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Writer's pictureAaron Bogle

Facebook Algorithm Explained 2020 How to BEAT THE ALGORITHM and skyrocket your ads!




If you want your Facebook ads to show for cheaper and you want to beat the Facebook algorithm in 2020, be sure to stick to the end of this video. Let's hop on my computer so I can show you and explain the Facebook algorithm.


Okay, let's go into exactly, step by step, how you can beat the Facebook algorithm and force Facebook to show your ads to as many people as possible for as little as possible. So before I get into it, be sure to hit the like button. And be sure to subscribe to my channel for more content just like this that's going to open the behind-the-scenes of the Facebook algorithm and of Facebook in general, and of Facebook ads.


So, yeah, let's get right into it. All right, so what is the algorithm's job? What exactly does a Facebook algorithm do? The algorithm's job is to show the most relative and the most interesting ads to the right user on Facebook. Because Facebook's goal is to give everyone a good experience when they go on Facebook. So that way they come back onto Facebook, and that way they can see more ads, see more promotions, and Facebook makes more money that way.


When it does this it has to take into consideration some factors, the inventory, which is all the available content that's out there. So that means the ads that you and I run, and the peoples' post. So, the Facebook user's friends and family, whatever they're posting, Facebook wants to show a lot of those posts as well.


That's why I usually see a person's post first and then an ad. And then you see two or three other of your friends or family's posts. And then you may see another ad. You may see more people's posts depending on the user profile that Facebook has made for you. And they also take in consideration your engagement signal. That means, have you received any negative feedback on your ads before? Have you received a lot of positive feedback on your ads before? They take that into consideration as well.



They also will predict on how well your ad will do. And I'm going to go in detail with that more, later. But overall, in short, Facebook's goal is to provide users with meaningful, engaging experiences. So they will prioritize that no matter how much money you throw at them. You can throw at them $1,000.00, but if your add is bad Facebook is not going to show your add to as many people. But you can throw them $20.00, and if your ad is great, Facebook's going to show your ad to so, so, so many people.



Because if you just remember to provide a meaningful, engaging experience to the Facebook user, you will beat the algorithm. And the algorithm will literally not have any choice but to show your ad to the relevant audience that you choose.



So what exactly is this Facebook algorithm? What's the details about it? You can think of the algorithm as an auction. The person with the highest total value will win and get their add displayed. Note I said, "Highest total value", not the most money. What exactly is composed of your total value? I'm going to move this up here. Your total value is your bid multiplied by your estimated action rate, plus your user value. And I'm going to go in detail with all of these components of what total value is.



Your bid, what exactly is your bid? Well, of course that is how much money you put into your Facebook ad. And you put how much money you put in for your Facebook ads at the ad-set level when you run a Facebook ad. Let me move this back down. And then, there are different ways you can bid, and now I'm going to go a little bit into detail with. Automatic bid, we all know this, is when you let Facebook do the bidding for you. So Facebook's always going to try to find you the lowest cost for your bid. They'll put in the appropriate amount of bid for you to win that auction and get your ad shown.



And you can also do manual bid, which is you can choose how much you'll let Facebook spend. So there are two different options when it comes to this. You can do target costs, which is you want to achieve your goal at a specific cost. Be careful with this because you might not get a lot of impressions depending on your target costs. Okay, for example, let's say you're doing for Facebook ads for real estate agents and you want buyer leads, but for only $2.00. But let's say in your neighborhood area a lead is $4.00.


So if you do target costs and you're in that specific scenario, you're not going to get a lot of impressions. Because Facebook's going to try to find the people who are going to convert for you at only $2.00. But if there's no one that's going to convert for you for $2.00, then Facebook's just not going to show your ad. And it's just not going to spend any of your budget.


And then you could also do average cost, which is a lot better. Which is you want to achieve a goal by averaging a certain amount. So in this example, let's say you want your average cost to be $6.00. You don't mind if one lead is $10.00 and another lead is $2.00, your average cost is going to be $6.00.


Bow we're going to get into the good stuff. Now we're going to get into how to actually go in there and beat the algorithm until it's crying and showing your ads. Estimated action rate, this is pretty much how Facebook and the third party will think your ad will perform. When you send your ad for review, they're going to make sure it complies with the privacy policy. Which, if you don't know the privacy policy you should really read up on it. Or you can watch my video which, I should have it as an icon up there. That's going to explain the privacy policy in detail, in one video and very quickly, so you don't get banned from Facebook, which is really bad.



