Working with Channels

What a channel is#

A channel turns product data into an outgoing feed that an ad network reads to build dynamic ads (Meta Advantage+, Google Shopping, TikTok, and similar catalog-based formats). A channel combines:

• A catalog — the product-feed source it pulls prices, stock, and links from. A channel targets exactly one catalog.
• One or more product sets — which products from that catalog are included.
• Fields — the feed columns you're exporting, and what goes into each one (product data, AI-written content, templated images/video, static text).
• Rules — conditional rules that adjust field values per product (for example, marking a product out of stock).

Renable renders the feed, hosts it at a stable URL, and keeps it up to date automatically — you connect that URL to the ad network once and updates flow through after that.

Creating a channel#

From a project page, go to the Channels section and click +. The create-channel dialog asks for:

• Name
• Catalog — auto-selected if the project only has one.
• Product sets — which product set(s) populate the channel. You can change this later.
• Type of channel — the starting point, which pre-fills fields and automations for a specific network or purpose:
  • Meta Advantage+ feed
  • Meta Advantage+ supplementary feed
  • Meta Advantage+ feed with animated videos (see Animated product videos)
  • Google Shopping feed
  • Google Shopping supplementary feed
  • TikTok feed
  • Custom — an empty channel; you add every field yourself.
• File format — XML or CSV (see Output format below).
• Image template and image template size — shown only for the Meta channel types (Meta Advantage+ feed, supplementary feed, and feed with animated videos), since those pre-wire an image field to a template render. Google Shopping and TikTok channels default their image field to the product's own catalog photo instead — you can still add an Image template manually afterward in Fields.
• Video template and video template size — shown only for the animated-video channel type.

The type you pick only sets starting fields and automations — nothing is locked in. After creation you can add, edit, or remove fields and automations freely.

Channel settings#

The channel's name and description are edited right in the page header — click either and type. The structural choices live on the Settings tab:

• Catalog
• Product sets included in channel — "All products" is always available as one of the choices, alongside any custom product sets you've built for the project.
• File format
• Used for — which ad networks the channel serves, and what the feed is used for on each. Unlike everything else, this applies immediately (it's not part of the draft).

Used for: telling Renable what the feed is for#

Each network you add gets one Used as choice plus any number of add-ons:

Setting this is what switches on Renable's per-network checks: the Fields tab starts marking which fields that network requires or recommends, and the Activity tab warns when values don't meet its rules. A channel with nothing set here gets no checks at all. It does not connect anything — you still paste the feed URL into the network's own catalog settings.

Changes here save automatically — but, like everything else on the channel page, they save to a draft. The live feed that ad networks read doesn't change until you publish.

Output format: CSV is tab-separated#

Two formats are available:

• XML (Google Merchant RSS) — RSS 2.0 XML with g:-namespaced elements. This is what most ad networks expect and is the right default for Meta, Google, and TikTok feeds.
• CSV — despite the name, this format is tab-separated, not comma-separated. Column headers drop the g: prefix. If you're opening the output in a spreadsheet tool or a script that expects commas, tell it to split on tabs instead.

Channel URL and regenerating#

The status bar under the channel's name carries a copy-feed-URL button and a Regenerate button once the first deployment finishes; the full URL is shown on the Settings tab's Output card. Until the first deployment, the status bar reads "Preparing your feed…" — see Channel events and troubleshooting.

• Regenerate — forces an immediate redeploy of the published feed, starting within about 15 seconds instead of waiting for the normal background refresh. That 15 seconds is how quickly the redeploy starts, not a completion guarantee — a large catalog, or products whose images/videos still need rendering, can take longer to finish. While a render runs, the status bar shows its live media-rendering progress and the button stays disabled.
• Activity — this tab lists every render: what triggered it (a product change, a template change, a publish, a manual regenerate), how many entries and media it produced, and a plain-language log per run. On a finished render, the Excluded by rules, Out of stock, and New media statistics are clickable — each opens the Preview tab filtered to those products, so a count becomes a list you can inspect.

The URL never changes once the channel is created, so you only need to give it to the ad network once — see Connecting a channel to Meta, Google, or TikTok.

The rest of the channel page#

The channel page has five tabs:

• Preview — the default tab: a rendered, per-product view of the feed with three views: Gallery (ad-style cards), Listing (a table), and Source (the raw rendered feed text, XML or CSV) — useful for spot-checking before you publish. In Gallery, rendered videos play automatically (muted, on a loop) as you scroll to them, so you can check an animated template product-by-product without leaving the page.
• Activity — the render history (with per-run statistics and logs) and this channel's warnings and errors.
• Fields — define what each feed column contains, with per-field fill rates from the latest render.
• Rules — conditional rules that adjust field values per product.
• Settings — catalog, product sets, file format, feed URL, and what the channel is used for (see Used for above).

Managing channels from the project page#

The project's Channels section lists every channel with per-row Regenerate and copy-URL actions, plus multi-select Archive / Unarchive and a "Show archived" filter. The Copy this channel icon (on the channel page and per-row in this list) duplicates a channel, including its fields and automations — useful for spinning up a variant for a different network or product set without rebuilding it from scratch.

Where to go next#

• Channel fields and placeholders
• Channel automations
• Publishing a channel
• Connecting a channel to Meta, Google, or TikTok
• AI discovery on Google