7 alternatives to Meta Overlays for product ads and a test plan for 2025

Global ad spend is on track to hit 1.1 trillion by the end of 2025. Your catalog ads are competing with brands that plan and test nonstop. Still leaning on basic Meta overlays?

Here’s What You Need to Know

Overlays helped, then everyone used them. Now they blend in. The win comes from branded templates, live product data, and faster creative testing across your feed.

Seven platforms are leading the pack for product ads in 2025. The right pick depends on your bottleneck. Choose based on your team and goals, then run a short, clean test to confirm lift on CPA and ROAS.

Why This Actually Matters

Digital already drives 73 percent of revenue, so small gains add up fast. North America spent 348 billion in 2024, Asia Pacific hit 272 billion, and Europe reached 165 billion. Latin America passed 32.1 billion, the Middle East and Africa reached 12.6 billion, and India is on track for 15 billion by 2025. China alone topped 180 billion in digital spend.

With that much money in the feed, generic catalog cards leave performance on the table. Branded, data rich product ads are expected, not optional.

How to Make This Work for You

Step 1 Get clear on your bottleneck

• If your ads look off brand, start with creative templating across the feed.
• If your data is messy, fix the feed before you add visual polish.
• If you need speed, prioritize tools that generate many variants fast.
• If your team is large, focus on workflow, governance, and scale.

Step 2 Pick the lane that fits your team

• Small to mid sized ecommerce teams without designers: Cropink or Creatopy
• Mid market and large brands running many locales or campaigns: Hunch or Smartly.io
• Creative first teams and agencies with many formats and languages: Bannerflow
• Growth teams that live in rapid creative testing: AdCreative.ai
• Agencies and retailers that need clean feeds across channels: Channable

Step 3 Shortlist with simple must haves

• Creative control: brand fonts, colors, logos, price and promo callouts
• Feed automation: live prices, stock, discounts, and seasonal rules
• Testing ease: quick variant creation and a clean way to compare winners
• Time to value: how fast you can ship the first winning set
• Cost clarity: how pricing scales with products, seats, and channels

Step 4 Run a four week split test

1. Baseline week: Record CTR, CPC, conversion rate, CPA, and ROAS on your current catalog ads. Note frequency and product coverage.
2. Build week: Create three fresh templates that match your brand. Ideas to try: a price badge with percent off, a short value claim, and a seasonal message. Pull all dynamic fields from the feed.
3. Test weeks: Run control versus new templates on the same products, audiences, placements, budgets, and bid strategy. Rotate evenly and keep budgets stable.
4. Read week: Compare CPA and ROAS first, then CTR and conversion rate. Keep any template that shows a material improvement. Roll losers off and queue new variants.

Step 5 Scale the winner

• Promote the best template to your full catalog.
• Create a fresh variant every two to four weeks to prevent fatigue.
• Expand to complementary channels once you see stable unit economics.

Tools that fit common needs

• Cropink: Enriched catalog ads, branded templates, and a Figma plugin. Paid plans start at 39 dollars per month.
• Hunch: AI powered creative and large scale catalog automation. Starts at 2,500 euros per month.
• Smartly.io: Multi channel ad automation with advanced reporting. Enterprise pricing in the thousands per month.
• Bannerflow: Creative management across display, video, and social with collaboration and DCO. Custom pricing.
• Creatopy: Easy creative automation for SMBs and agencies. Pro starts at 36 dollars per month. Plus starts at 245 dollars per month.
• AdCreative.ai: Fast generation of many creative variants with AI insights. Plans from 39 dollars to 599 dollars per month.
• Channable: Product feed optimization and multi channel publishing. Plans start at 49 dollars per month.

What to Watch For

• Link CTR: Tells you if the creative stops the scroll and earns the click. Use it to compare templates.
• Conversion rate: If CTR rises but conversion falls, the message may not match the landing page.
• CPA and ROAS: Core decision metrics for scale. Read in the same attribution window you use today.
• Frequency and fatigue: Rising frequency with falling CTR signals time to rotate.
• Feed health: Price accuracy, stock status, and product coverage. Bad data kills good creative.

Bottom line: judge creative on both demand capture and data quality. One without the other stalls growth.

Your Next Move

This week, pick one lane and set a split test. If brand control is the gap, ship three new catalog templates. If data quality is the drag, clean the feed and relaunch the current look. Give the test two weeks, then keep the winner and queue the next variant.

Want to Go Deeper?

If you want market context before you spend, AdBuddy can add category benchmarks for CTR, CPA, and ROAS, suggest which lever to pull first, and share playbooks for catalog creative and feed fixes. Use it to set a clear bar for your next test, then get back to building.