Meta Advantage+ Catalog Ads Explained: What Changed and How Creative Works Now

You open Ads Manager to set up Advantage+ catalog ads, and the option you knew is gone. Meta has folded catalog ads into its sales campaigns, renamed the format "Products from your catalog" and switched some creative enhancements on by default.

Leave those settings unchecked, and Meta may adjust your product images, add product videos and pick the ad format without you noticing. Know what moved, and you decide what shoppers actually see.

This guide explains what changed, what Advantage+ now automates and which five things to check in your account. First, what does Advantage+ actually mean?

What is Meta Advantage+?

Meta Advantage+ is Meta's name for its automated ad products. In Meta's words, it is "a suite of products that can help you enhance and optimize campaign performance" through AI and automation.

It comes in two forms. The end-to-end campaigns, Advantage+ sales, app and leads campaigns, automate a whole campaign. The single settings, such as Advantage+ audience, Advantage+ placements and Advantage+ creative, automate one part of a campaign you otherwise set up yourself.

Meta introduced the Meta Advantage name in March 2022, when it gathered its automated ad products under Meta Advantage. Automatic placements became Advantage+ placements, and automated shopping ads became Advantage+ shopping campaigns.

What happened to Advantage+ catalog ads?

Meta no longer treats them as a separate ad type. Its catalog ads page now reads "Advantage+ catalog ads (now Products from your catalog)" and says your product catalog works across all sales campaigns, not just one ad format.

In practice, catalog ads are no longer a campaign type of their own. You create a sales campaign, select your catalog under Product data and connect it once at the campaign level, and Meta can then show products from it in that campaign's ads.

Meta announced the direction at Cannes in June 2026: product data is becoming "a foundational input across all Sales campaigns", so Meta can match products to people without advertisers splitting their campaigns by ad type.

A short history: from DPA to Products from your catalog

The format has had four names in just over ten years, which is why guides and Ads Manager rarely agree. The dates below come from Meta's own announcements where Meta published one.

Catalog ads vs Advantage+ sales campaigns

Catalog ads describe where the products in an ad come from: your catalog. An Advantage+ sales campaign describes how the campaign runs: Meta decides the audience, the placements and how the budget is spent.

When Meta renamed the campaign type in February 2025, it said the AI optimizations turn on when you use Advantage+ audience, placements and campaign budget. Switch one of those to a manual setting and the campaign is a sales campaign without the full Advantage+ setup, which can still use your catalog.

So the two don't compete: today your catalog runs inside a sales campaign, with Advantage+ fully on or partly on.

What happened to dynamic ads for broad audiences

Dynamic ads for broad audiences arrived in January 2017. They let Facebook show catalog products to people who had never visited the advertiser's site, based on what they browsed elsewhere.

That idea is now the default, not a separate option. In January 2025 Meta removed the Audience Types option from catalog ads with the sales objective, so prospecting runs through Meta's automated targeting.

Retargeting still works, but you set it up yourself. You build a catalog custom audience of people who interacted with products from a product set, which needs the Meta Pixel or the app SDK.

What Advantage+ creative does to your catalog ads

Advantage+ can change how your catalog products look in the ad, not only who sees them. Meta's Advantage+ creative page is direct about defaults: "Some enhancements may be turned on by default, but you can turn them off at any time."

These are the options that apply to catalog ads, with their default status from Meta's developer documentation and from a new sales campaign we checked in Ads Manager:

In Ads Manager the settings sit in an Advantage+ creative box at the ad level. In a new sales campaign we created in October 2026, without changing anything, three of six Advantage+ creative enhancements were on: dynamic overlays, dynamic description and image touch-ups. Product tags, music and background generation were off. A second group, essential enhancements, was on too, including hiding the price, standard labels and an enhanced call to action.

Meta's creative page also lists text generation, image expansion, image animation and video expansion. It doesn't say which of these apply to catalog ads, so check the creative settings of each ad.

Format automation is the one that surprises people. When you turn it on, Meta "picks a format for each ad impression", so the same catalog ad can appear as a carousel to one person and a collection to the next (how the formats differ).

Should you leave the enhancements on?

Test them rather than assume either way. Meta itself notes that advertisers want product images that meet their brand guidelines, and a generated background or adjusted crop can drift from yours.

Check a few delivered ads in the preview for each placement before a big budget goes behind them. If an enhancement changes how the product looks, turn it off for that ad and compare results over the same period.

What Meta claims about performance

Meta publishes its own results for these features. They come from Meta's tests, and the pages don't show how each test was run, so read them as Meta's claims rather than benchmarks for your account:

The fair test is your own: run the enhancement on one ad set and off on another, with the same products and budget, and compare cost per purchase over the same period.

What to check in your account now

If your catalog campaigns were set up before these changes, five checks catch most of what moved:

1. Campaigns built through the API. Meta's developer blog says the old Advantage+ shopping campaign setup can no longer be created or updated through the API, and that remaining ones will be paused in a later API version. If a tool or agency built yours that way, rebuild them as sales campaigns.
2. Retargeting ad sets. If an ad set relied on the old Audience Types option, it now uses Meta's automated targeting. Add a catalog custom audience if you still want a ring-fenced retargeting budget.
3. Creative enhancements. Open the creative settings of each active ad and note which enhancements are on. Image touch-ups and dynamic overlays were on by default in a new campaign we checked, dynamic media is on by default too, and all of them change what people see.
4. Product sets. With Meta choosing products across the whole campaign, a product set is the main way to keep clearance stock, low-margin items or a brand you can't advertise out of an ad.
5. Images per placement. Meta adapts one image to every placement unless you give it more. Extra 4:5 and 9:16 images in the feed give it better material for Feed, Stories and Reels.

What you still control

With Advantage+ on, Meta chooses the audience, the placements, the budget split and which products each person sees. Meta has said as much itself: at Cannes 2026 it wrote that advertisers want "more ways beyond product images on a white background".

That leaves you a short list:

• The product data. Titles, prices, availability and images in the feed decide what Meta can show at all.
• The product sets. Which products a campaign may promote, and which it may not.
• The creative. The images Meta puts in front of people, and which enhancements you leave on.
• The measurement. Which results you judge each set and creative by.

The creative is the item on that list with the most room. A catalog that only holds white-background packshots gives Meta nothing else to choose from, however good its targeting.

These four examples from the OptiQube ad library were generated from product feeds, each for a different kind of store:

Callout, electronics: a smartwatch with four labels for the display, the crown, the band and the sensors.

Lifestyle, home decor: a pumpkin lamp hanging on a porch at night, next to the product shot, for a Halloween week.

Callout, food: cookie dough with labels for taste and ingredients, and a short headline.

Lifestyle, luggage: a suitcase in an airport, next to a clean product shot.

OptiQube, our product, generates creatives like these for every product in a feed and sends the approved ones to Meta as a paused campaign draft. Meta's own enhancements work on top of whatever image you give it, so a better starting image helps both.

Frequently asked questions

Start with the creative

Advantage+ decides who sees your products and where. What they look like is still your call.

Browse 250+ catalog ad examples in the ad library, or start for free and generate creatives from your own product feed.