Product data feed is a key element of e-commerce marketing. Ensuring the quality of the data in these files is one of the biggest challenges online stores face.
On the surface, product feed data should be of high quality without user intervention. Many e-commerce platforms, including Magento and Shopify, automatically prepare these feeds, which can be downloaded with a single click. However, tailoring them to meet the requirements of various portals while maintaining high data quality is a challenge.
What is a Product Feed?
A Product feed is an XML file containing information about the products available in an online store. This file can include various data—from product names and descriptions to images and additional features requested by the platform or chosen by the store. Often, it includes the number of items still in stock.
A product feed in social media is a digital file containing detailed information about a company’s products. This file typically includes attributes like product names, descriptions, prices, images, availability, and unique identifiers such as SKU numbers. Social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, use these feeds to create dynamic product ads, which automatically showcase relevant products to users based on their interests and browsing behavior.
These feeds facilitate efficient and accurate ad creation, ensuring that the information displayed to potential customers is current and consistent across all marketing channels. By using product feeds, businesses can streamline their advertising efforts, as the feeds can be automatically updated to reflect changes in inventory or pricing. This automation not only saves time but also helps in targeting ads more effectively, enhancing user experience and potentially increasing sales.
Where Product Feeds are Used
Product feeds are utilized by advertising systems and technologies in online store marketing automation. Common examples include price comparison websites, marketplaces, and automated social media ads.
In practice, the quality of data in the product feed often determines the final appearance of ads, thereby impacting their effectiveness.
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What Data is in a Product Feed (and How It Affects Ad Quality)
A product feed can be compared to an API. It is a tool that allows machines to communicate without human involvement—assuming the feed is generated automatically by a tool like Feedink, rather than manually by store employees.
A product feed contains, among other things, the following data:
Titles
The title is a short, crucial description of the product. It often serves as the product name, a buying incentive, a list of key features, and a few keywords. Titles are the most important part of an ad and, in some formats (e.g., search ads), can be the entire ad.
Impact: Keywords, Phrases
Poor-quality title data can cause ads to display incorrect content, omit important elements, or get cut off. This can erode customer trust—if store owners can’t prepare a paid ad correctly, how reliable are the products they sell?
Images
The product feed also includes images used by advertising and marketing systems. Most ad formats, including Google Shopping ads, use images to showcase products and attract users.
Impact: Poorly chosen images significantly lower conversion rates
An incorrect image—too large, too small, low-quality, or poorly matched—will negatively impact ad effectiveness. At best, the ad will look bad (e.g., the image will be cut off or misaligned). At worst, the image won’t load at all, leaving a blank spot instead of an illustration.
Descriptions
Product descriptions provide detailed information about the item. Depending on the store owner’s awareness, keywords can be added to descriptions to increase visibility in search engines.
Impact: Cut-off or mismatched descriptions significantly reduce trust
A too-long description will be cut off, looking bad or confusing users. A too-short description won’t fully utilize the potential provided by price comparison websites and may look poor compared to competitors.
Quality matters too—a good, unique, engaging description performs better than a repetitive text found on many competing sites.
Technical Aspects
Product feeds contain not only data presented to the customer but also technical information enabling smooth integration with the portal. These include product IDs and categories.
Impact: Incorrect IDs or categories can prevent products from displaying
Missing IDs (or similar data like ISBNs) can prevent ads and offers from appearing in searches or comparison sites. Incorrect categories can confuse users and lead to issues with portal administration.
Managing Multiple Feeds
Maintaining high data quality in feeds is especially challenging for companies using multiple automation tools. Their configuration requirements vary and can sometimes conflict. For example, different naming conventions for the same data (e.g., “images” vs. “photos”) or varying description length limits across portals can cause formatting issues.
Summary
The quality of data in product feeds directly impacts the effectiveness of ads displayed based on that information. Ads with poor-quality images, cut-off descriptions, and mismatched titles will be ineffective. They won’t attract user attention or convince them to purchase from the store.
Therefore, ensuring the quality of data in product feeds and matching them to advertising portal requirements should be a priority for marketing teams—one error in the feed affects all portals using it.
