How would you design Shop-ad ranking?

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of ad-ranking and multi-objective machine learning, focusing on ranking objectives, feature and label design, and the trade-offs between user experience and diverse advertiser goals.

How would you design Shop-ad ranking?

Company: Meta

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Machine Learning

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Suppose the previous experiment shows that, in some contexts, users are more likely to convert when shown an ad that leads to an in-app Shop rather than an external website. Now design a ranking algorithm for Meta ads that can **intelligently uprank Shop ads** without hurting user experience or advertiser objectives. Discuss: - What the ranking objective should be. - What features and labels you would use. - Whether you would use a heuristic boost, a learned ranking model, or a multi-objective system. - How you would handle heterogeneous advertiser goals, such as direct online conversion versus offline foot traffic. - How you would evaluate the algorithm offline and online. - What risks, fairness issues, and cold-start problems you would watch for.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of ad-ranking and multi-objective machine learning, focusing on ranking objectives, feature and label design, and the trade-offs between user experience and diverse advertiser goals.

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Oct 16, 2025, 12:00 AM
hardData ScientistTechnical ScreenMachine Learning
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Suppose the previous experiment shows that, in some contexts, users are more likely to convert when shown an ad that leads to an in-app Shop rather than an external website.

Now design a ranking algorithm for Meta ads that can intelligently uprank Shop ads without hurting user experience or advertiser objectives.

Discuss:

  • What the ranking objective should be.
  • What features and labels you would use.
  • Whether you would use a heuristic boost, a learned ranking model, or a multi-objective system.
  • How you would handle heterogeneous advertiser goals, such as direct online conversion versus offline foot traffic.
  • How you would evaluate the algorithm offline and online.
  • What risks, fairness issues, and cold-start problems you would watch for.
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