Dive Brief:

• Facebook is going to begin scoring ad slots that appear on third-party sites served through its Audience Network ad exchange based on user engagement, such as taking the action the advertiser desired with the placement according to Marketing Land.
• The scoring, rolling out over the next couple of months, will be based on not only clicks, but also additional action taken post-click, and will determine how much advertisers pay for the placement.
• For publishers, this means ad revenue will no longer be consistent as Facebook implements the scoring system and places higher value on some ad slots than others.

Dive Insight:

For Facebook, scoring gives it a higher level of control over its ad network as it hopes to stave off marketers who would prefer to buy News Feed ads completely separately from Audience Network ads, which isn’t currently possible. It also fits into Facebook’s goal of providing advertisers with value by altering the ad spot price depending on value returned. 

While the move is intended to provide marketers with better value, it puts Facebook in the unique position of both being a publisher with its own ad inventory and also acting as an arbiter of how much other publishers should receive for ads, something that may not sit well with some publishers. Facebook already has shaky relationship with publishers, who are not always happy with how their content is surfaced on the platform.  

A native ad slot that acquires a large number of clicks and additional engagement such as a purchase or other activity on an advertiser’s site will score higher than another slot that, through poor design, caused a large number of accidental clicks followed by an immediate bounce from the advertiser’s site, according to Marketing Land. From that point forward the more “valuable” slot would cost more for advertisers and also generate more revenue for the publisher hosting the ad.