Ad Score / Quality Ranking

1. What is Ad Score / Quality Ranking?

Ad Score (also known as Quality Ranking) is the internal rating Meta assigns to your ad based on how users respond to it compared to other ads competing for the same audience.
It measures:

• Expected engagement
  
  

• Expected quality
  
  

• Expected conversion relevance

The score affects how much you pay in the auction and how often your ad is delivered.

2. Where does it exist in the ad platform?

Inside the Ads level → Delivery column, you’ll see:

• Quality Ranking
  
  

• Engagement Rate Ranking
  
  

• Conversion Rate Ranking

These scores compare your ad against ads targeting the same audience.

They do not appear until the ad has enough impressions to evaluate.

3. What does it control or influence?

Ad Score influences:

• CPM (higher score → cheaper reach)
  
  

• Auction priority (higher score → stronger delivery)
  
  

• Cost efficiency (low-quality ads are penalized with higher costs)
  
  

• Creative fatigue detection (scores drop when users stop responding)

It essentially determines whether the algorithm wants to keep showing your ad.

4. Why does it matter for advertisers?

A good Quality Ranking means:

• you win more auctions
  
  

• you pay less per impression
  
  

• you maintain performance for longer
  
  

• you exit the learning phase faster

A poor ranking increases costs even if your targeting is correct.

This is why creative quality and scroll-stopping power matter as much as bidding strategy.

5. How does the platform use it during delivery?

Meta compares your ad to similar ads in the auction and predicts:

• Will users click?
  
  

• Will they watch the video?
  
  

• Will they take the optimization action?
  
  

• Will they hide the ad?

If your ad is expected to perform above average, the system rewards you with:

• stronger delivery
  
  

• cheaper impressions
  
  

• better placement priority

If the expected performance is below average, the system reduces distribution and increases costs.

6. Common mistakes or misconceptions

• Thinking a “Below Average” score means the ad is bad — it may just be in a highly competitive niche.
  
  

• Trying to fix the ad score with targeting when the real issue is creative.
  
  

• Ignoring the score and scaling, which usually inflates CPC and CPM quickly.
  
  

• Comparing scores across different audiences is inaccurate — scores are audience-relative.
  
  

7. What to learn next related to this system?

The next concept that naturally follows is:

Ad Relevance Score / Ad Delivery Optimization

Because once you understand the score itself, the next step is understanding how the entire delivery system allocates impressions based on relevance and predicted actions.