Metrics question
As a Product Manager at Meta, what key metrics would you track to identify and measure the impact of poor-performing ads?
- Meta
- Metrics
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests ads-quality metrics thinking: can you identify signals of poor ad performance from both the advertiser's and the user's perspective, not just click-through rate alone.
How to approach it
- Clarify 'poor-performing' from two angles: poor for the advertiser (low ROI) and poor for the user experience (low relevance, high annoyance), since these are not always the same ads.
- Name advertiser-side metrics: click-through rate, conversion rate, and return on ad spend, compared against category benchmarks to flag underperformers.
- Name user-experience metrics: negative feedback rate (hide, report, see-less) and engagement quality, since a high click rate with high hide rate signals a misleading ad.
- Combine both into a composite quality signal: low ROI plus high negative feedback is doubly poor and should be deprioritized, whereas low ROI alone may just mean poor targeting.
- Add a platform-health guardrail: track whether poor ads correlate with lower session time for users repeatedly shown them.
- Define the actionable metric as a quality score combining CTR, negative feedback, and bounce rate, used to demote poor performers automatically.
What a strong answer includes
- Separates advertiser-side and user-side definitions of 'poor-performing' explicitly, since an ad can be bad for one and fine for the other.
- Names negative feedback signals specifically, how real ad-ranking systems actually detect user-experience harm, not just click data.
- Proposes a composite quality score combining both sides rather than a single metric, showing systems-level thinking.
- Adds a platform-health guardrail connecting poor ads to broader engagement risk.
Common mistakes
- Only naming advertiser-side metrics like CTR and conversion, ignoring the user-experience harm dimension entirely.
- Treating a low click-through rate alone as sufficient evidence of a poor ad, without considering negative feedback signals.
- No proposal for what to actually do with the metric (demote, restrict) once poor performers are identified.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you distinguish a poorly targeted ad from a genuinely low-quality or misleading ad?
- How would you handle an advertiser who disputes their ad being flagged as poor-performing?
- How would you set thresholds for automatic demotion without unfairly penalizing new advertisers with little data yet?
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- You launched a new signup flow to encourage new users to add more profile information. A/B test results indicate that the % of people that added more information increased by 8%. However, 7 day retention decreased by 2%. What do you do?Google · Metrics · Hard
- Define the metrics for YouTube search.Google · Metrics · Medium
- You are the PM of Instagram app. The MAU has been constant but DAU has declined. What will you do?Meta · Metrics · Medium
More questions from Meta
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop