What Product Feeds Are and How They Simplify Working With Your Catalog
What a Feed Is Used For
Uploading a Product Catalog
The main purpose of a product feed is transferring data to advertising and commerce platforms. It is especially useful when manual uploads would take too much time, for example when a catalog includes hundreds or thousands of items.
The generated feed contains the required data, and the platform reads it automatically. This keeps an online store’s catalog synchronized with marketplace storefronts, contextual advertising systems, and other promotion channels.
Keeping Data Up to Date
A feed maintains accuracy and consistency of information. When prices, stock levels, or product attributes change in the catalog, updates are added to the file, and platforms receive them during the next import. This reduces the risk of mismatched data: customers see the actual price and availability, while marketers do not need to make manual corrections.
Generating Dynamic Ads
Modern advertising systems use feeds as a data source for dynamic ads. The product name, price, link, and image are inserted from the file into a campaign template, and the ad is generated automatically based on user interests and behavior.
Creating Product Galleries
A feed can also serve as the basis for visual product collections: website showcases, product grids in email campaigns, or catalogs on social media. These product blocks stay up to date thanks to regular updates in the feed file and do not require constant manual editing.
Marketing Management and Segmentation
Remarketing
Feeds are also used in remarketing scenarios. A user who viewed a specific product may later see an ad featuring that same product or similar items. This keeps the customer interested and increases the likelihood of conversion.
How to Create a Product Feed
- name;
- unique identifier (SKU or ID);
- price;
- stock availability;
- short description;
- link to the product page;
- image link;
- category and brand;
- additional attributes (color, size, material, and other parameters).
This information forms the basis of the future feed and must match the data on the website. Otherwise, discrepancies may cause incorrect product display or upload errors. If any attributes change, updates on the website and in the feed should be synchronized.
| Formats | Description |
|---|---|
| CSV, TSV, XLS/XLSX | Tabular formats that are convenient for manual editing. They are suitable when the feed is relatively small and does not require complex relationships between fields. |
| XML, YML | Tag-based formats that provide a strict data structure. YML feeds were originally developed for Yandex Market and later adopted by other e-commerce platforms across the CIS. |
| GZ, ZIP | Compressed archives used for large catalogs. The archive contains the feed file itself, usually in XML, YML, or CSV format. Compression speeds up uploads and helps avoid errors when the original file exceeds size limits. |
| JSON | Used for API integrations or data exchange between platforms and CRM systems. |
The choice depends on the platform used and its technical requirements. Before starting, review the documentation and sample product feeds carefully. It is also important to follow the required order of attributes, limits on description length, rules for links, and accepted formats for currencies and encoding.
- image links must lead to working URLs;
- product categories must match the catalog on the platform;
- numeric values must not contain extra symbols or units of measurement;
- products that are unavailable must have the status “out of stock”.
Advertising platforms may provide validation tools to test the feed before uploading. These tools detect structural errors, missing fields, or incorrect values and indicate what needs to be corrected.
To keep the data up to date, configure regular updates on a schedule (for example, once per day or every few hours) or trigger updates by events. Otherwise, the system will continue using outdated data, and ads or catalogs may show incorrect prices and unavailable products.
How to Import a Product Feed into Altcraft
Automatic import makes catalog management predictable and stable. When data in the feed changes, the platform retrieves the updates and displays the latest information in advertising campaigns.
After the first run, the system stores the import history: it shows how many products were added or updated, the execution status, and any errors. This gives full control over the process and helps adjust the settings when needed.
Common Mistakes When Creating Product Feeds
Problems with Structure and Required Fields
Different platforms have their own feed requirements, from mandatory fields to specific data formats. If even one key field is missing (for example, ID, name, price, availability, or link), the product may fail moderation or simply not upload.
Errors may also occur because of an incorrect file structure:
- tags are mixed up in XML or YML;
- the wrong column separator is used in CSV;
- the file contains extra spaces or uses an incorrect encoding.
Even a single incorrectly formatted line can stop the processing of the entire file.
Outdated Data
One of the most common and serious problems is a mismatch between the information on the website and in the feed. A user may see one price in an ad but a different price on the site. In other cases, a product that is already out of stock may still appear in ads or product listings.
This undermines trust and can lead to lost sales. In addition, inaccurate data distorts analytics: the system continues to count impressions for products that are no longer available.
Low-Quality Images and Incorrect Links
The quality of visual content directly affects advertising performance. Low-resolution images, pictures with watermarks, or images with the wrong aspect ratio look unprofessional and may be rejected by platforms.
Problems with links are also common: broken URLs, endless redirects, or unnecessary parameters in the address. All of this slows down access to the product page and reduces the likelihood of conversion.
The Feed Is Not Used in Advertising Formats
Sometimes companies create a product feed, upload it to a system, and stop there. The data is not used in dynamic ads, product recommendations, or remarketing. As a result, the potential of the feed remains underused, while advertising stays static and less relevant.
Conclusion
Today, using product feeds is a common practice in e-commerce when working with large catalogs and advertising. If the assortment is small and updates are rare, manual entry may be sufficient. However, as the number of products grows and activity on advertising platforms increases, a feed provides scalability and a structured, automated workflow.
