Facebook has announced that it will remove its Ad Relevance Score as part of a broader switch to more granular, relevant ad metrics to help improve performance.
As per Facebook:
"Rather than measure relevance in one metric, over the next few months, we will replace relevance score with three new, more granular ad relevance diagnostics metrics. Similar to relevance score, these ad relevance diagnostics are not factored into an ad's performance in the auction. We think that this level of granularity will offer reporting that's more actionable for businesses."
Facebook originally launched its ad relevance score back in 2015 to provide advertisers with more insight into their ad performance, and what they could expect.
As explained by Facebook at the time:
"Relevance score is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback we expect an ad to receive from its target audience. The more positive interactions we expect an ad to receive, the higher the ad’s relevance score will be. (Positive indicators vary depending on the ad’s objective, but may include video views, conversions, etc.) The more times we expect people to hide or report an ad, the lower its score will be."
The idea behind the score was to help advertisers create better ads, using Facebook's insights, and to improve ad performance - "the higher an ad’s relevance score is, the less it will cost to be delivered".
But Facebook now says that the single metric doesn't provide enough actionable insight, which is why its switching to a more detailed measurement option.
The new metrics which will be provided are:
- Quality ranking - How your ad's perceived quality compared with ads competing for the same audience.
- Engagement rate ranking - How your ad's expected engagement rate compared with ads competing for the same audience.
- Conversion rate ranking - How your ad's expected conversion rate compared with ads that had the same optimization goal and competed for the same audience.
The extra detail will enable more specific focus on each element of your ad - creative, targeting and post-click - to help focus on the key areas to improve, which will help advertisers better understand their relative campaign performance.
In addition to this, Facebook is also removing six ad metrics, and replacing them with more actionable data points.
Those being removed are:
- Offers Saved and Cost Per Offers Saved - Facebook will replace these metrics with a new 'Post Saves' measure, which "will serve as a more inclusive metric for measuring when ads are being saved". Post Saves will cover both of these metrics, while also providing more overall insight into such response.
- Messaging Replies and Cost per Messaging Reply - Facebook's replacing these metrics with 'New Messaging Connections' and 'Messaging Conversations Started'. Businesses will still be able to measure replies within new or existing conversations, but the updated data points will focus on new conversions that have been started with people who have never messaged with their business before, and messaging conversations that started after a period of inactivity.
- Mobile App Purchase ROAS and Web Purchase ROAS - Facebook's Return on Ad Spend insights will now be aggregated across channels - previously, Facebook's ROAS metrics were channel specific (i.e. Mobile, Web, On-Facebook). Facebook says that since the path to purchase is becoming more omni-channel, its ROAS measurement will be more beneficial when consolidated into "one, holistic Purchase ROAS metric".
The changes are designed to provide more beneficial insight based on feedback from Facebook advertisers and how they're actually using Facebook ads. Some of the use cases here are fairly specific, so the impact will be relative, but it is worth noting all the changes and considering how they factor into your Facebook ad measurement.
Facebook is always updating its ad metrics, and providing new tools and refinements to help improve transparency, and help businesses generate better results. This obviously benefits advertisers, but it also helps Facebook, in that by providing insight into the specific performance and benefits it can encourage further ad spend.
The ad quality metrics are not definitive, but they will help improve your on-platform ad performance, and help you understand your repspective ad reach.
Facebook's new ad performance metrics will be rolled out over the next few weeks, with relevance score being removed as of April 30th.
