Facebook’s New Relevance Metrics For Improving Your Ads

Facebook announced recently that it replaced the ‘Relevance Score’ we’re used to seeing in our ad reporting with 3 new metrics that are aimed to give us better insights into WHY our ads might be under-performing so we know what to focus on to improve them.

Why does relevance matter?

People prefer ads that are relevant to them.

So Facebook’s algorithm is designed to show the most relevant ads to each of us. And therefore, relevant ads get better results.

If you can optimise your ad to be more relevant, you’ll create a better experience for your audience AND you’ll achieve better outcomes.

The old relevance score was a single value from 1 to 10 that indicated how relevant our ad was to our audience. Now let’s look at our three new relevance ranking scores.

The 3 New Relevancy Metrics

The new ad relevance metrics can help you diagnose more accurately how relevant your ads were to the audience you reached.

If your ads aren’t performing well, you can use these ranking metrics to understand whether changes to your creative assets, post-click experience or audience targeting could improve performance.

Like the old relevance score, these new metrics themselves don’t impact your ad’s performance. They are purely there to give insights to help you improve.

Your ad will be ranked and scored against other ads competing for the same audience.

For example, if Average was 35% – 55% of all ads, then you might be ranked:

• Above average (above 55%)
• Average (35% – 55%)
• Below average (bottom 35% of ads)
• Below average (bottom 20% of ads)
• Below average (bottom 10% of ads)

Quality Ranking

This metric ranks your ad’s perceived quality compared to ads competing for the same target audience.

Facebook measures quality from tracking positive vs negative responses – e.g. people viewing or hiding the ad.

They also assess the creative and messaging of the ad to identify click-bait, engagement bait and other poor user experiences such as text over images, using capital letters, lots of exclamation marks (to name a few!) – which all add to a low quality score.

For example, a quality ranking of below average (bottom 20% of ads) means that your ad’s perceived quality was in the lowest 20% of ads competing for the same audience. At least 80% of ads competing for the same audience were perceived as higher quality.

Engagement Rate Ranking

This score ranks your ad’s expected engagement rate compared to ads competing for the same audience.

It shows the likelihood a person will click, react to, comment on, share or expand an ad. Engagement-baiting (such as asking for likes and comments) will not improve your ad’s performance.

Engagement rate ranking isn’t available for the following optimisation goals: ad recall lift, impressions, reach or custom conversions.

Conversion Rate Ranking

This metric shows your ad’s expected conversion rates when compared to ads that have the same optimization goals and audience.

It calculates the likelihood that a person who viewed your ad will complete your optimisation goal.

For example, if you run a campaign with a Video Views optimisation goal, it will calculate how many 10-second video views you’re likely to get.

How can you improve your relevance score?

Read about the top ways to make your ad highly relevant, engaging and convert more here in this blog: Facebook Ads 101: What is a Relevance Score and why does it matter?

More new changes to ad metrics you should know about

Goodbye: Offers saved and Cost per offers saved 

Hello: Post saves. 

This is the number of times your ad is saved by people who want to find it again later. It’s the same metric as before, but now it is available on all ad types.

Goodbye: Messaging replies and Cost per messaging reply

Hello: New messaging connections and Messaging conversations started.

New messaging connections measures the number of new conversations with new contacts who haven’t messaged your business before.

Messaging conversations started measures the number of ‘new’ conversations started after at least seven days of inactivity.

Goodbye: Mobile app purchase ROAS and web purchase ROAS

Hello: Purchase ROAS

ROAS means Return On Ad Spend. The new Purchase ROAS metric combines the different buying channels into one holistic metric because customers can start and finish a purchase on different devices – therefore return on spend cannot be accurately reported for a single channel any more.

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These changes are being rolled out starting April 30, 2019. You may not see the changes in your account immediately, but know they are coming!