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Why is Facebook advertising attracting more advertisers than Google Ads?

The answers provided in this piece in Streetwise Journal should be a must-read for any digital marketing manager. (The short answer, in case you were wondering, is Facebook's “contextual and holistic approach” that pulls from all sorts of user data from Likes to entertainment preferences.)

Of course, like any marketing effort, the numbers don't lie. Marketers who see a higher return on Facebook ads will spend their money there accordingly. Furthermore, as the platform continues to make changes to their platform, digital marketers should be ever-vigilant to make sure their dollars are being well-spent. The “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” adage may apply, but as we'll soon see, thanks to recent developments, marketers may find, “if it ain't broke, try to fix it anyway.”

Introducing Ad "Relevance Score"

The development in question is Facebook's new "Relevance Score." Like its competitor Google, Facebook uses a combination of bid price and relevance scoring to determine which ads to show. Now Facebook is taking this logic a step further, while simultaneously encouraging advertisers to optimize the quality and relevance of their ads, in the form of “Relevance Scores.”

In short, Facebook will rank your ad and tell you how relevant it truly is. The more relevant the ad, the more appealling it be to audiences. More engaged audiences means better ad performance, which also means more money for Facebook. What a concept! As Facebook noted in a blog post:

“Ads receive a relevance score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest. The score is updated as people interact and provide feedback on the ad. Ads with guaranteed delivery — like those bought through reach and frequency—are not impacted by relevance score. Relevance score has a smaller impact on cost and delivery in brand awareness campaigns, since those ads are optimized for reaching people, rather than driving a specific action like installs.”

The score will also help marketers focus on classic A/B testing. If ad A has a relevance score of 8 and ad B has a score of 4, they'll not only go with A, but design future ads the same way (assuming, of course, they're reaching the same audience, offering similar products, etc.)

So...How Often Should You Revamp Your Ads?

It's with this recent announcement as a backdrop that we finally address the title of this post: How often to revamp your Facebook ads? The inclination may be to revamp your Facebook ads based on your relevance scores. In fact, brands may be tempted to revamp relatively successful ads with the promise of boosting relevancy to create an even more successful ad. That temptation may be strong, Facebook cautions that the score alone “should be used as the primary indicator of the ad's performance.”

And so the answer to our question is a simple one. Check your Insights page daily and revamp your ads once they stop delivering value over a predetermined amount of time.

What do you think? How often do you revamp your Facebook ads? What other metrics, beyond Relevance Score, will you track to measure effectiveness?

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