They're going to also send it to a third party and take a look at it themselves and say, "Okay, how are people going to react?" to your ad, and then make a judgment call themselves. If they think that people are going to react badly to your ad they might just disapprove it. Or they will show it out there but they will charge you more for it. If they think that your ad is going to do well, they'll charge you less for showing it, overall.

There are also a lot of other factors other than this that go into it.


For example, how often do you post on your page, and if you get any engagement on your Facebook page? I see a lot of people that run Facebook ads have literally two posts on their page. And they literally haven't posted on their page since 2016. And that is a huge no-no. Facebook actually does see if you're active on your page, and if you get likes, comments and shares on your page.


And they're going to reward you if you actually do get some engagement on your page. Or that you at least post on your page to show that you are active and that you're not some spammy bot or whatever, trying to scam people out of their money, also how old your ad account is.



So this is why if you open a new ad account, A, it might take longer for your first ad to get actually reviewed and accepted. But also you might be seeing that you have an increased cost. This is because people constantly make ad accounts, like scammers or people who got banned from the Facebook ad platform before because they didn't watch my privacy policy video.


They have no prior history that they can fall back on to say, "Oh, your ads have done relatively well in the past so we're not going to charge you as much for it." So if you have a new ad account you might experience a little bit more cost than if you have an old ad account.



How your past ads have done in the past, so again, if you've gotten a lot of positive feedback in the past, Facebook's probably going to be like, "Okay, you're going to run another ad? And you've gotten positive feedback before?


So we're going to charge you less because you're going to possibly get more positive feedback because you know what you're doing. Or if you've gotten negative reviews it can go the other way as well. They're going to be like, "Oh, people have hid your ad. People have left negative engagement signals on your ad.


We're not going to show it as much. We're going to charge you more to show that add." And again, like I literally just said, if you've gotten negative reviews or hide-add signals, that's not good for you because you're giving people less of a good experience. And Facebook is not going to like that. They would rather show an add that's gotten more positive signals.


The post-click experience. This one's really important. Pretty much, how does Facebook think people are going to react once they click on your add and go to your landing page or your offer page, your sales page, wherever you lead them? So, if your landing page is not optimized to get people to convert.


Or are people going to back away immediately? That's also not good. If Facebook thinks that people are immediately going to back click when they land on your landing page, they're going to charge you more for your add or they're just not going to run your add at all. On that note, you have to make sure that your add is going to lead to the right landing page. It's called congruency.


So for example, if you're selling a phone, the landing page better be of the sales page or information about the phone that you have on your ad. It can't be an add about the Nintendo Switch, and then your landing page just leads to a vitamin supplement or something like that. It has to be congruent.


And the add you have sent for review. So that's just Facebook looking at the add and being like, "Okay. How well is this add going to do?" And they think of, does it look engaging? Are people going to like, share, comment on it? And are people going to have a better experience when they see that ad? Will people overall be happier if they see this ad?


And the last factor of the Facebook algorithm and how to beat it is the user value. So how much value does the user get when they see your ad? Here's some of the factors to consider. How long they actually interact with your add.


Let's say if people are just scrolling on Facebook and they see your ad, and it makes them stop and they're reading your copy, that sends good signals for Facebook saying like, "This ad's pretty engaging because this person's spending a longer time on this ad." That's not even clicking on the ad or doing anything. If a person's just literally looking at your ad that's sending positive signals to Facebook and your way.


So, if they click on your ad and they immediately click back ... This is what I was talking about before with the bad post-click experience, so if people are landing on your landing page and literally, immediately back clicking on it, that sends bad feedback to Facebook saying like, "Hey, this is not a good landing page.


People are backing away. Let's not show his ad anymore. Let's show this ad with a good landing page that people are converting on, people are engaging with, that people are loving."



Do people like, share and comment on your add? So just the post engagement signals. The more likes, shares and comments that you have, the better your ads are going to do. Do people leave negative signals? Do people hide your ad? Do people not want to see your ad? Do people leave Facebook once they see your ad? All these negative signals ad up and they tell Facebook, "Hey, these people aren't liking this ad."



