e-Retailers all know the frustration that comes with having your feed rejected by Facebook. It slows down your sales efforts and creates problems with your workflow. How can you prevent this from happening?
In this blog we will examine 6 of the most common feed errors in your Facebook Dynamic Product Ad’s and how you can avoid them in the future.
Wrong GTIN codes: Property GTIN is incorrectly formated
A GTIN code (Global Trade Item Number) is a unique bar code that identifies your product.
The code will vary in the following countries:
- In North America it’s commonly known as a UPC number and has 12-digits
- In Europe it’s commonly known as an EAN number and has 13 digits
- In Japan it’s commonly known as a JAN number and has either 8 or 13 digits
- An ISBN code is reserved for books and has 13 digits
It’s very important to have the correct codes mapped in your feed so spend a little extra time when setting up your feed and make sure you have the correct codes matched to all your products. Likewise, if your products are missing GTIN codes, your feed will also be rejected. The quickest way to check this is to download your feed in a csv file and do a quick run-through. The only time you won’t be required to add a GTIN code is if your feed includes custom-made products. If you can't find the GTIN, you can always contact the product's manufacturer to ask for it.
If you’d like more information on GTIN codes, read our blog post: Finding GTIN’s for your products
Missing required fields: Property missing
Facebook has 9 required fields as shown in this feed example below. Make sure they are all mapped correctly. They are:
ID, Availability, Condition, Description, Image Link, Link (url), Title, and GTIN code.
Invalid values
Sometimes it may seem challenging when utilizing values to optimize your feeds.
But if you apply incorrect values, your feed won’t make any sense and it will get rejected. A common mistake many e-retailers make when mapping their feeds is to list custom labels individually as opposed to having them grouped together. For example, all price variations should be grouped in 1 custom label, while promotional items should all be grouped in another. You may have several different price ranges, but you will group them all into 1 custom label by creating rules that separate them from one another, as seen in the example below.
DataFeedWatch offers 7 basic values (besides regular expressions) that you can use to optimize your feeds, as shown in the image below:
Image size too small
It’s important to note that Facebook’s recommended resolution for all images is 600x600 pixels. Any smaller than that and your image starts to look bad. While having a smaller image might not completely disqualify your items, it will affect your feed’s performance and it won’t look good in the ads.
This is the warning you will receive if your images don’t conform:
How to overcome this issue:
* In your mapping section make sure you have selected the biggest image from the source possible.
* Pro tip for Shopify users: sometimes, even though you may choose image_large_1 from your Shopify source, this warning might still occur. To prevent this make sure to use your biggest image possible and apply this hack:
Missing Google categories
What on earth do the Google categories have to do with Facebook anyway, you may ask? Well, Facebook uses Google taxonomy to categorize items, and although this field is optional in Datafeedwatch, if not mapped it will give you warnings in the Business Facebook account. Fact is, it’s always good to categorize your items properly to increase their visibility. If your own feed is already mapped to Google’s categories, simply connect your input field google_product_category to the optional output feed google_product_category that you will create. However, if you have already mapped all your Google sub-categories in your Google feed, you can save yourself a lot of time by utilizing the “Copy From” functionality in DataFeedWatch to copy it across to your Facebook feed.
If you still have to map all categories from scratch and your input field doesn’t contain this, then you can simply connect easily with our Google pre-mapped sub-sub-categories, as follows:
Missing currency
An error that we have picked up time and time again in Facebook feeds is the missing currency. While Google accepts feeds with or without the price currency, Facebook insists on it so you need to remember to include this. For example, instead of 15.00 you need to specify 15.00 USD. With our nifty DataFeedWatch tool you can add your currency as your suffix in your field mapping area, as the example below shows:
Facebook also offers a valuable Product Feed Debug Tool that allows you to paste your feed up and get it validated for errors and warnings.
By paying attention to these common errors and applying the solutions which we have outlined in this blog post, your feeds will not be rejected and you won’t waste any downtime while trying to figure out what the problem is with your feed and why Facebook is rejecting it.
Feel free to leave comments and other ideas in the comments section below.
