Insider Integration

Insider's personalization widgets, recommendation carousels, abandoned-cart flows, and cross-channel campaigns (web push, email, SMS, WhatsApp, on-site banners) all read from the same product catalog. Without a synced feed, Insider has no product names, prices, images, or stock status to insert into these experiences.

Feeding Insider a clean, correctly mapped catalog also protects your Google Merchant Center and other advertising feeds. If your team already maintains a Feedance-optimized feed for Google Merchant Center or Meta, you can typically reuse the same underlying product data — reshaping it into the format Insider expects — rather than building and maintaining a completely separate export.

Insider's documentation on catalog integration describes real-time (or scheduled) synchronization as the mechanism that keeps its Smart Recommender operating on current data: as your catalog updates, Insider One automatically removes out-of-stock products from campaigns and recommendation widgets so shoppers are never shown items they can't buy.

Insider does not publish the internal ranking logic of its recommendation engine, so treat this as a data-freshness guarantee rather than a description of the personalization algorithm itself: keep the feed accurate and current, and the downstream recommendations stay accurate and current too.

Insider's Product Catalog integration (documented under XML-Based Product Catalog Integration Methodology) accepts XML feeds in one of three supported formats:

1. Criteo XML format — for merchants who already export a Criteo-standardized feed.
2. Google Merchant XML format — the common `g:` namespace structure used for Google Merchant Center, which Insider's Product Catalog Attribute Matching System can auto-map to its own attributes.
3. Custom XML format — a self-defined structure where you manually map each tag to an Insider attribute.

Insider also supports catalog updates via its Ingest/Update APIs (JSON-based) as an alternative to XML. Insider explicitly does not allow running both the XML feed and the API integration for the same catalog at once — you must choose one method.

During setup in the Insider panel (InOne), you also specify the product tag name (typically item unless your XML uses different terminology), the locale, and which currencies appear in the file — XML integrations are configured per locale/store.

Insider's Product Catalog Attribute List documents a set of default attributes it recognizes automatically when the field name and type match, plus support for fully custom attributes you define yourself. Requirement status varies by which Feed Type you select (see below), but the core fields are:

Insider's documentation warns that products missing a required attribute (such as item_id or in_stock) are ignored during processing rather than causing the whole feed to fail.

1. In Feedance, build or select the product feed you want to send to Insider, mapping your source data to the fields Insider expects: item_id, name, image_url, url, in_stock, plus price/original_price if you'll use a Stock-Revenue Based feed.
2. Choose Google Merchant XML as the output format in Feedance if you want Insider's automatic attribute matching to work with minimal manual mapping — this reuses the same `g:` tag structure many teams already maintain for Google Merchant Center.
3. Publish the feed and copy the resulting Feedance feed URL.
4. In Insider's InOne panel, go to Product Catalog integration, choose XML as the integration method, name the integration, select Google Merchant (or Custom) as the format, and paste the Feedance feed URL as the source.
5. Set the locale, product tag (Insider defaults to item), sync period, applicable currencies, and enable out-of-stock detection if relevant.
6. If your Feedance feed URL is protected, add the required Header Key/Header Value pair so Insider can authenticate; otherwise make sure Insider's IPs are allowlisted if your hosting has firewall/WAF/bot protection in front of it.
7. Map any remaining custom attributes, then confirm — Insider will validate the feed and report product counts and attribute coverage before activating it.

Insider lets you configure the sync interval anywhere between 1 hour and 5 days when setting up the XML integration. Insider's own documentation notes that catalog changes are applied on the next sync cycle, not instantly — so if you rely on real-time stock or price accuracy for flash sales or fast-moving inventory, choose the shortest interval your Feedance feed generation schedule can support, rather than assuming changes propagate immediately.

Insider surfaces integration health through validation statuses shown in the InOne panel: Active, Passive, Validation Pending, Ready to Activate, Validation Failed, and System Error. The documented causes worth watching for are:

• Missing required attributes — products lacking item_id, name, or in_stock (or other fields required by your chosen Feed Type) are silently dropped from processing rather than blocking the whole feed.
• Feed URL blocked by firewall/WAF/bot protection — if your hosting protects the XML URL with IP restrictions or bot detection, Insider's fetch requests will fail unless Insider's IPs are explicitly allowlisted.
• Mismatched product tag name — if your XML doesn't use item as the product tag and you don't set the correct tag name during setup, Insider won't be able to parse individual products.
• Running XML and API integration simultaneously — Insider only allows one active catalog integration method at a time; enabling both is not supported.

These are general feed-hygiene practices, not Insider-specific requirements:

• Keep in_stock and pricing fields as fresh as your sync interval allows — recommendation and campaign relevance depends directly on this data being current.
• Pick the Feed Type (Stock-Revenue, Availability, Published-Time, or Start-End-Time Based) that matches your business model rather than defaulting to the generic e-commerce one, since Insider uses the feed type to decide which dimension drives recommendation filtering.
• Reuse a Google Merchant-formatted feed where possible so Insider's automatic attribute matching does the mapping work for you.
• Populate optional attributes like category, brand, and group_code even though they aren't required — they typically improve how well personalization and variant grouping work downstream.

Can I use both an XML feed and the API integration for my Insider product catalog?
No. Insider only allows one integration method — XML or API — to be active for a given catalog at a time.

Does Insider support Google Merchant Center-formatted feeds directly?
Yes. Insider's Product Catalog Attribute Matching System is built to auto-recognize the standard Google Merchant `g:` tag structure, which is one of its three supported XML formats alongside Criteo and Custom.

How fast will price or stock changes show up in Insider after I update my feed?
Only as fast as your configured sync interval, which can be set between 1 hour and 5 days — changes apply on the next sync cycle, not instantly.

What's the minimum data Insider needs to accept a product?
At minimum, a valid item_id, name, and the fields required by your selected Feed Type (for example in_stock for stock-aware feed types). Products missing these are ignored rather than causing the entire feed to fail.