If you run Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) on Meta and you’re looking to scale your creative, automate your workflows, or manage complex campaigns more efficiently, you’ve probably come across Hunch.
Hunch is a creative automation and media buying platform designed for performance marketers who need more than just simple overlays and catalog tweaks.
It promises to streamline how you produce, personalize, and optimize your ads – across Meta, Snap, and even TikTok.
But is it the right tool for you?
In this review, we break down how Hunch stacks up against other DPA-focused platforms like Confect, Smartly, and Marpipe. Whether you’re focused purely on Catalog Ads, looking for better campaign automation, or exploring cross-channel solutions, this guide will help you decide if Hunch is worth the investment – or if there’s a better fit for your ecommerce ad strategy.
Table of Contents
Hunch compared to other tools and alternatives
When comparing Hunch to other platforms in the Dynamic Product Ads space, it’s important to understand its positioning. While tools like Confect and Marpipe focus heavily on Catalog Ads/ Dynamic Product Ads specifically, Hunch sits closer to Smartly.io – offering not just DPA capabilities, but also automated campaign automation and media buying features.
Let’s take a closer look at what real users are saying, and how Hunch scores on key features.
User reviews for Hunch
When looking at verified reviews from their users on G2, Hunch generally performs well – especially in support and advanced feature sets – but it trails behind in usability and value for money compared to some of its more specialized competitors.
| G2 review scores | Hunch | Confect.io | Smartly | Marpipe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meets Requirements | 8.9 | 9.6 | 8.5 | N/A |
| Ease of Use | 8.3 | 10.0 | 8.3 | N/A |
| Ease of Setup | 8.9 | 9.6 | 8.9 | N/A |
| Ease of admin | 8.7 | N/A | 8.3 | N/A |
| Quality of support | 9.9 | 9.8 | 9.3 | N/A |
| Product Direction | 9.3 | 10.0 | 8.6 | N/A |
| Price (starting from) | $2,800/mo. | $299/mo. | $4,000/mo. | $1,499/mo. |
| Commitment | Yearly | Monthly | Yearly | Yearly |
Prices are lowest price points without ad-spend limits.
Meets Requirements (8.9) – Hunch users feel the platform delivers on its promises, especially when it comes to cross-channel campaign automation and advanced features like weather-based messaging or hyper-localized ad sets.
Ease of Use (8.3) – While generally positive, Hunch’s interface can feel overwhelming, especially for users primarily focused on Meta DPAs since there are so many features and complex options available.
Ease of Setup (8.9) – Hunch earns high marks for onboarding and initial setup, bolstered by strong customer success support.
Ease of Admin (8.7) – Users report that once you’re familiar with Hunch, managing creatives and campaigns is efficient. However, a steeper learning curve can be a hurdle early on.
Quality of Support (9.9) – This is one of Hunch’s biggest strengths. Reviewers consistently praise their support team for being responsive, knowledgeable, and proactive.
Product Direction (9.3) – Hunch’s roadmap appears to align well with user needs, particularly for marketers pushing the very limits of automation and personalization, using complex media buying and campaign management algorithms.
While it’s more affordable than Smartly, Hunch can still feel expensive – especially if you’re only using it for DPA creative. That’s where tools like Confect and Marpipe are seen as more cost-effective solutions.
Overall, Hunch scores highly where it matters for larger, more complex teams – support, scalability, and automation. But for non-enterprise ecommerce brands or teams that just want a tool for Dynamic Product Ads, the user data suggests there are both better and cheaper options.
Our rating of Hunch
We’ve evaluated Hunch across several key areas relevant to paid social specialists running Dynamic Product Ads – and the results reflect a tool that’s powerful, but not without trade-offs.
Hunch scores highly for features like Story and Video DPAs and Media Buying, making it a great choice for teams looking to go beyond static Catalog Ads and automate their broader campaign workflow. It also performs well in supporting multiple ad channels, making it suitable for multi-platform strategies.
However, it lags behind when it comes to ease of use, value for money, and the Dynamic Product Ads specific features – especially when compared to more DPA-specialized platforms like Confect.
If your focus is on quickly building and iterating on your Dynamic Product Ads without needing media buying automation or cross-channel support, you might find Hunch too complex or too expensive for what you need.
That said, if you’re a performance marketer juggling multiple ad types, formats, and platforms, Hunch can deliver serious operational efficiencies – once you’re fully onboarded.
