Use your Facebook Catalog to advertise internationally without making a catalog feed for each country you want to run dynamic products ads. This is a great feature for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands looking to go global. 

Creating a Catalog for each country you want to advertise in can be a tedious task. Facebook has streamlined this by letting you set up a sub-catalogs that connect to your main country catalog for running dynamic product ads (DPAs). This post is going to cover 3 key  areas:

  1. Create a language or country feed
  2. Upload a language or country feed to a catalog
  3. Create a dynamic ad for multiple languages and countries

We have been using Facebook’s Catalog for multiple countries and languages with a global DTC brand in 42 countries across 4 continents and it’s amazing.

This is the best way to take your Facebook DPAs global and help you scale an ad account while doing DPA remarketing.

Set Up a Catalog for Multiple Languages and Countries

If you want to advertise your items internationally, you don’t need different catalogs for each language or country. You can create a single catalog for your default language and country and then upload additional language and country information to it with data feeds. You can then use your catalog to create dynamic ads that automatically show people the correct item information and prices for their language or country.

Before you begin:

  1. Create a catalog (see below) and add inventory information for your default language and country. This is the most common language your customers speak and the country where you do most of your business. Within your catalog, you can also create product sets to control which types of items appear in your ads.
  2. Upload language or country information to your catalog with a language or country feed.
  3. Install a Facebook pixel. The pixel is a piece of code that measures events, meaning the actions people take on your website. To run dynamic ads, your pixel code must include certain required events.
  4. Connect your pixel to your catalog. This connection allows you to show items from your catalog to people who previously searched for or interacted with those items.

Create a language or country feed

To create a data feed with item information for other languages or countries:

  1. Open a spreadsheet program, such as Excel, to create a new data feed file for language or country. If you want, you can use Facebook feed templates you can: language feed CSV template or country feed CSV template.
    Note: To add information for both language and country, create two separate feeds. You can include multiple languages in the language feed and multiple countries in the country feed.
  2. Include an id column in your language or country feed. In this column, enter each item’s unique ID. The ID for each item must match its ID in your main data feed (the feed for your default language and country) and its content ID from your pixel. This tells your catalog that it’s the same item in all 3 places.
  3. Add an override column. In this column, enter the ISO codes for the languages or countries you want to reach.
  4. For a language feed, use the following:
    Language ISO codes
    For a country feed, use the following:
    Country ISO codes: Add columns for any other catalog fields you want to provide language or country information for. In these columns, enter your item details for each language or country.
  5. Supported fields for language and country information:
    If you’re creating a language feed and a country feed, add each field to one feed or the other, but not both. For products, we recommend you include title and description in your language feed and include price, availability and link in your country feed. Remember to include the correct ISO currency code for prices. For example, 1000 JPY for Japan. Save your data feed file in CSV, TSV or XML (RSS/ATOM) format.

You’ve now successsfully created a language or country feed. Now you can upload it to your catalog.

Upload a language or country feed to a catalog

To upload a language or country feed to your catalog:

  1. Go to www.facebook.com/products. Select your catalog for your default language and country.
  2. Open the Catalog tab and go to Data Sources.
  3. Click to open the dropdown menu next to Add Products on the top right. Select Add Localized Product Information.
  4. Select Add Country Information or Add Language Information followed by Next.
  5. Upload your language or country feed.
    • If your inventory changes frequently, select Scheduled feed and follow the steps to set up an hourly, daily or weekly upload schedule. You’ll need to provide the URL to your file stored on a hosting website, like Dropbox.
    • If your inventory doesn’t change very often, select File upload and follow the steps to do a one-time upload.
  6. Name your language or country feed and select Upload.

You’ve added language or country information to your catalog. You can now create dynamic ads for multiple languages and countries.

To check how your item details will appear for other languages or countries, go to the Catalog tab. Select an item to open the item details window. Select a country, language or both from the dropdown menus to see alternate information for that item.

Create a dynamic ad for multiple languages and countries

To create a dynamic ad for multiple languages and countries:

  1. In Ads Manager, select + Create.
  2. Select Catalog sales, Traffic, App installs or Conversions as your objective.
  3. Name your campaign and select your catalog. Remember that the catalog must contain item information for multiple languages or countries. Select Continue.
  4. Select the product set you want to advertise from the dropdown menu. Enter your audience, placements and budget and schedule to create the rest of your ad set. Select Continue.
  5. Select the Single image, Carousel or Collection ad format.
    Note: Collection format is only available for multiple languages and countries if you selected the Facebook News Feed placement. If you selected a different placement or automatic placements, you won’t see the option to add languages in the next step.
  6. Add creative for your default language and country. When you’re finished, select Add Languages.
  7. Select your default language from the dropdown menu, then select + Add Language. You can add up to 48 more languages. Enter a headline and text for each additional language you select.
  8. To see how your ad will look in a certain country, select a country from the dropdown menu above the preview.
  9. Select Save and then Confirm to publish your ad.

You’ve created a dynamic ad for multiple languages and countries. You should be proud of yourself! We hope you learned some stuff.