What is ad-platform settings that aren't real levers?
Both Google Ads and Meta Ads show you numbers and labels that look like controls but mostly aren't. Google's Ad Strength and Optimization Score are diagnostic labels describing how the system rates your setup; changing them requires you to edit something else (headlines, targeting) that then produces a new score. Genuine direct levers are things like bid amount, budget, targeting settings, and which conversion action you're optimizing for. Confusing a score for a dial is a common reason people think they've 'tried everything' when they've mostly just read a report card.
Google Ads' Ad Strength (rated Poor to Excellent) and Optimization Score (a percentage) are both diagnostic feedback, not settings with their own on/off state or numeric input. You cannot 'raise' Optimization Score directly the way you raise a bid; the score recalculates after you accept a recommendation or edit an underlying element like adding headlines or descriptions. Google's 'Recommendations' tab works the same way: most recommendations require you to explicitly review and apply them, they do not self-apply, and applying one changes an actual setting underneath, the recommendation itself is just a suggestion surfaced to you. Meta has parallel cases: relevance-style diagnostics (shown per ad, historically split into quality, engagement, and conversion rankings) describe how your ad is being assessed against competing ads in the same auction, they are feedback, not something you set a value for.
The genuine direct levers, the ones where changing a number changes what the system does immediately, are narrower than the settings panel makes it look: bid strategy and bid amount, daily or campaign budget, targeting parameters (location, audience, placements), and which conversion action or event you tell the platform to optimize toward. Everything else in the interface, scores, strength meters, suggested-but-not-applied recommendations, is the platform describing its own assessment of your account back to you. For someone who ran a campaign, watched a low Ad Strength label, and concluded the platform was broken or their product was bad, this distinction matters: a Poor rating is not a penalty being applied to your delivery, it's Google telling you your asset variety is thin. The actual lever is adding assets; the score just reports the result after you pull it.