Pros and cons of Hunch
Like any platform, Hunch has its strengths and trade-offs. It’s packed with features – some of which are incredibly powerful if you need them, and unnecessary complexity if you don’t.
What we like
- Many features for a lot of usecases
- Good support
- Access to weather API and other advanced features (if you use it)
- Provides a lot of inspiration material
What we don’t like
- You have to work in Hunch’s Ads Manager, not in Meta
- Expensive if only used for Dynamic Product Ads
- Can be too complex for many
The biggest win for Hunch is its versatility: you get access to media buying automation, dynamic creative tools, and cross-channel support all in one platform. Add to that strong support and advanced features like weather-based targeting, and it’s clear why performance-driven teams like it.
On the flip side, Hunch can feel heavy for marketers who just want to improve their Catalog Ads on Meta. Be aware that with Hunch you’re locked into using Hunch’s own Ads Manager instead of Meta’s native tools, and the price tag is hard to justify if you’re not using most of the platform’s capabilities.
Who is Hunch best for?
Hunch is a strong fit for brands looking for a more affordable alternative to Smartly, especially if you’re managing complex campaigns or need automation across media buying, targeting, and creative. It’s ideal for advanced use cases like hyper-localized ads, weather-based targeting, or running campaigns across multiple channels from a single platform.
However, if your primary goal is to improve your Meta Dynamic Product Ads – not overhaul how you manage campaigns and media buying in Meta – Hunch might be more tool than you need. In that case, Confect or Marpipe may be better suited, offering both better and more cost-effective solutions focused purely on DPA creative.
Features of Hunch
Hunch positions itself as more than just a creative platform – it’s a full-stack solution for automating, optimizing, and scaling your paid social campaigns. But how well do its features actually support Dynamic Product Ads for ecommerce?
In the sections below, we break down Hunch’s core capabilities across design, catalog management, ad formats, campaign automation, and cross-channel support. Whether you’re considering Hunch for its creative potential or its automation muscle, here’s what to expect.
Designing
One of Hunch’s core strengths is its creative automation capabilities, especially when it comes to building dynamic, personalized ads at scale. The platform allows you to create branded templates, apply conditional logic, and generate variations for different audiences or product segments.
While it may take some time to get used to the design editor, it’s a flexible tool once you’re up and running.
Design editor
Hunch’s design editor gives you a decent amount of flexibility to create personalized, dynamic ad templates. It includes drag-and-drop functionality, conditional elements, and access to brand assets, allowing you to build DPA templates that feel more tailored than Meta’s native options.
That said, it’s not the most intuitive interface, especially for newcomers – it can take time to learn where things live and how to create scalable designs without starting from scratch each time.
On brand designs
Keeping things on-brand is definetely possible with Hunch. You can upload brand assets and use custom fonts, colors, and styles.
With Hunch, maintaining a high-end brand look across thousands of products is doable, but it requires more setup and testing.
Managing catalogs
Hunch offers basic but useful tools for working with your product catalog on Meta – enough to support dynamic ad generation, but not quite a full catalog management system. You can enrich your product feed with custom fields, group products, and apply logic to tailor your creatives based on attributes like price, category, or availability.
One important thing to note is how Catalog Ads / Dynamic Product Ads is a small part of Hunch’s large offering: Which can both be a positive (if you are using all the other features) but also a negative for Dynamic Product Ads specifically, as it makes DPA a small part of their overall product focus.
However, most advanced feed editing still needs to happen outside the platform. If you’re looking for deep, hands-on control over catalog data within the tool itself, Hunch might fall short – but for dynamic creative generation tied to your feed, it gets the job done for most ecommerce advertisers.
Editing Meta Dynamic Product Ads
Hunch lets you sync your product feed and enrich it with custom data fields. You can create product groups and customize how each group is presented in ads, but don’t expect a full-blown catalog manager.
Most catalog-level tweaks (like price formatting, category filtering, or conditional rules) still have to be done upstream or in a connected Google Sheet.
Tailoring designs based on rules
Hunch does support conditional logic to show different overlays or messages based on product attributes – like price drops, low inventory, or categories – inside the design.
However, these conditional rules is only changing the design itself, not selecting which design to use, like you do in Confect. This makes it more difficult to setup a full tailored setup in Hunch compared to Confect.
Multiple designs
You can A/B test and use different creative variations across your product sets and build out multiple templates for different audiences or campaigns. This is a strong point for Hunch, and the platform makes it relatively simple to manage versions and see which combinations are performing.
The only thing to be aware of here is how you are required to do all settings inside Hunch’s own Ads Manager, instead of working in the Facebook Ads Manager like you are probably used to.
