Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) offer powerful prospecting and retargeting capabilities, but maximizing their performance often requires a strategic perspective. Marketers weighing whether to tackle DPAs in-house or invest in an external service face a crucial decision. Let’s break down the factors involved in making the decision to in-house or use a service.
In-House DPA Management: Pros
With an in-house team, you can:
- Utilize Facebook Frames: Add simple frames for a quick visual boost (note: these are Facebook-exclusive. Frames don’t run on Instagram). Frames are free and available in every account. Frames are most often used for logos or account wide % off discounts.
- Manage Supplemental Feeds: Supplemental feeds overwrite the attributes in your primary feed. With Supplemental Feeds you can swap primary images for lifestyle, add additional images, change titles or descriptions, or replace your main images with individually edited images with callouts.
- Product Sets: You can segment your catalog for different promo categories.
However, in-house DPA optimization is challenging. It requires technical skills in catalog management, which is a new skill set for most creative strategists.
It can also be resource intensive. Manually editing images at scale while managing all the assets to make sure they are accurate is a task that grows exponentially as the catalog grows.
A process that works well for 10 products will break down for 100 products. The true magic starts when you go beyond the basics.
The Case for an External DPA Service
Specialized DPA services can offer the following advantages:
- BNPL Overlays: The “Buy Now, Pay Later” “As low as” price is a potent attention grabbers, boosting click-through rates and every other metric through the entire funnel.
- Large-Scale Promo Updates: Effortlessly sync promotional messaging across your entire catalog. Even if different products or categories of products have different promos.
- Branding with Backgrounds: Create visuals that align seamlessly with your brand’s aesthetic.
- Add Lifestyle images: Additional images unlocks the slideshow feature within catalog ads to boost performance
- A/B Testing for Creative: Data-driven experimentation to identify the most effective ad designs.
- Leverage other catalog channels: Catalog creative that works well on Meta can work on Pinterest, Snap, TikTok, and Klaviyo
- Best Practices and Strategic Guidance: Tap into the experience of DPA specialists that know how to solve catalog issues.
When Does a Service Make Sense?
Generally, a dedicated DPA service becomes a strong contender if:
- Your Catalog Ad Spend Exceeds $3,000/month: A DPA enhance service provider will start at $199/mo. At that level a 10% or more performance boost provides a solid ROI on a service provider. Often with BNPL you can see as much as a 70% increase in performance.
Actual 30 day ROAS case: A $3000 monthly budget using BNPL overlays. - Your Catalog is Large (25+ Products): Services excel at managing the complexity of keeping all creative up-to-date, especially for price or promotion updates across extensive product lines. Manually maintaining consistent creative across dozens or hundreds of products can be a significant time drain for internal teams. Services leverage automation and expertise to ensure your ads always reflect the latest information.
Additional Considerations
- In-House Skillset: Does your team have the bandwidth and specific DPA expertise needed?
- Opportunity Cost: Could your team’s time be better spent on other high-value marketing activities?
- Long-Term Goals: Are you focused on scaling growth, where optimized DPAs can be a major driver?
The Verdict
In-house DPA management can be effective for smaller-scale operations where basic customization suffices. However, if you’re serious about maximizing the ROI of your Meta ad spend, or have a complex product catalog, a specialized service can deliver a significant competitive edge.
