How Zalando should run Meta ads.

A fashion marketplace with millions of SKUs. The edge isn't targeting, it's the feed. Hand the catalogue to the algorithm and get out of the way.

Industry Fashion marketplace Model Marketplace · 1P + 3P Region EU Site zalando.nl

Analysis built with paid.social, the ad-planning tool from Jonas Sluijs, former Meta growth lead

Our read

The catalogue is the entire campaign. With millions of products and around 50 million shoppers, Zalando's advantage on Meta isn't clever targeting, it's handing Advantage+ Shopping the full feed and letting it match the right product to the right person. Prospecting, retargeting, and cross-sell all run off the same catalogue. The job is a clean, complete, fast-updating feed, not a stack of ad sets.

At a ~€62 basket the per-order margin is thin, so first-order ROAS looks unforgiving. The model works because fashion shoppers come back. You deliberately target below first-order break-even and earn it on repeat, which is why the scorecard has to be blended and cohort-based, not last-click per campaign.

The economics we assumed

AOV

€62

Est. contribution

~30%

Break-even ROAS

3.4×

Target ROAS

~2.5×

Real: average basket €61.8 (Q3 2025), group EBIT margin ~5%. Estimated: ~42% gross margin (category benchmark), ~30% contribution after returns and fulfilment, so first-order break-even ROAS lands near 3.4×. Because customers repeat, you target ~2.5× on first order and win on LTV. Our estimates from public figures, not Zalando's internal data.

Set it up

Main campaign

Advantage+ Shopping, powered by the full product catalogue. This is the workhorse. Let Meta choose products and audiences; don't fragment it into hand-built ad sets.

Catalog / feed

The whole game. Keep the feed clean, complete, and fast-updating on price, stock, and images. Build product sets for seasonal pushes (sale, new-in, a category in season).

Objective

Sales, optimised for Purchase, server-side via the Conversions API.

Targeting

Broad. Advantage+ audience, no interest stacking, country-level. The catalogue does the targeting.

Retargeting

Dynamic product ads to browsers and cart-abandoners, straight off the catalogue. Exclude recent purchasers per category.

Placements

Advantage+ (all placements).

Budget

Scale by ROAS, not by number of ad sets. Push budget into the Advantage+ Shopping campaign as long as blended ROAS holds above your ~2.5× target.

Creative

The feed is the creative for mid and lower funnel. Add a small set of brand videos on top for reach (the two angles below).

The first three weeks

Feed audit, then launch. Fix the catalogue before you spend: complete titles, real-time stock, clean images. Launch one Advantage+ Shopping campaign and leave it through the learning phase.

Read blended, not per-ad. Judge on blended ROAS and new-customer cost across the account, not individual product ads. Layer in the brand videos once the catalogue campaign is stable.

Scale on ROAS. Hold above ~2.5× blended and add budget weekly. When it dips, refresh product sets and creative, don't rebuild the structure.

Creative angles

Feed first. For Zalando the catalogue is the creative: dynamic product ads off the feed carry the volume. The two concepts below are the top-of-funnel awareness layer that keeps the retargeting pool full, nothing more.

zalando.nl

How we built this plan

We modelled the economics from Zalando's published figures (average basket, GMV, EBIT margin) plus fashion-retail benchmarks for gross and contribution margin. The derived numbers are estimates, not Zalando's internal data, meant to show what a catalogue-led marketplace plan looks like and what "good" is.

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