Understanding Facebook Ads Relevance Score

What is Relevance Score?

There is a new way to understand how people respond to your Facebook ads. It’s called the Relevance Score. The more relevant your ad is to your audience, the better it’s likely to perform. It also means you pay less to reach your audience.

Pay Less for Your Facebook Ads

Facebook now considers how relevant your ad is when determining which ads to show a person. When your ad is relevant to your audience, its relevance score is higher and it is more likely to be served than other ads targeting the same audience. As a result, you pay less to reach your audience.

Ad relevance score can also help you:

Know when to update your ads. When your ad’s score drops, it may be a good time to change your ad’s creative or update its targeting.
Determine which ad creative is most relevant. You can use the score to test your ads to help determine which message, image or video resonates most with your target audience.

How The Facebook Score Works

After your ad is served more than 500 times, your ad receives a daily relevance score from 1–10, ten meaning your ad is highly relevant and one meaning we it’s not very relevant. You can view the score in the Ads Manager by going to Campaigns in Facebook and clicking on Ads.

Your ad’s relevance score is based on feedback, both positive and negative they expect from the people seeing it, and that is based on how the ad is performs. It is calculated differently depending on your set objectives like clicks to website or video views.

Positive feedback. The number of times Facebook expects people to take a desired action like share or like your ad, or help you reach your objective, like visiting your website.
Negative feedback. The number of times Facebook expects people to hide your ad or indicate a negative experience such as choosing not to see ads from you.

Here are some examples from Facebook below to help you understand the score better or check out the next section to learn about ways to improve your score.

Example Facebook Ads with Relevance Scores

Relevance Score 2 / 10

Targeting: Men and Women, Ages 18-34, Lives in United States

The ad target is a very broad audience with a generalized message, which means some people may find it irrelevant and not take any action. Also, the ad’s blurry image may lead people to hide the ad, resulting in negative feedback.

Relevance Score 5 / 10

Targeting: Women, Ages 18-34, Lives in United States

The ad now targets only women for a more defined audience. The image has improved and the message is descriptive but still lacks direction for what action a person should take. While this may lead to less negative feedback, this ad might still not get more positive feedback.

Relevance Score 8 / 10

Targeting: Women, Ages 18-34, Lives in United States, Interested in Fashion

The audience is even more defined by targeting women who are also interested in fashion. The message is clearer with details about the business and suggests what action a person should take by including a Call-to-Action Button.

Improving Your Facebook Ad’s Relevance Score

Be Specific When Selecting Your Target Market

If you are targeting a broad audience such as men and women, ages 18–25 year old living in the United States, chances are your ad may not be relevant to every person. Try narrowing your audience by specific location, ages, interests and behaviors. Also consider using Custom Audiences.

Consider Your Ad’s Image and Message

Think about how your ad’s message and image (or video) will resonate with your audience. An image/video is more noticeable than text, so focus on improving that first. Also, keep your message simple and related to what you are promoting.

Change Your Ad When Scores Get Low

Over time, an audience that once responded positively to your ad can grow tired of it. When the relevance score for an ad drops, try creating another ad with new content for your audience.

Test Your Ads

Try showing different ads targeting the same audience, or the same ad to different audiences. Look for patterns in your existing ads that might lend insight into what works, such as which ads have the highest score, and what do they have in common.

Avoid Offensive Content

Offensive content might get people’s attention but, on Facebook, this leads to a poor experience.

For more information: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/ads-relevance-score?