Quality ranking is one of three ad relevance diagnostics in Meta Ads Manager. It tells you how Meta judges the quality of your ad compared with other ads that competed for the same audience, using labels from “above average” down to “below average”, rather than giving a score out of ten.
How quality ranking works
Meta builds its view of quality from feedback and content signals: people hiding the ad or reporting it, time spent looking at it, and whether the creative shows patterns Meta treats as low quality, such as engagement bait, withholding key information to force a click, sensationalist language or a landing page experience people dislike. Your ad is then placed against others that reached a similar audience.
The labels are above average, average, and three bands of below average: bottom 35%, bottom 20% and bottom 10% of ads. The ranking appears only once an ad has had enough impressions, around 500 at the time of writing (October 2026), and it is reported per ad, not per ad set.
It sits next to two siblings. The engagement rate ranking compares expected engagement, and the conversion rate ranking compares expected conversion rate for the same optimisation goal. Meta states that the diagnostics themselves are not auction inputs; they are a readout of signals that feed ad quality in the auction.
Why it matters
Ad quality is part of how Meta decides which ad wins an auction, alongside your bid and the estimated action rate. An ad Meta considers poor quality has to pay more to win the same impression. For a small UK budget, that can be the difference between a campaign that scales and one that stalls at a high cost per result.
The ranking is most useful as an early warning. A below-average quality ranking on a new ad, before conversions have had time to build, often explains why its costs look worse than its siblings.
Take a London dental practice running two ads to the same local audience. One shows a real photo of the surgery and states the price of a check-up; the other uses a stock smile and the line “You won’t believe this offer”. The second may draw curious clicks, but if people hide it and the landing page does not match the tease, its quality ranking is likely to slip and each booking from it will tend to cost more than one from the plainer ad.
Common mistakes
- Treating the ranking as a goal. An ad with average quality and a strong cost per purchase is a good ad.
- Reading it on tiny volumes or acting on it before the label has settled.
- Comparing rankings across different audiences When each is relative to its own competition.
- Ignoring the landing page. A slow or misleading page can drag quality down even when the ad looks fine.
- Chasing quality with clickbait Which tends to improve clicks briefly and harm quality later.
How to act on it
Look at quality ranking only after an ad has had a reasonable number of impressions, and read it with the other two diagnostics. A low quality ranking with average engagement and conversion rankings points at the creative or the page; low rankings across all three suggest the offer does not suit the audience at all.
To lift it, make the ad clear about what is offered and at what price, remove exaggerated or teasing language, use original, well-lit images or video rather than tired stock, and make sure the landing page delivers exactly what the ad promised. Check comments and hides on the ad for clues. Fixing underperforming creative is part of my Facebook ads management service.