Facebook makes use of a blend of relevance scoring and bid price in order to determine which ads to propose, much in the same way that Google does. As from February 2015, the social networking giant is going to share their relevance scores (RS) to marketers. This initiative aims to encourage advertisers to work on improving the relevance and quality of their ads.

With the RS, Facebook is striving to provide targeted ads to its users. By exposing the relevance scores, Facebook is hoping to strike a win-win-win situation, where the marketers, Facebook users and the company itself would be able to benefit from better targeted ads.

Facebook’s RS is based on the feedback received for an ad from target audience. The higher the positive impact and interaction that an ad receives, the more its relevance score will be. Facebook uses indicators such as number of times a video ad is viewed and conversion rate. Obviously, an ad receiving negative feedback from users reporting it or hiding it, will have a lower RS.

The company has also affirmed that RS will aid in A/B testing as well as creative optimization. Ads that have obtained a high RS imply that they are competitive at auctions and as such they would cost less for marketers.

Facebook has however laid the emphasis on bidding as the most crucial factor for success. If, for instance, two ads target the same audience, assuming that both of them have a high relevance score, the ad with the highest bid will bid the one with the lowest bid.