How Facebook Newsfeed Works and How Your Ads Perform
A couple of people were asking about how Facebook works. I normally do a longer lecture on this that dives deeper on the more nitty gritty, but here’s a simplified version I sent to a friend at work a few months ago that is still relevant today.
Hey Malorie,
Excellent question, thank you for asking!
First off, to discuss what the Facebook Algorithm does, we have to first clarify what it is. There are two Facebook main algorithms, one for the ORGANIC NEWSFEED, and one for the ADVERTISING part.
FACEBOOK ORGANIC NEWSFEED: The main purpose is to simply show the user the best content relevant to him. This is a very — user experience driven algorithm. It’s ultimate purpose is to ensure that the user has the best experience in Facebook with their own newsfeed. Regardless of the opinions of everyone regarding Facebook’s evil intentions, it is actually in Facebook’s best interest to make sure that you, the user, is engaged in the platform as much as possible. Note that Facebook is focusing more on MOBILE.
Random Zuckerberg note: In Facebook, if you want to present anything to Mark Zuckerberg, you have to present it using a phone.
FACEBOOK AD ALGORITHM: This is the primary algorithm driving your ads in Facebook. There’s two components to it: DELIVERY and PACING. To understand this all fully, you must understand a couple of things:
- Facebook Ads are mostly on a BIDDING (Auction) buying structure. When you set a bid of $10 per day, Facebook automatically optimizes that money to get the most results (either Clicks, Impressions, Views) for your money. You can also override this by simply buying all the clicks you can get. You can also do a Frequency and Reach buy which basically guarantees you a number of REACH (# of people that will see the target). But mostly, it’s Bidding.
- The prices per REACH or IMPRESSION is different on a per CHANNEL BASIS. Facebook has a lot of channels: Desktop Newsfeed, Audience Network, Instagram, Extended Audience Network, Right Hand Side, Mobile Newsfeed. Each channel has a different CPC, CPR, and CPM. These are also largely driven by demand and inventory — there are less ads in the Desktop newsfeed so it’s more expensive. There are more ads in the Audience Network so it’s cheaper.
Taking all that in consideration, DELIVERY calculates where to put your ad based optimally based on your preference. PACING calculates how often it will show the ad based on your bid.
Now to answer your question, how do we guard against Facebook algorithm changes?
SIMPLE! Facebook Ads are all about RELEVANCE. Facebook will always push the most relevant Ad on to the related audience. You can gauge this based on the relevance score for each ad. What we do is to make sure to match the RIGHT CREATIVE to the RIGHT AUDIENCE for the business. At the end of the day, all algorithms of Facebook is done simply to give the best content to their users — same with ads. While we do a lot of testing as well to monitor the algorithms and how they affect us, when we make sure that our creative is the best creative for the best audience that we crafted for the business, then that’s already 75% of the job done. The rest is buying optimization.
Also, algorithm changes are primarily on the Facebook Newsfeed side for organic posts.
Hope this helps!
Joshua
- *NOTE: There’s a third component to the Facebook Ad Algorithm — Asset. The asset itself affects BOTH the delivery and the pacing of an ad based on the relevance score.
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