And is it achieving the goal that you set for it? This one's also very important. If your goal is lead generation are you actually getting leads when you do this? If your goal is traffic, are people leaving Facebook and going to your landing page?


Facebook also takes this into consideration. If your lead-generation Facebook ad is not driving up leads, it means that it's not accomplishing it's goal and it's not well optimized. And Facebook may charge you more if it's not achieving the goal that you set for it. And like I was saying before, are you getting leads if you're doing lead generation?


And they even go as far as to ask surveys of people, saying, "Which ad is better?" I've actually gotten these surveys on Instagram. They say, "Compare add A to add B. Which one do you think is better?" You should fill out those surveys, too, if you ever get the chance to do them.


Because they give you a better user experience as well, and overall Facebook's goal is to give you the best user experience that they can possibly give you. So by doing those surveys, taking a minute and saying which add you like, which add you don't like, Facebook's going to tailor the adds they show more for you.


So that's pretty much the Facebook algorithm, but I want to share you guys in Facebook's own words how to beat it's own algorithm, for the most part. "If you know your user well, your adds will likely have solid targeting and relevant content,


which then leads to a higher user value. As we have mentioned previously, adds with a higher user value can potentially get more delivery and have lower costs. Conversely, adds with lower user value may possibly get less delivery and have higher costs." That is Facebook's own words of how to pretty much beat the algorithm. Know your audience well. Have solid targeting. Which, if you want to know how to target on Facebook, I have a playlist which I'll have as an icon up there.


And make sure you have relevant content as well that's going to lead to a higher user value. And Facebook tells you how you're doing because they have quality scores and rankings that are going to tell you.


So the first thing is quality ranking which is, "A ranking of your ad's perceived quality. Quality is measured using feedback on your ad and post-click experience. Your add is ranked against ads that competed for the same audience." So, these are Facebook's exact words, by the way.



And they rank your ads based on above average, which is the highest you can get. Which is over the 35 percentile. So if you're at least above in the 35 percentile, that means your adds are better than 65% of other ads that are running to the same audience, which is good. So you have above average, then you have average, which is when your add is between the 35 and 55th percentile.


Then you have below average, and then you have below average 20%. Then you have below average 10%. And if you have below average 20%, you need to stop running that ad and fix it because you're paying a nice, pretty penny to run those ads since it's not very engaging.



So, engagement rate ranking, which is "A ranking of your ad's expected engagement rate. Engagement includes all clicks, likes, comments and shares. Your ad is ranked against ads that competed for the same audience."


So that means with all clicks, if people tap on your ad to see "see more", that is a click and that will improve your engagement ranking. And again, they have the spectrum from above average to a below average. And lastly, conversion rate rankings, which is "A ranking of your ad's expected conversion rate. Your ad is ranked against ads with your optimization goal that competed for the same audience."


So again, if you're doing lead generation, are you getting leads? If you're doing conversions, are you actually getting the conversion that you specified on Facebook? All these rankings go together.


They'll tell you if you're above average, average or you are below average. And if you're anything at the below average, or even average level, you want to be at the above average level. That way you know that your ads are showing. That way you know that you're getting the best price for your adds.



Pretty much in this video I just went through everything that the algorithm is and how to beat it. But I just want to make it clear exactly how to beat the algorithm in this slide. Know your audience.


Have relevant, engaging ads that speak to your customers well. And give them a really good experience. Create an ad that's going to leave someone feeling better or solves their problem. Have adds that encourage people to like the post. What I mean by that is don't use click bait because Facebook says that click bait tactics aren't going to work. And they won't improve your ad's quality score. It might make it even go down.


So don't use click bait tactics, but have something that people are just going to want to share with their friends. Have posts that's going to leave someone feeling a bit better once they see it. And that is exactly how you beat the algorithm. And lastly, this is key. If you don't do this you're just going to be a slave to the algorithm and always paying more for your adds. Subscribe to this channel.


That way you can learn the best tactics to create highly converting adds, to create adds that grab attention. And you'll learn how to create ads that people want to engage with so that people will buy your product or service that you are selling.

So that is the step-by-step of how to beat the Facebook algorithm 2020, 2021 and all the years that Facebook is here to stay. Be sure to read some more blog posts to learn more about Facebook Ads!

Congrats on Finishing the long read

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