What is a product feed? (with examples)
A product feed is a structured file of your catalog that shopping channels read to show your products. Here is what one contains, with real examples.
What a product feed actually is
A product feed is a structured file that lists every product you sell along with the details each shopping channel needs to display, price, and rank it. Think of it as a spreadsheet your store hands to Google, Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat so their systems know exactly what you are selling.
Each row in the feed is one product (or one variant, like a specific size and color). Each column is an attribute: the title, the price, the link to the product page, the image, the availability, and identifiers like GTIN and brand. The channels do not crawl your storefront to build ads. They read your feed. If the feed is wrong or incomplete, your products either do not show or get disapproved.
Feeds are usually one of three file types: CSV, TSV, or XML. The data inside is what matters most. The format is just the wrapper.
What a product feed contains
Channels have a required core and a large set of optional attributes. Google Shopping is the most demanding, so most merchants build to its spec and adapt for other channels. Here are the attributes you will almost always need:
- id: a unique, stable identifier for each product (your SKU works well).
- title: the product name shoppers and the channel's matching engine read.
- description: a fuller explanation of the product.
- link: the URL of the product page on your site.
- image_link: a direct URL to the main product image.
- price: the current selling price, with currency.
- availability: in stock, out of stock, preorder, or backorder.
- brand: the manufacturer or brand name.
- gtin and mpn: global and manufacturer identifiers used to match your product to the catalog.
- google_product_category: the taxonomy value that tells Google what kind of product this is.
A simple example
Imagine you sell a pair of running shoes. A single feed row, shown as columns, looks roughly like this:
- id: SHOE-RED-42
- title: Acme TrailRunner Running Shoes, Red, Mens Size 9
- link: https://yourstore.com/products/trailrunner-red
- image_link: https://cdn.yourstore.com/trailrunner-red.jpg
- price: 89.99 USD
- availability: in stock
- brand: Acme
- gtin: 0123456789012
- google_product_category: Apparel & Accessories > Shoes
Where the feed comes from
Your product data lives in your ecommerce platform, your PIM, or a spreadsheet. The job of a feed is to take that source data, shape it into the exact columns each channel expects, and publish it at a stable URL the channel can pull on a schedule.
Few stores can export a channel-ready feed straight from their platform. The raw export usually has the wrong column names, missing identifiers, titles that are too short, or prices in the wrong format. That gap between your catalog and a channel's strict requirements is the entire reason feed management tools exist.
MartechFlow ingests your catalog from a live URL or an upload, maps your fields to each channel's required attributes, lets you fix and enrich the data with simple rules, and publishes clean CSV and XML feeds at stable URLs that Google, Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat pull automatically. You map your data once and every channel gets a correct feed.
Why feed quality decides your results
A product feed is not a one-time file. Prices change, stock runs out, and new products launch. If your feed does not refresh, channels show stale data, which leads to disapprovals and wasted ad spend. Worse, a price or availability mismatch between your feed and your live site can suspend your whole account.
Good feed data also drives performance, not just approval. Better titles and complete attributes help the channel match your products to more searches and rank them higher. The feed is where most of your shopping-ad performance is won or lost, long before you touch a bid.