Facebook Ads have become a strategic cornerstone of many businesses moving towards digital marketing and away from traditional media. Often ignored by ad buyers, Facebook gives your advertisements a “relevance score” on your analytic reports. Marketers and agencies, however, should be aware of its crucial importance.
The relevance score is Facebook’s way of telling you how relevant your ad is to the targeted demographic. Facebook will give your ad a relevance score from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Ads are not graded by how good they intrinsically are, but how their message is being received by the audience.
Facebook’s goal is to feed the right ads to the adequate people. An ad that sells “fidget spinners” will have a low relevance score if it’s targeting adults over 50 years old – no matter how great its copy and design is. On the other hand, if the selected audience included teenagers under 21 years old, the ad would receive a much more positive score. But how does Facebook calculate it? It is based on the positive and negative feedback that the ad receives, and it is updated automatically as more people interact with it.
There are different factors that will increase or lower your grade. Negative ad engagements, such as users hiding it from their feed, will lower your relevance score. That is a clear sign that your audience does not align with what you are showing them. Your Click Through Rate (CTR) is another crucial indicator that Facebook will use to determine your score. Higher CTR means that users are interested in your offer, and they want to visit your website – which will bring your Relevance Score up. Thirdly, your campaign objective will be decisive to your ad relevance. Choosing the right advertising objective to your campaign goals is essential for Facebook to consider that your ads are important. And finally, positive user engagements such as likes, comments, and shares will make your score rise.
In order to get higher scores, you should always focus on your targeting.
Facebook’s Audience Insights is a great tool to narrow down your audience. Finding the right people to serve your ads is an imperative part of your Facebook Ads success. Like always, split testing will provide you with more information regarding what your audience receives with open arms and what they reject.
Higher relevance scores will bring your business better results. Facebook’s belief that you are providing quality ads to your audience will allow you to have a lower Cost Per Mile (cost per a thousand impressions) and a better Click Through Rate. In other words, a positive Relevance Score will make your advertising cheaper, and you will potentially get much better results. Facebook users enjoying your ad will, in consequence, make its algorithm serve it to more people for a lower cost. Yes, you should not keep your eyes off more bottom-line focused metrics like ROI, but it is a great indicator that you are on the right path.
Further Reading:
You Can No Longer Boost Shared Posts On Facebook – Digital Insights Blog
CMOs Think Digital Marketing Is More Effective Than Ever – Digital Insights Blog
Facebook Is Testing A New Influencer Search Engine For Marketers – Digital Insights Blog
Marti writes about digital marketing and entrepreneurship. Find him with coffee and a laptop while traveling back and forth between Barcelona and Charlotte. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
