A Product Is Missing from My Feed or Ads

If a product isn't showing up in your feed or ads, it's almost always one of six things: it's not in the channel's product set, a rule excluded it, it's missing a required field, an image placeholder has nothing to show, it's out of stock, or it's still importing. Work through them in that order — or ask Aimée to trace the product and tell you exactly why.

The product isn't in the channel's product set#

A channel only exports the products in its product sets. If the product doesn't fall into any of them, it won't appear in that feed — there's no error, it's simply out of scope. Open the channel and check its product sets, and confirm the product matches at least one of them. See Product sets and product queries.

Membership follows the product's data. When an import or Renable's own processing changes a product so that it no longer matches a set — its price drops below the set's minimum, its category changes — the channel runs again and the product leaves the feed. The same happens when a product disappears from the catalog's source feed.

A rule excluded the product#

An Exclude product action drops a product from a feed whenever its conditions match — sold out, discontinued, a brand you don't advertise. This can happen at two levels:

• A catalog rule removes the product from every channel.
• A channel rule removes it from just that one feed.

The channel's run history reports how many products its rules excluded, and a per-product trace says "excluded by a rule" so an excluded product never looks like a fault in the run. To find and change the rule, see Fixing your feed data with rules for catalog rules, or Channel automations for channel rules.

The product is missing a required field#

Ad networks reject products that are missing a required field. Meta, Google and TikTok all require an ID, title, description, link, price, availability, and main image; Meta and TikTok also require condition and brand, while Google asks for those only for some products. Renable calls these out before the ad network does: the catalog's mapping shows any required fields still empty, and the channel's fields mark required fields with warnings. Fill or map the missing field, then publish. See Mapping your feed fields and Channel fields and placeholders.

A product whose source row lacks the core basics — an ID, link, title, or price — can't be imported at all, so it never reaches the catalog in the first place. When that happens, the import raises a warning on the catalog's Activity tab that names the missing field and counts the affected products (for example, "14 products are missing price"), and you can drill down from the warning to the exact products. Fix the value in the source feed or map it with a rule, and the warning clears on the next import.

An image placeholder has nothing to show#

A template or channel field bound to Product image (or Lifestyle image, or another image category) only shows images Renable processed. If the catalog doesn't process this product's images — Categorize images is off and no background-removal step covers them — the placeholder is empty, and an empty required placeholder is missing content. The channel then treats the product as its automations say: on a Meta or TikTok channel the built-in Status automation archives it.

Fix it either way round: process the images (turn on Categorize images or add a step in the catalog's Image processing section, or add a Process images rule for these products), or add a fallback to Image link on the placeholder so the feed's own photo is used. In a channel field, Image link is your image's address exactly as your product feed lists it, so it's there as soon as the product is imported; in a template, it's Renable's own copy of that image, which Renable fetches the first time the template needs it — the channel's run waits for it for up to an hour, then publishes what's ready and corrects the feed once the image arrives. See When a template or prompt first uses a feed image.

Why an image placeholder is empty#

When an image placeholder comes up empty, Renable tells you why: the channel's missing-content warning, the trace on the channel and in Studio, a prompt's Skips N feed items warning, and Aimée all give the same one-line reason. What each reason means, and what to do:

• The product has no images — the feed lists no images for it. Add them in your source feed, or map the column that holds them.
• The product has no image of that kind (for example "This product has no Lifestyle image", sometimes with an image position) — its images are processed, but none is in the category the placeholder asks for, or there's no image at that position. Change an image's category on the project's Content page, or bind the placeholder to a kind the product does have, or add a fallback.
• The image is still downloading — wait. It fills in on its own once the download finishes. If it doesn't and the catalog shows the error Your image links aren't working, the catalog's image downloads are paused, because most of the image links Renable tried first failed — see "The catalog's image downloads are paused" below.
• The image is still being processed — wait. The catalog's processing covers the image and Renable hasn't finished with it yet; it fills in on its own. Aimée and a prompt waiting for the image say this; the channel's warning and the trace give no reason while it lasts.
• The image could not be downloaded — Renable couldn't fetch it from your website. It tries again automatically, and once an attempt succeeds the image fills in on its own, in templates and prompts too. See Why can't my images be retrieved?
• The catalog's image downloads are paused because most links fail — when most of a sample of the catalog's image links fail (they lead nowhere, return a web page, or point to a file Renable can't use), Renable stops downloading the rest and raises the error Your image links aren't working. Those images aren't downloaded until you act: fix the address in your product feed or the rules that build Image link and Additional image link, then import again, or use Retry image downloads on the catalog page (or ask Aimée there to retry them). See "Your image links aren't working".
• The image is being fetched so it can be used — a prompt's test run in the editor says this when Renable is fetching a feed image the prompt reads. Wait; the next test run uses it, and the prompt generates for the product once it has arrived.
• The product's images aren't processed — neither the catalog's Image processing settings nor a Process images rule covers them. Turn on Categorize images or add a step there, add a Process images rule for these products, or add a fallback to Image link so the feed's own photo is used. When Aimée explains a product, she names the image positions this applies to.
• Categorize images is off for this product — with the switch off, every processed image counts as a Product image, so none is a Lifestyle image or any other kind. Turn Categorize images on (in the catalog's settings, or in the Process images rule that covers the product), or bind the placeholder to Product image instead.

A prompt that reads an empty image placeholder doesn't generate without it: it skips that product, removes what it generated for the product earlier, and counts it in its Skips N feed items warning, under the same reason. The fixes above apply there too, a fallback to Image link included: in a prompt, Image link is Renable's own copy of the photo, which Renable fetches the first time a prompt needs it, and the prompt waits for it rather than skipping the product — see Why a prompt skips some products.

The product is out of stock#

An out-of-stock product usually stays in the feed but is marked unavailable, so the ad network stops delivering it — it disappears from your ads without being removed from the feed. If the product is genuinely in stock, check that your feed's stock or availability value is mapping correctly, because a wrong or missing availability value reads as out-of-stock. See Channel automations for how availability is handled per feed.

The product is still importing#

A newly added product only appears after the next import finishes and the channel runs again. If you just connected a feed or added the product upstream, give the import time to complete — the catalog's Activity view shows import progress and results. Aimée can also wait for the import to finish and report back the real counts when it's done. See Feed runs and warnings.

The fastest check: ask Aimée to trace the product#

Rather than checking each cause by hand, ask Aimée why a specific product isn't in a feed. She can look at one product end to end — its import state, which product sets and channels it belongs to, whether a rule excluded it, and how each field resolved — and tell you exactly which step dropped it, and what to do about it.

FAQ#

The product is in my catalog but missing from just one channel — why?

That's almost always product-set scope or a channel-level exclude rule, since both are specific to one channel. A catalog-level problem — a missing required field, or an exclude rule on the catalog — would affect every channel, not just one.

I fixed the problem but the product still isn't showing — what now?

Publish the catalog or channel so the fix goes live, then wait for the next import and channel run. Changes stay in a draft until you publish, and ad networks pick up feed changes on their own schedule after that.