A Meta catalog ad doesn't have to be a still image. Meta can show a product's video instead, and it decides which one to show per impression through a feature it calls Dynamic Media.
There are two ways to give it video. This article covers the one that lives inside a design group — a video that belongs to a named creative concept and is pinned along with it. If your channel doesn't use adaptive designs and you just want a plain product video column, see Animated product videos instead.
The thing to understand first#
Dynamic Media is on by default for catalog ads. Meta may already be showing videos on your catalog ads today, whether or not you supplied any — because where a product has no video, Meta may go and find one.
That's the real reason to do this, and it's covered in its own section below.
Before you start#
- A Meta channel with adaptive designs turned on and at least one design group — see Set up design groups.
- A Studio template that renders video. Animated templates are built the same way static ones are; see Animated product videos for the template side and Video templates for what they can do.
- Every product still needs an image. Meta requires it — "Every product also needs an image, even if you plan to use only product videos" — so video designs are added beside your image designs, never instead of them.
Video rendering is the most credit-intensive thing on the platform, since every product needs a full render. Start with a small product set while you're iterating. See What uses my credits.
1. Add video designs to a group#
On the channel's Fields tab, open Adaptive designs.
- When you add a new group, click the dashed Add a design group row at the end of the list — the dialog switches to the add-group view. The form asks for an image template and an optional video template. Filling both in creates one image design and one video design per template size, all in the same group.
- On a group that already exists, open the … menu on that group's card, choose Add video designs, and pick the video template.
Image and video designs in a group are two facets of one creative concept, not two things to choose between. You pin the group; Meta picks the medium.
Afterwards, any single video design can be pointed at a different video template on its own: hover its tile on the group's card and click the pencil. The picker offers only templates that can render video, and the design keeps its name — see Set up design groups.
2. Video needs no shape markers#
Your feed's default designs carry Meta's reserved shape markers — that's what lets Meta match one to a surface with no pinning — and groups you add afterwards deliberately carry none. A video design needs neither, which is correct rather than an omission: a video's shape is intrinsic to the file. In Meta's words, "if a video matches the aspect ratio for the ad placement, that video is returned."
Meta doesn't say how it determines that match, so Renable doesn't either. What you can do about it is straightforward: supply the ratios you care about — a video design per size your video template carries — and let Meta match them.
This is why the Adaptive designs dialog gives a video design no shape at all: video designs sit in the same strip of tiles as a group's image designs, marked with a small play badge, rather than being labelled Square, Portrait or Story.
3. Publish, and give Meta time to fetch#
Press Publish on the channel. Until Meta fetches the updated feed, the video designs aren't in Meta's copy of your catalog. The Renable Options panel's freshness line tells you when Meta last fetched.
One thing to expect and not worry about: the panel never warns that Meta is missing a video design. Meta fetches catalog video lazily and may not fetch it until the product is in an active campaign, so "not in the sample" and "not fetched yet" look identical from outside — and a warning that fires on every healthy new video design is a warning people learn to ignore.
4. Pin an ad to the group#
Open the ad in Meta Ads Manager with the Renable Options extension installed, find the group, and click Use. The panel shows a group's image and video designs together, because they travel together.
Renable turns Dynamic Media on for the new version when it can pin the group's video by name. That switch is what lets a catalog video serve at all, so pinning a video-carrying group without it would suppress the very thing you pinned. For an image-only pin Renable does the opposite and turns Dynamic Media off, so Meta shows exactly the design you chose.
The confirmation tells you exactly what it set — worth reading rather than assuming, because the direction follows what Renable was actually able to pin, not simply whether the group has video designs in it.
After that, the panel changes what it says about Dynamic Media on this ad. On an image pin, Dynamic Media being on is a warning — Meta may substitute something for your design. On a video-carrying group pin it's the mechanism doing the work, so the panel notes that it's what lets the video show — and warns you if it has been switched off, because then the video can never surface.
The videos Meta adds by itself#
This is the part most people don't know about.
Meta automatically adds product videos to catalogs, and the setting is on by default. Where a product has no video, Meta may scan your public product pages, videos you've uploaded to Ads Manager, Reels and videos on your Facebook Page or Instagram profile, other products in the same catalog, and your other catalogs — and add what it finds. There's no approval step; auto-added videos appear immediately.
Those are videos you didn't make, didn't brief, and don't control, running beside creative you did.
The fix is structural, and it's the point of this article. In Meta's own words: "If you add a video to a product yourself, it takes priority over all automatically added videos, which makes them disappear from the catalog." A video-carrying design group supplies your video for every product it renders, which evicts the scraped ones per product. Your remaining exposure is only products your feed gives no video to.
If you'd rather switch the behaviour off entirely, the setting lives in Meta's Commerce Manager under the catalog's settings, as Automatic product video updates — turning it off removes auto-added videos within about a day. You can also reject them, but rejection is per product and all-or-nothing: you can't reject one of several auto-added videos on the same product, and rejecting permanently stops auto-adds for that product. [VERIFY: the exact navigation path to this setting in Commerce Manager's current layout.]
If your channel already sends a plain video column#
Some channels carry a plain product-video field from before adaptive designs. Renable leaves it alone: the Adaptive designs dialog acknowledges it, it stays your ads' default video, and video designs are added beside it. Nothing is converted, and nothing is removed.
What Meta's own limits are#
Two facts worth having, both from Meta's documentation, because both get misquoted:
- There is no length limit on a catalog video. The "keep it to 15–20 seconds" figure that circulates is a vendor recommendation, not a Meta rule.
- Meta asks for at least 500 × 500 pixels, and caps a feed-supplied video file at 200 MB.
What we never promise#
Renable writes the video designs into your feed and writes the pin onto the ad's creative. Everything after that is Meta's, and the copy in the product stays on the right side of that line:
- Meta decides when and where a video shows. Renable never claims a particular medium will run on a particular surface, and never says what renders for a product that has no video — Meta doesn't document it.
- Dynamic Media is a switch, not an outcome. Turning it on is what makes a catalog video able to serve; it isn't a promise that one will.
- Adapt to placement governs image shape adaptation: it has to be switched on in the ad's Advantage+ settings for Meta to match one of a group's image designs to the surface — in our testing, with it off the ad showed one image design everywhere. A video's shape works the other way round, from the file itself, so this setting isn't what steers video. Renable switches it on for an ad you pin from the extension, and warns you when an ad has it explicitly turned off.
Turning it off#
Remove video designs, in the … menu on the group's card, is the way back: it takes just that group's videos out of the feed on the next publish, leaving its image designs — and everything else — untouched. Ads pinned to the group keep their images. Beyond that, delete the group to remove the whole concept, or turn off adaptive designs to leave the feature entirely. In every case the video designs are removed rather than converted, because there's no plain field for them to become.
The confirmations differ in how much they tell you. Remove video designs and turning the feature off both list the video designs they will remove, by name, before anything happens. Deleting a group warns you that its designs leave the feed on the next publish and that ads pinned to it fall back to your default designs — without naming them individually, so check the group's card first if you want to know exactly what's going. See Run different designs for different campaigns or seasons for why deleting a group is usually the wrong move when un-pinning would do.
Where to go next#
- Adaptive designs — the full picture, including video and Dynamic Media.
- Adaptive designs and design groups — what a design, a group and a shape each mean.
- Set up design groups — adding a group with a video template.
- Animated product videos — building the template, and the plain video-column route.
- The Renable Options browser extension — what the panel says about Dynamic Media per ad.
- Test two designs against each other