Product feed glossary
Every feed and shopping-ads term, explained in plain English.
Advantage+ catalog ads are Meta's automated product ads that pull from your catalog and dynamically show each shopper the most relevant products across Facebook and Instagram.
Availability is the attribute that tells the channel whether a product is currently purchasable, using standard values like 'in stock', 'out of stock', 'preorder', or 'backorder'.
A catalog is the structured collection of all your products and their attributes that a channel stores and uses to power ads, shopping listings, and other commerce features.
A Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) is a partner program through which retailers in Europe submit their feeds to appear in Google Shopping, often at a lower effective cost than going through Google's own CSS.
Condition is the attribute that states whether a product is 'new', 'refurbished', or 'used', so shoppers and channels know exactly what they are getting.
A custom_label is an optional tag you attach to products to group them however you want for campaign organization and bidding, with values you define yourself.
A feed disapproval is when a channel rejects some or all of your products because they fail its requirements or policies, which stops the affected products from showing in ads.
google_product_category is the value that places your product into Google's official product taxonomy, telling Google what kind of thing it is using a category from their predefined list.
A GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is the globally unique product barcode number, such as a 12-digit UPC or 13-digit EAN, that identifies a specific product everywhere it is sold.
identifier_exists is a yes/no attribute that tells the channel whether a product has a unique identifier like a GTIN or brand plus MPN, used to declare honestly when one genuinely does not exist.
item_group_id is a shared value you put on every variant of the same product so the channel knows that, for example, a shirt in five sizes and three colors is one product with fifteen variants.
An MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) is the code a manufacturer assigns to a specific product, used to identify it when a universal barcode like a GTIN is not available.
A product feed is a structured file (usually CSV, TSV, or XML) that lists every product you sell along with the attributes each sales channel needs, like title, price, image, and availability.
Product feed management is the ongoing work of collecting your product data, cleaning and transforming it, and publishing channel-ready feeds that stay accurate as your catalog and the channels' rules change.
A product identifier is any standardized code that uniquely identifies a product to a channel, primarily the GTIN, the brand plus MPN combination, or the brand on its own for certain categories.
A Product Listing Ad (PLA) is a shopping ad that shows a product's image, title, and price directly in search results, generated automatically from your product feed rather than from written ad copy.
Sale price is the temporarily discounted price of a product, submitted alongside the regular price so the channel can show the discount and display a strikethrough on the original.
A shopping feed is a product feed formatted specifically for a shopping or advertising channel, containing exactly the attributes and values that channel requires to list and advertise your products.