How to set up a Meta product catalog feed for Facebook and Instagram

Meta's catalog powers Advantage+ catalog ads, Instagram shopping, collection ads and the shop surfaces. It reads a file the same way Google does: you publish a feed at a URL, register it in Commerce Manager as a data source, and choose how often Meta fetches it. The mechanics are familiar; the details differ enough to cost you products if you assume a Google feed will do.

What Meta needs from each item

The fields that must be present for a product to be usable:

Recommended, and worth the effort: item_group_id, sale_price, additional_image_link, gtin, color, size, google_product_category. Yes — Meta uses Google's product taxonomy for categorisation, which is convenient when you have already mapped it.

Where Meta differs from Google

Availability wording. Meta expects values written with spaces — in stock, out of stock, preorder, available for order, discontinued — where Google's specification uses in_stock and out_of_stock. Feeds that were built for Google and re-used for Meta often import with every product marked unavailable for exactly this reason.

Condition is required. Most shops sell new products, so this is a constant: set condition: new for everything and override it for the categories where it differs. Meta additionally accepts more granular used conditions for some catalogs.

Field names for variants. Colour and size belong in color and size, not only baked into the title. Meta uses them to build variant pickers and to avoid showing four near-identical items in one carousel.

Longer titles are tolerated but not rewarded. Meta allows a longer title than Google. That is not an invitation to stuff it; the ad crops it.

Variants, done properly

Send each buyable combination as its own item, with its own id, price and availability, and give them all the same item_group_id:

id,item_group_id,title,color,size,availability,price,link,image_link
SKU-1042,TRAIL-GTX,"Northwind Trail Runner GTX",Slate,42,in stock,89.88 EUR,https://…/slate-42,https://…/slate.jpg
SKU-1043,TRAIL-GTX,"Northwind Trail Runner GTX",Slate,43,in stock,89.88 EUR,https://…/slate-43,https://…/slate.jpg
SKU-1051,TRAIL-GTX,"Northwind Trail Runner GTX",Moss,42,out of stock,89.88 EUR,https://…/moss-42,https://…/moss.jpg

Two details that matter more than they look:

• The link should open the right variant. If every size links to the same generic product page, shoppers land on a page that does not match the ad, and conversion suffers even when nothing is technically wrong.
• The image should show the right colour. Sending the same photo for every colour makes the carousel look broken.

Choosing what belongs in the catalog

Not everything you sell should be in the catalog. Products with no image, products below a margin you are willing to advertise, spare parts, gift cards, bundles that cannot be fulfilled from stock — all of these are better filtered out than uploaded and then paused product by product.

A useful rule of thumb: the catalog should contain exactly the products you would be happy for Advantage+ to choose on your behalf. Meta's automation picks from what you supply; filtering the file is the most direct control you have.

Keeping it in sync

Set the fetch schedule in Commerce Manager, then make sure your side rebuilds at least as often. A catalog fetched hourly from a file that is rebuilt once a day is a catalog with hourly-fresh mistakes.

Beyond the schedule, three habits keep Meta catalogs healthy:

1. Rebuild after stock and price changes, not only on the clock.
2. Validate before publishing. Missing condition, Google-style availability values, and prices without a currency are the three most common reasons items are dropped on import.
3. Watch the item count. The number of items Meta accepted should track the number your file contained. A sudden divergence is the earliest signal that something in the shop's export changed.

A practical set-up

If you are already publishing to Google, the shortest path to a working Meta catalog is:

1. Build a second feed from the same catalog, using Meta's field names.
2. Map availability to Meta's wording, set condition, and make sure brand is filled.
3. Keep item_group_id, color and size populated for variants.
4. Filter out anything you do not want Advantage+ to advertise.
5. Publish it at its own URL and register it in Commerce Manager with an hourly or daily fetch.

That is all the file needs. Everything beyond it — labels for campaign structure, curated sets, seasonal exclusions — is built on the same catalog, and is easier to change once the data lives in one place instead of in a spreadsheet per channel.

Meta's own reference: the product data specification in the Meta Business Help Center lists every accepted field and value.

Frequently asked questions