Product feed

June 4, 2025

What is a product feed?

A product feed is a file with structured data about a company’s products. It’s used to share information about products with platforms like Google Shopping, Meta, and Amazon to help with listing, selling, and ads. 

What does a product feed contain?

Product feed contains information about the products you sell. A product feed usually includes the following:

  • Product ID

  • Product name or title

  • Product description

  • Product category

  • Price

  • Availability

  • Product and image URLs

  • Condition

  • Brand 

  • Shipping info

What is product data?

Product data refers to all the attributes that describe a product. In addition to basic information like the name, manufacturer, SKU, and barcode, it also includes the following key details:

  • Description, features, benefits, and usage/care instructions

  • Size, weight, and material/ingredients

  • Price and discounts

  • Stock levels

  • High-quality photos and/or videos

  • Product category, tags, or keywords

  • Certifications and regulatory compliance data

  • Safety information

  • Country of origin

  • Reviews and ratings

How do you create a product feed?

Here are the steps to creating a product feed:

  1. Gather all of your product information

  2. Select a format e.g. CSV

  3. Create the file and upload it to Google Merchant Center

  4. Keep it updated.

Product feeds in eCommerce

Why are product feeds important in e-commerce?

Effective digital advertising is built upon product feeds. They link your product inventory to various shopping platforms like Google Shopping, Amazon, and Facebook Shops, letting you enjoy product visibility across channels and improving discoverability. They can also automate the process of updating product data to ensure that shoppers have accurate information, out-of-stock items are removed, and price changes are reflected in real time.    

Powering Dynamic Ads and Retargeting

Product feeds are a key component for running Dynamic Ads and can help with data matching, automation, and real-time updates. It offers the data needed to match a relevant product listing to an online shopper’s browsing behaviour. 

Platforms can then pull elements like the price, product name, or brand directly from the product feed to create ad creatives. Plus, thanks to real-time updates, the ads will stay accurate to show sale prices and remove out-of-stock items. 

showing prices in catalog ads during black friday week

As for retargeting, it enables you to show personalized ads to people who’ve previously visited your website or opened your app. This way, instead of displaying a generic ad, the potential customer will see an ad for the product they browsed. 

Common Use Cases for Product Feeds in E-commerce

Google Shopping and Merchant Centre

Product feeds can be used to create Display and Search ads dynamically when you want to promote your entire product range. Alternatively, if you want a product to show up for a specific search query, you can use it for Google Shopping Ads. And, if you’re not ready to invest in paid ads yet, Google Merchant also supports free product listings. 

Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Dynamic Product Ads

Meta’s Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) on Facebook and Instagram will automatically promote relevant items from your catalog to social media users who’ve interacted with your app or website before. This makes it especially effective for reducing cart abandonment and increasing the customer lifetime value (CLV). 

instagram carousel catalog ads dynamic product ads meta nike

For example, if a potential customer added a phone case to their cart, DPAs will show that same product failed to buy in an ad. Then, when the customer buys that product, Meta can use your product feed to create an ad for a complementary product such as a screen protector. 

Aside from matching shoppers to the most relevant products, it will also automatically generate ad creatives that reflect the real-time price and availability. This makes it a popular solution for improving conversion rates. 

Amazon and Marketplace Integrations

Product feeds can also support your efforts to expand across Amazon and other popular marketplaces. A flexible product feed will make it easier to align with the different listing requirements of each marketplace and automate the product listing creation.   

Affiliate Marketing and Price Aggregators

Affiliates can use product feeds to generate product listings automatically, write reviews, or create comparison tables, for example. It can also be integrated with affiliate networks like CJ so that affiliates always have accurate, up-to-date product info. 

Price aggregators also use product feeds to update product listings with real-time availability and prices. Feeds also offer key data like brand name and category which help aggregators to group similar products together for easier comparison. 

What does a product feed look like?

Here’s an example of what a product feed can look like:

       <item>

      <g:id>SKU123</g:id>

      <g:title>Women's Court Shoes</g:title>

      <g:description>Lightweight, canvas shoes for tennis</g:description>

      <g:link>https://example.com/p/womens-court-shoes</g:link>

      <g:image_link>https://example.com/images/shoes.jpg</g:image_link>

      <g:availability>in stock</g:availability>

      <g:price>59.99 USD</g:price>

      <g:brand>Nike</g:brand>

      <g:condition>new</g:condition>

Product Feed Management Tools and Platforms

Manual vs. Automated Feed Management

Manual feed management refers to when a business creates and updates a spreadsheet for each channel. It’s better suited for stores with small catalogs that rarely change. 

With automated feed management, a product feed management tool uses dynamic integration with the e-commerce platform like Shopify to sync, distribute, and optimize feeds. This way, your product feed gets updated automatically to reflect price changes and inventory. It saves time, reduces errors, and lets you easily scale across multiple channels. 

In what format can product feeds be?

Depending on the platform requirements, product feeds can be in the following formats:

  • CSV 

  • XML

  • JSON

  • TXT

  • XLS

Best Practices for Product Feed Optimization

Keeping Data Fresh and Accurate

It’s recommended that you update your products feed at least once per day. As such, it’s best that you use a plugin that supports dynamic, real-time syncing when you’re using an e-commerce platform like Shopify. Then, make sure that you review diagnostics and disapprovals weekly and check for field completeness once a month (you can use a feed management tool to check for missing required fields like colour or material). 

Using High-Quality Product Images

High-quality photos stand out and more easily capture shoppers’ attention, helping to improve the click-through rate (CTR) and performance across digital platforms. Best practices include showing the product on a white or neutral background from various angles and how it can be used in context. Unless the platform allows it, it’s also best to avoid logos, text overlays, or promotional banners. 

Structuring Categories and Tags Effectively

When you’re structuring product categories for product feed optimization, try to use standardized and precise categories over vague categories like “miscellaneous” or “other”. Then, use custom labels to create a few tags for products based on attributes like profit margin, inventory levels, or seasonal trends.  

Avoiding Common Errors and Feed Disapprovals

To avoid disapprovals and feed errors, you should:

  • Create a checklist for each platform’s feed specs and restricted product categories

  • Ensure you sync your inventory and pricing

  • Use only accurate and unique product identifiers

  • Avoid keyword stuffing and clickbait terms in your product titles and descriptions

  • Check that all URLs are live, crawlable, and on a secure domain

  • Validate and preview small batches before you upload in large scale

A/B Testing with Product Variants in Feeds

When you’re doing A/B testing (which you should), start with a clear question linked to a measurable KPI (e.g. Does including the brand name in the title improve the CTR?). Then, test only one variable (e.g. brand name, keyword, etc.) at a time. When running the test, you should also use identical bidding strategies and budget allocation and run the test for a sufficient duration, for example 1,000 clicks per variable. 

How do you optimize a product feed?

Here’s a structured approach for optimizing your product feed:

  1. Double-check that your product data like titles, descriptions, prices, and availability match the information on your website 

  2. Optimize your product titles by placing the most important keywords at the beginning and including relevant attributes like brand, colour, model, etc. 

  3. Write a detailed, unique product description that focuses on benefits and incorporates keywords naturally. 

  4. Ensure that you’ve accurately added and completed all the attributes and fields such as product category, size, material, gender, etc. 

  5. Add custom labels like bestsellers or seasonal items for better campaign segmentation and targeting

  6. Optimize your product images by checking that you’ve followed the platform’s image requirements and included additional images to show different angles, unique features, and use cases. 

  7. Monitor performance, A/B test elements like titles, images, or descriptions, and refine data regularly based on these findings.

    Learn more about Advantage+ and how it can boost your campaign performance here.

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