What's more annoying on social media than opening up your Facebook page to be greeted by an advertiser trying to sell you something you don't need or direct you to a page you don't want to visit? For users and those looking to communicate a message or call to action to them, a poorly received Facebook ad is a lose-lose.
Facebook knows this, and they are working on it. On Wednesday, the company announced the introduction of "Relevance Score," its latest step in the effort to improve the relationship between users and advertisers.
"Relevance Score is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback we expect an ad to receive from its target audience," the company explained in a blog post. "The more positive interactions we expect an ad to receive, the higher the ad’s Relevance Score will be."
The functioning behind the Relevance Score is pretty simple. After an advertiser uploads an ad, Facebook will assign the ad a score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest. The score will give the advertiser an indication of how well Facebook thinks users will receive the ad. Likewise, the higher the Relevance Score, the less it will cost to be delivered because a high Relevance Score is seen by the system as a positive signal.
For professional communicators, the new Relevance Score is important for a few reasons. For those already sold on the positive impact of paid advertising on social media, the Relevance Score gives advertisers a chance to measure the potential impact of an ad before releasing it into the world. Knowing what Facebook thinks of your ad before you send it out could be crucial, providing a much-needed feedback mechanism and improving the quality of ads.
For those still not convinced of the efficacy of paid social posts, the new score adds another way to measure potential impact. Measurement sells, especially in the case of the Relevance Score, in which a higher measure makes the ad cheaper to deliver.
Follow Brian Greene on Twitter: @bw_greene