Social Dynamic Ads (SDA) catalogs (for Meta, TikTok and Snapchat) allows you to setup your catalog using Bannerflow and publish to the social network in question. The SDA module allows you to use Studio to design your creative with feeded content to create your catalog using script tags.
With the SDA module in Bannerflow you are able to be more creative with your design (as it otherwise tends to be a white background and a product image). As the SDA module is using the script tag, you are able to benefit from all other functionalities in Bannerflow, such as scheduling and pushing design changes from studio. The updates will not be live immediately as Meta doesn’t allow for updates more frequently than every 1 hours.
Within the SDA module you are able to set update intervals for new images to be generated. These images are only updated if there is a change in any of the values from the feed source itself, if no change then the image remains as is. Note, Meta only checks for updates up to once an hour. This means that even if you have a 30 min update interval in the SDA module it will not update in Facebook every 30 minutes.
Setup your first catalog
Build your creative in Studio (needs to use feeded content for this to work)
Go to the SDA module and click "+ Create Catalog"
Select the template that best match your industry and give it a name
Paste a link to the feed source you are looking to use
Supported formats are CSV, JSON and XML
Set the update interval you wish to use (important, this is within Bannerflow only, not affecting the update interval in the social network you are publishing to)
Paste in the Script tag in the next step
Click "Create Catalog"
Edit Catalog
In the list view of your catalogs, either click the three dots and select "edit catalog" or click on the name of the catalog to enter the edit mode. In this view you will see four different tabs to navigate through:
Catalog
Shows the summary of the fields expected from the social network you are publishing to
Review each field and ensure the mapping of them are correct and as you expect. The utility page will be smart and try to auto map each field, if using the same feed source in Bannerflow when building the creative as you used when setting up the SDA Catalog, the mapping will be smoother.
Important that the field “id” contains unique values. If it doesn’t, the rows will be seen as the same product and as a result only one of them will be generated as an image. This field might be called different for different templates, all have id as part of the name and need to be mapped against a unique value in the feed
By clicking the name of the row, you can edit the mapping and choose if wanting to take from the feed itself, a static text, or use expressions to adjust how the output is displayed
You are able to add different designs depending on the product / item in your feed. This gives you more flexibility to keep everything in one place and control what is being displayed to users from the social network itself
For additional control, you are able to go into the image generated and manually set what each feeded item should take it’s information from. You access this view by clicking on the creative image in the above preview:
This allows you to override the automatic mapping done, and have full control over which section of the feed source that is being used in the design itself.
When mapping, you are able to use:
Static text
Field from feed used in the catalogue
Product expression
Remember to toggle “Activate“ as this is needed for the Catalog Feed to be generated. The Catalogue Feed is what you upload to facebook and this contains the link to the image generated (that was built in Bannerflow) as well as the dynamic content, it will have one item for each product from your product catalogue. This link will be displayed at the bottom of this section (Open Catalog Feed), and is what you copy and paste to Facebook when publishing your dynamic ad.
Product Feed
Shows a summary of the product feed which is the main feed source that contains all information about your products / games / routes etc. that you wish to generate images for
Allows you to change the feed source
Allows you to adjust the update interval
Allows you to set filters if there are only certain parts of the feed source you wish to use
Preview
Will show the preview of all images generated based on the information from your Product Feed and any filtering applied in the DPA module.
Log
Will show the updates made and if any changes since setup
The images will only update if there is a change in the feed source. If only one item has a change, only this item and image will be updated.