Like your high school English teacher, Facebook is breaking out the red pen. You won’t receive a letter grade, but Facebook will be grading ads on a score of 1 to 10. The score is based on how relevant your ads are to your audience. The more relevant the ad is, the higher the score.

Here’s what you should know about the recently released score:

How is the score calculated?

According to Facebook, “the score is based on the positive and negative feedback we expect an ad to receive from its target audience.” Feedback is based on a variety of factors, but includes metrics like video views and conversion rates. The better the feedback is, the higher the score. The score can change as your audience interacts with the ad.

What are the benefits of the relevance score?

You might be wondering how yet another number is going to help you reach customers, but there are some significant benefits to this new Facebook statistic. Here are a few:

• It can lower your advertising costs

Yes, you read that right. Facebook plans to reward those who create relevant ads by giving a discount on the ad. The better your relevance score is, the cheaper your ad. Facebook hasn’t given any specifics on the discount, but any break on advertising costs is a welcome one.

• It provides testing options

Rather than create an ad and hope it hits home with your target audience, you can test ads and check your relevance score before releasing it. It’ll give you the opportunity to change copy or images to see which variation your audience will respond best to.

• It provides a real-time metric

When an ad is running, you can monitor the score to see how it’s doing. If you want to make changes to improve the score while the ad is up, you can.

What are the drawbacks of the relevance score?

As with any new metric, there are a few downsides. Here are a few:

• It’s just one number

While the relevance score is a litmus test for your ad, it’s still just one number. As always, you’ll want to look at all of your metrics to see how the ad is working for your specific needs.

• Your advertising goal is more important than a number

An ad that meets your goal is a successful one, no matter what the relevance score says. For example, if you run an ad with the intent to boost sales of a specific product on your website and you see an increase in sales, that’s the statistic that’s important to you. Even if your relevance score is low, the fact that your ad is meeting your goal could be more important than the score.

What do you think of the new relevance scores? Will this new metric help your business? Tell us your thoughts in the comment section below.

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