How To Win The Facebook Ad Auction

Let's start with the basics: What is the ad auction?

In simple terms, it is Facebook's ad delivery system. Since there are hundreds of advertisers who want to show ads to the same audience, Facebook needs to favor some more than others, since it cannot fill its platform with ads and "bother" the user too much.

The Facebook ad auction is designed to deliver the maximum value possible to the advertiser while optimizing the consumer experience.

‘'The purpose of the ad auction is to offer advertisers more value and an optimal consumer experience.'’

With 3 million advertisers competing for the attention of more than 2 billion users on the news section and other Facebook publishing platforms, Facebook says it conducts billions of auctions every day to link "the right people to the right ads. 

This is how it works

Advertisers submit ad requests and select their target audience, target, and price offer for each click or conversion. Then, every time Facebook has a chance to show an ad to a person in that audience, an auto auction decides which ad the user will see. To determine which ad wins the auction, Facebook assigns a total bid value to each ad.

The total value is calculated from three factors:

1. The value of the advertiser's offer for the result they want to achieve.
2. The probability that displaying an ad to the person will lead to the advertiser's desired result.
3. The quality of the ad and its relevance to the person.

Every time an ad is considered to be displayed to a user, an auction is held, and each of these factors can affect the potential of an ad to win the auction. In each auction, the ad with the highest total value wins (winning means the ad is shown to the person under consideration). 

This means that an ad that is highly relevant to one person could win the auction with a low bid. This also means that another ad with similar relevance could win the same auction if it arrives with a higher bid.

So how do we win this complex auction?

Now it's easy to know how! There are only three ways to do it. Going back to the 3 factors that determine the total value of an ad, you can:

Increase the value of your auction.

Be clear about the result you want to achieve with your promotion and choose the objective that best aligns with your interests when you go to create your ad.

And this is my favorite ... that your ad is of quality! That is, it is relevant and something that people want to see.

Several articles could be made from this last point... so if it is something you would like to learn, leave a comment!