On October 28 Meta published a plain-language guide to how its ads system matches an ad to a person. It restates the three auction inputs, gives updated figures for its ranking models, and lists the advertiser decisions Meta says matter most. Nothing here is a new setting, but it is Meta telling you directly what it rewards.
The three auction inputs
Every impression is a real-time auction. Meta says an ad competes where its predicted cost per outcome is below what the advertiser is willing to pay, and that the biggest bid or budget does not automatically win.
- Bid: derived from your budget and goal, with pacing adjusting it to live market conditions
- Ad quality: the whole experience, including what happens after the click
- Estimated action rate: a machine-learning prediction that this person takes your optimised action
Ad quality now reaches past the click
Meta says quality signals include feedback from people who view, click or hide ads, detection of traits such as engagement bait or withheld information, and more than 200 million customer survey responses a year. Those surveys ask about purchase satisfaction, shipping delays, unexpected charges and whether people felt misled.
In practice, slow delivery, surprise fees and a bait-and-switch landing page can raise your costs even if the ad itself is clean.
The ranking stack, with Meta's numbers
Andromeda narrows tens of millions of ads to a few thousand worth ranking for each person; Meta says Q3 improvements lifted Facebook conversions by 1.4%. Generative retrieval on Facebook Feed drove nearly 2% more conversions in targeted segments. In Q2, user-understanding models with GEM and sequence learning delivered 8.3% more ad clicks and a 15.7% conversion uplift on Facebook.
These are Meta's own figures and have not been independently verified.
What Meta says you control
Pick the outcome you actually want rather than a proxy: Meta notes a lead is not a sale and an install is not a subscriber. Send conversion values, not just events, so value optimisation and value rules have something to work with. Choose the attribution view you trust, including incremental attribution.
Meta also pushes Advantage+, more creative variety, Conversion Lift or Brand Lift tests, and budget scheduling for peak periods.
What it means for you
- Optimise for the real business outcome, not the cheapest proxy event
- Pass purchase values through Pixel and Conversions API
- Fix shipping, fees and landing-page honesty; they feed ad quality
- Validate Meta's reported lifts with your own lift or holdout tests
Sources
- Meta for Business: How Meta's ads system matches your ad to the right person
- Social Media Today: Meta says its expanded processing capacity is driving ad results
