You may have noticed a new Facebook Ads Relevance Score has been added for advertisers to help improve their algorithm and be more transparent with those advertising on Facebook. According to the official announcement from Facebook on February 11 of this year, the social network has always used relevance as a factor in determining how they deliver ads to users.
If you step away from a business mindset for a second, you might realize that all of the ads on your personal Facebook page are incredibly targeted. This is because relevance has always been important; it’s only now that advertisers can see an actual metric.
This makes having this information in the form of a score incredibly important for Facebook advertisers looking to improve their ad delivery and even cost for specific campaigns.
How the Facebook Ads Relevance Score Works and Why It Matters
The new Facebook Ads Relevance Score works just like the Google AdWords Quality Score in that it will help serve as a quality signal. This will affect your ad delivery and the cost you pay for your campaigns. Below is a sample screenshot from the announcement:
Your relevance score is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback for each ad according to the ad’s target audience. If Facebook expects the ad to have a lot of positive interactions — lots of views, comments, conversions, a clear objective, etc. — it will have a higher relevance score. If the ad is expected or showing negative interactions — people hiding or reporting the ad — the score will of course be lower.
As you may have guessed, your score per ad will change as more people interact with the ad. You can score between 1 and 10, but it is worth noting that this score has a smaller impact on cost and delivery in brand awareness campaigns. In other words, because these ads are optimized for reaching people as opposed to driving a specific action (such as installs), the score becomes less important.
Using the Facebook Ads Relevance Score to Improve Your Ads
Understanding why the Facebook Ads Relevance Score matters for each of your ads can help you determine where you should be putting your money and what you can do to optimize your ad for more positive interactions. According to the announcement, the benefits include:
- Lowering the cost of reaching people. If your ad has a high relevance score, it’s going to cost less for you to deliver that ad because Facebook values relevancy. It is not the only factor that is considered (for example, bid is also important), but it is going to be a significant determiner for Facebook’s delivery system.
- Helping advertisers test ad creative options. Advertisers can test different layouts, images, copy, different audiences, etc. in order to see which ads have the highest relevance scores; thus helping advertisers make an informed decision about the right ad to run and save money in the process.
- Help advertisers optimize all campaigns. Specifically, existing campaigns. By testing different ads for relevance score during a campaign, advertisers can find patterns and see what is working and then make changes accordingly. In other words, as you watch your current campaigns, try to find trends to see what your ads with the highest relevance score have in common.
Once again, it’s important to keep in mind that the most important factor for success with Facebook ads is still going to be bidding based on the goal of your ads. Facebook said specifically in their announcement:
“For instance, if two ads are aimed at the same audience, there’s no guarantee that the ad with an excellent relevance score and low bid will beat the ad with a good relevance score and high bid. But, overall, having strong relevance scores will help advertisers see more efficient delivery through our system.”
I would also highly recommend checking out this article from Sprout Social to learn more about how to create better ads in general, including how to create compelling content, how to really understand your audience, and how to keep ads simple for maximum success.
How to Find the New Facebook Ads Relevance Score
You can find the Facebook Ads Relevance Score for all of your ads in any of the ads reporting tools or through Facebook’s ads API to their partners and developers. Put more simply, you can head to the Ads Manager and then add the relevance score tab to your ads report.
Now that the new feature has been available for one month, what are your thoughts? Do you think the Facebook Ads Relevance Score has been helping your campaigns succeed?
Republished by permission. Original here.
Facebook Photo via Shutterstock
Of late, we have fortunately been able successfully implement ads with very high scores for our Marketing Sweet social media clients. The Ad Relevance score is great and I’m glad Facebook have added to the business side of things.
I’m glad they’ve started providing this information. Up until this point, I’ve always relied on cost per conversion. And looking at my most recent campaigns, cost per conversion and relevance score seem to go hand in hand (a high score does result in lower costs). So it’s useful to see the two figures – especially when it gives you a hint that your ad just isn’t working for that audience. Great article.
Nice idea, but isn’t “making the ads relevant” part of what you are paying for?
It can barely be called a service when you’re doing so much yourself – making the ad, making it relevant, posting it. You’re essentially paying them to keep the servers switch on and running.