few ways you can use travel ads:
Like travel ads, you can upload your vehicle catalog, and Facebook uses it to automatically create compelling ads and display them to the right audience.
From test drives to cars sold - go beyond dynamic automotive ads.
Here are a few ways you can leverage automotive ads:
Dynamic ads are recommended for all e-commerce companies or companies with an e-commerce model. However, automotive companies should switch to automotive inventory ads because the targeting, retargeting, and recommender algorithm is specific to the automotive industry.
For instance, you can factor in the vehicle’s location when delivering automotive ads, which is not possible with the original dynamic ads.
Here’s a table from Facebook that explains the difference between dynamic ads and automotive inventory ads:
You may have guessed it from the name already.
Formerly known as dynamic ads for property, real estate ads are intended to be used by real estate agents, realtors, or agencies. Real estate ads help their listings reach potential buyers and renters based on specific parameters like the neighborhood, price, square footage.
Using a Facebook pixel or SDK, the ads are shown to people that have displayed interest in your business by taking specific actions. The algorithm also factors in property location and property similarity.
This solution is geared towards high-traffic sites. So, it is recommended that you leverage this type of ad if you have at least 100 listings.
Facebook’s recommendations suggest using carousel ads and template tags for the best results.
You only need three things if you’re planning to set up Facebook dynamic ads.
Using Facebook pixel or SDK creates a strong feedback loop between your ads and your product catalog. You can either install the Facebook pixel on your website or use the Facebook SDK to increase app installs that drive direct app downloads.
The Facebook Ads Manager won’t allow you to create dynamic ads. Since they work on a larger scale, you will need to set up a Business Manager Account.
You can either manually create a product catalog and upload it to Business Manager or connect your Shopify, Magento, or BigCommerce store and automatically set up your dynamic ads.
5. Finish creating your ad based on the campaign objective by following the on-screen instructions
Your dynamic ads can be placed in the following places:
You can choose between automatic placements or edit placements to decide where you want your ad to show up.
Automatic placements are recommended if you just want Facebook to automate your ad placement. Edit placements allow more granular control, and you can decide where you want your ad to show up by choosing from a list of specific placements.
You can either choose the combination and it will tell you which is the best performing combination, or distill it down to all the creative elements and see which image is received well vs. others.
We’ve covered the best practices for dynamic ads on Facebook, so make sure to check that out.
Here's our Paid Social Playbook for Fashion.
Here’s a quick recap:
DCO helps you spend more time doing things that help your business grow instead of worrying about what kind of ads will convert.
Unsurprisingly, there are some cons to using Facebook’s DCO. Some are limitations of the platform, while others make it difficult for you to achieve your objectives.
The bottom line is Facebook’s DCO is great for advertisers looking to get started and companies that don’t want to or can’t spend time, effort, and money on creatives and testing. But, if you are someone looking for granular control, Facebook’s dynamic creative ad experience is not enough.
Facebook’s dynamic creative allows you to create static campaigns based on the product catalog that you upload.
What does this mean? The data you upload is all that you can play around with when setting up the dynamic ads.
With Hunch, you can create active dynamic templates and creatives. The system checks and rechecks the data on a frequency that works for you - hourly, daily, weekly or monthly.
Let’s say you are running a campaign for 10 cities, and you decide to personalize the ad based on the weather, and you want to change it hourly. Traditionally, you would have to find out the weather data for all those 10 cities every hour and then pause or unpause your campaign if the weather changes. If your ad runs for 12 hours a day, that’s a whopping 120 checks you would have to perform every day.
Hunch’s creative studio allows you to automate this entire process saving you time and effort and design resources you would have needed otherwise.
To be fair, the concept of saving time quickly goes out the window because it is challenging to run a large-scale campaign the traditional way. If you had to target 120 cities instead of 10, that’s 1.440 checks that you would have to perform every day.
Try adding another element of localization like language localization to this campaign, and you’ll realize that it is virtually impossible to do it manually.
With Hunch, you can achieve the impossible.
P.S. Check out how Air Serbia uses dynamic flight ads.
Hunch can be categorized as a dynamic creative vendor perfect for businesses looking to scale their paid social ads and has 3 pillars: automation + creative + ad spend.
See how it fares against other popular dynamic creative optimization platforms.
This is a common question people ask when introduced to the concept of dynamic creative and DCO.
The answer is YES. Whether you’re just getting started or have experience with paid social advertising, dynamic ads are key to personalization.
According to Salesforce. 97% of marketers saw a rise in business outcomes through personalization.
This suggests that customers like personalization. But, to what end? As per SmartHQ, 72% of consumers reportedly respond to marketing messages exclusively crafted for them.
And now, with the recent rollout of Apple’s ATT update, it'll be more difficult to track user behavior, which means that marketers will have fewer data to personalize their ads with.
Even worse, the new privacy measures are likely to drive up costs for advertisers who want access to this valuable information.
It all falls down to marketers who will need to re-learn measurement and personalization, but the question remains how.
By chance, I happen to have been in similar chaos before and can take you through how to create personalized ads without sacrificing user privacy.
The best answer would be seeing DCO in action. See representative examples of DCO in our case study.
Creating relevant and engaging ads is critical for today's marketers. DCO gives you an opportunity to run highly personalized campaigns, without losing your sleep time, and hiring more people to handle it.
Ready to switch on personalization and take it up a notch? Our team wants to talk to you and offer you a FREE strategy call that you can use to get more out of dynamic ads.
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