Catalog Ads formats
Hunch stands out when it comes to the variety of ad formats it supports for Catalog Ads. Beyond standard static DPAs, the platform lets you create dynamic Story and Video Catalog Ads that are automatically generated from your product feed.
Story Catalog Ads
The platform lets you turn your product catalog into vertical-format Story Ads that are automatically generated and branded. These can include animations, transitions, and dynamic elements that pull from your feed. If Story Ads are a core part of your strategy, Hunch delivers a powerful set of tools here.
Video Dynamic Product Ads/ Product Level Video
This is one of Hunch’s standout features. Hunch also supports dynamic video creatives built from your product feed. These can include motion graphics, transitions, and custom messaging. The results can look very polished, assuming you invest some time in setting up your templates. Hunch even supports templates that simulate real UGC-style videos – great for performance-driven DPA strategies.
Campaign management and Media Buying
Hunch goes beyond just ad design and helps manage the full funnel – from campaign setup to optimization. You can build media plans inside Hunch, launch directly to Meta, and automate bidding, budgeting, and audience targeting. This is where Hunch starts to feel more like a Smartly competitor.
If you want a tool that centralizes media buying and creative, Hunch is a strong option. If you just want better Dynamic Product Ads for Meta, it might feel like overkill.
Other channels
While Hunch is strongest on Meta, it also supports other platforms like Snapchat and to a small degree Google. You can adapt your catalog creatives for these channels and manage campaigns from a unified interface.
This makes it a fairly good choice if you’re running campaigns both across Meta and Snap, and want to keep creative and campaign logic centralized.
Just like with the Meta ads, you set up the Snap ads inside Hunch’s Ads Manager instead of doing it in Snap’s own.
Setup and implementation
Hunch offers a managed onboarding process, especially for enterprise customers. You’ll typically work with a Customer Success Manager who helps set up integrations, sync your catalog, and build your first few templates.
That said, there’s a learning curve – especially if you’re used to work in Meta’s own Ads Manager. Expect a couple of weeks to fully ramp up.
Analytics
The analytics dashboard in Hunch is solid, showing performance by creative, product group, and campaign. You can run comparisons across templates and see which rules or creative variants are driving the best results.
While not as granular as some dedicated analytics platforms, it gives you enough insights to iterate on your DPA designs and creative strategy.
Google Ads
Hunch offers limited but useful support for Google Ads. While it doesn’t handle catalog management or full campaign setup for Google (unlike what it does for Meta), it does provide optimization tools once your campaigns are live. You can automate certain aspects like performance alerts, optimization rules, and creative adjustments. If you already manage Google Ads elsewhere (e.g., in Google Ads Manager or through a feed provider), Hunch can help enhance performance by streamlining optimizations – but it won’t replace your Google Ads setup or catalog infrastructure. It’s best thought of as a performance layer rather than a full-stack solution for Google.
Final conclusion
Hunch is a powerful platform for ecommerce advertisers who need more than just Dynamic Product Ads. It shines when you’re managing complex campaigns across multiple platforms and want to centralize creative production, automation, and optimization.
For paid social specialists looking to scale and automate large parts of their media buying and creative workflows – especially if you’re running on Meta and dabbling in Snapchat or Google – Hunch offers serious capabilities. Its Story and Video DPA features are among the best available, and its creative automation tools can save time once you’re fully set up.
However, if your primary need is simply to create more visually appealing and high-performing Catalog Ads, Hunch might be more tool than you need. Its pricing and setup complexity may feel heavy for teams just looking to upgrade their DPA creative.
Bottom line: Hunch is a great choice if you’re looking for a Smartly alternative with broad automation capabilities and cross-channel support. But for brands focused solely on DPA creative – without the need for advanced media buying tools – options like Confect or Marpipe may be more cost-effective and easier to get started with.
Hunch pricing
Hunch typically works on a 12-month contract basis, with a one-month pilot to start.
Monthly minimum fee: €2,500/mo (~$2,800/mo)
Commitment: Yearly contract after 1-month pilot
Ad spend limits: Pricing tiers will vary based on ad spend, features, and service level.
While the platform is priced lower than Smartly, it’s still a significant investment – especially if you’re primarily using it for Meta Dynamic Product Ads. For large companies with very complex workflows or multi-market campaigns, the pricing can be justified by the time saved and scale achieved through automation. For medium-sized companies or DPA-only use cases, the ROI will be hard to realize.