Increasing return on ad spend with Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads and product level video

Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, On is a performance sportswear company that designs and markets sports clothing, including running shoes, tops, bottoms, jackets, caps, shorts, T-shirts and accessories tailored for active men and women.

On’s usual strategy had been to run catalogue-based ad campaigns across Facebook and Instagram that used still images of its products. Looking for a way to strengthen campaign metrics – especially return on ad spend – the team decided to test Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads with the product level video feature.

With Advantage+ catalogue ads, advertisers simply upload their online product catalogue to Facebook and Instagram, and the machine learning functionality in Advantage+ catalogue ads automatically pulls images of relevant products, and customers can then purchase on the advertiser’s website.

Using the product level video feature, catalogue advertisers can feature their most inspirational and engaging video assets, and use their online catalogue to display those videos assets along with the existing product images. Employing machine learning and automation, the system delivers the most relevant ad creative at the product level, as well as the highest-performing creative assets based on what the algorithm predicts will improve campaign performance.

To see how well this ad format and feature could work for its business, On worked with Meta Business Partner Celtra and the Meta product team to build video assets from existing content. Together they used bits of On’s brand video at the beginning and end of each asset, and animated images of each product. Celtra was able to produce these videos on a large scale, ensuring that a video was available for every available product.

The advertiser then ran an A/B test that compared the performance of:

• Control cell: its usual photo ad campaign without the product level video feature
• Test cell: an Advantage+ catalogue ad campaign with the product level video feature

On showed the ads in both cells to US adults aged 18 and over, and it used the Advantage+ placements feature to automatically deliver ads across all of Meta’s placements based on which were most likely to drive the best campaign results at the lowest cost.