Facebook has a new trick up its sleeve. It’s called “dynamic creative,” and it’s a tool available in Power Editor and the newly updated Ads Manager. Here is what it does, how to use it, and why.

Firstly, let me begin by saying that you might not have either the updated Ads Manager, or the new dynamic creative tool that Facebook announced this week. Worry not. You will have the former within the month, and chances are you will also have the latter at the same time. Until that day comes, make sure you’ve familiarised yourself with Facebook’s Power Editor, as the new Ads Manager will be based on the ad-creation logic it uses.

Dynamic creative is a tool that “delivers the best combination of your creative assets,” by finding the best creative combinations of your ads. It does so by taking components like images, videos, titles, descriptions, CTAs, etc. and runs them as different combinations across audiences. Essentially, it automatically creates ad variants for you – based on the components it has at its disposal – and then converges on those that deliver the best results. Then, it serves the best performing creative.

If you’d like to set up and use dynamic creative, you will have to use Power Editor. You can also use the Quick Creation workflow in the updated Ads Manager – if you have it. You’ll want to use dynamic creative with at least one of three available objectives: traffic, conversions, and/or app installs.

Begin by creating a campaign as you would normally. Create an ad set as you would, and see if you have the option to use dynamic creative in your ad set settings. Ad set and ad settings that aren’t compatible with dynamic creative will be changed or deleted. You can of course edit these later. When creating an ad you can find the option to add multiple assets. Make sure that all assets can be combined without loosing their relevance. Note that you can only use assets that total up to 30. Thus, as Facebook explains,

For example, you could use 10 images, 5 bodies, 5 titles, 5 descriptions, 1 ad format, 1 link URL, 1 CTA, which would equal 28 assets.

While the total asset number is 30, you can use a maximum of 5 titles, 10 images or 10 videos,  5 bodies of text, 5 descriptions, and 5 CTAs. Also note that you can use images or videos, and can’t mix in the same ad set. As such, you could always try images and videos in separate ad sets. Once you’re happy with the assets you’ve uploaded, you can preview different variations by clicking View More Variations. Finally, click Review Draft Items to make the ad changes.

The supported placements for dynamic creative ads are:
– Facebook Newsfeed on desktop and mobile
– Right hand column with Audience Network
– Instagram feed

Once you’ve run a campaign using dynamic creative, you can find the performance of each ad creative by heading over to your “breakdowns” drop down and select “By Asset.” Then choose one of the breakdowns from: Image, Video, Headline, Text, Description, Call to Action, or Website. Once you’ve done so, you can view columns for Results, Cost per Result and CTR (Link Click-Through Rate) to see the metrics by asset type. If you’re so inclined, you can also choose Age and Gender breakdown.