What is Ad Relevance Score?

Ad Relevance Score is a platform-generated metric that measures how useful, valuable, and meaningful your ad is to the audience it reaches.

It evaluates your ad based on how people respond to it, how well the message aligns with their interests, and how likely they are to take action. A high relevance score means your ad is resonating with users and is more efficient to deliver.

What do platforms officially say about Ad Relevance Score?

Meta explains that relevance diagnostics help advertisers understand the quality of their ads by evaluating user engagement, response, and expected performance.

The score helps diagnose whether the ad is being ignored, disliked, or embraced by the target audience.

Meta Business Help Center, 2024. About Relevance Diagnostics.
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1144422523062174

Why does Ad Relevance Score matter right now?

Because in 2025, platforms prioritise user experience more than ever.

Ads that fail to resonate become expensive, slow to deliver, or suppressed.

A strong relevance score helps advertisers maintain efficiency, improve delivery, and protect their performance from rising competition.

The Cognitive Ladder: Learning Ad Relevance Score Step by Step

Stage 1: What is the Ad Relevance Score in advertising?

Ad relevance score is the platform’s way of grading how appropriate and appealing your ad is for the people you are targeting.

It reflects how closely your creativity and message align with audience expectations. If users watch, click, or interact positively, relevance increases.

If they ignore it or hide the ad, relevance declines. Understanding this score helps advertisers see the gap between what they intended to communicate and how the audience actually perceives it.

Stage 2: What does Ad Relevance Score do in a campaign?

Ad relevance score influences how your ads compete in auctions and how efficiently they are delivered.

High relevance helps you win better placements at lower costs because platforms reward ads that create a positive user experience. Low relevance does the opposite. It can cause higher CPMs, slower delivery, or reduced impressions because the system prefers ads that users respond to. Essentially, relevance score shapes the economics of your campaign.

Stage 3: Where does Ad Relevance Score fit in the marketing workflow?

Ad relevance score becomes important once your campaign is live and accumulating data. It helps you diagnose why an ad is underperforming and where to make changes. If relevance is low, it may signal issues with targeting, messaging, creative clarity, or offer resonance. By monitoring relevance, advertisers can decide whether to refresh creative, adjust audiences, or simplify the message.

Learn how creative quality affects audience response at: https://www.usenotch.ai/marketing-terms/ad-creative

Stage 4: Why does Ad Relevance Score matter for performance?

Because relevance directly impacts your costs, your audience experience, and your ability to scale. When relevance is high, the platform spends less to show your ad to the right people. When relevance is low, you pay more per impression and the system limits delivery. Improving relevance unlocks better CTR, stronger engagement, and better return on ad spend because the platform treats your ad as valuable.

Stage 5: How can you master Ad Relevance Score?

Mastering relevance begins with understanding your audience’s needs and crafting creative that speaks clearly to those needs.

Use specific, benefit-driven messaging, highlight the value proposition early, and avoid generic or broad targeting.

You can improve relevance by ensuring your ads set accurate expectations and your landing page delivers exactly what the ad promised.

Continuously monitor signals like engagement rate, feedback, and watch-through to guide refinement.

Stage 6: What mistakes should you avoid with Ad Relevance Score?

Avoid assuming that low relevance only comes from poor creativity.

Sometimes it comes from targeting the wrong audience or mismatched messaging.

Another mistake is ignoring negative feedback signals such as hides or comments that indicate confusion or irritation. Running stale creative for too long also harms relevance.

Not correcting these issues leads to higher costs and weaker performance even when other parts of the campaign are strong.

Stage 7: How do you evolve Ad Relevance Score into an advanced skill?

You evolve this skill by learning to read relevance diagnostics like a strategist.

Advanced advertisers dig into quality ranking, engagement ranking, and conversion ranking to identify which component of relevance is weak.

They then adapt creative angles, change hooks, refine targeting logic, or restructure the value proposition to resolve the underlying issue.

Over time, they build a feedback loop where every creative decision is guided by relevance signals, not assumptions.

Stage 8: What should you learn after Ad Relevance Score?

Learn Ad Set next because relevance connects directly to how your creative and audiences are structured at the ad set level.

Quick Learning Recap