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With billions of dollars invested in paid social advertising every year, social media advertising is full of opportunities for brands to connect and engage with their audiences.
Explore paid social advertising, including what it is and why it helps you reach the desired audience organic social can’t.
Paid social uses social media channels to advertise content to a targeted audience highly interested in your product or service.
Paid social media advertisements appear in several formats, including static images, videos, and carousels. They are usually labeled with tags like “sponsored,” “promotion,” or “ad” to differentiate them from organic content.
Running paid social campaigns can help you increase followers, engagements, clicks, and views and boost brand awareness.
An example of an Instagram post by Uber. It includes a “sponsored” tag so audiences know it’s an ad.
Paid social ads are the perfect complement to other forms of advertising (like Connected TV (CTV) or audio advertising). They allow you to tap into a large audience pool and are effective at every stage of the marketing funnel.
How many social media users are there in the USA?
7 in 10 Americans will log into a social media platform today, with the average user accessing nearly 7 social media platforms every month.
They also allow you to reach your audience across multiple devices, including smartphones and tablets, reinforcing your brand’s awareness and message.
Paid and organic social are different types of posts on social media.
Paid social refers to advertisements that brands pay for to reach a targeted audience on social media platforms. This strategy helps brands reach a highly interested audience who may not have seen the brand before, driving leads and conversions.
Organic social, on the other hand, consists of any content posted on social media for free. This includes updates, photos, videos, stories, and more, shared on a brand’s social media pages.
Unlike paid social, organic posts are shown to your followers and may reach their extended network through likes, shares, and comments. Algorithms may serve your posts to non-followers based on their interactions, but there’s no guarantee of reaching them.
Some social media channels like Instagram allow you to boost an organic post. You can pay to show your existing content to a wider audience beyond your followers. This can help expand your reach and increase brand awareness without the need to constantly create new dedicated advertising campaigns.
However, to create an effective boosted post, you need to identify which organic content performs well.
How does paid social complement an organic social strategy?
“An effective content strategy uses both paid and organic content to build trust, break into a variety of demographics, and establish consistency in the viewers’ minds. The more they see the product, the more likely they are to make a purchase over time.
Also, some social channels like Instagram allow you to boost an existing post. This is great because you can use the organic content you are already posting. However, in order for it to be effective, you need to identify which organic content performs well. Look for posts that have already garnered high engagement, such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks. These metrics indicate that the content resonates with your audience and has the potential to perform well with a broader audience.”
Using different types of paid social media ads allows brands to reach and engage their target audience in various ways, enhancing the overall effectiveness of their marketing strategy.
Review some examples of paid social media ads brands can use.
Image ads are one of the most common formats for paid social media advertising. They feature a single image accompanied by a caption or call-to-action (CTA). These ads are ideal for showcasing products, highlighting offers, or promoting brand messages.
An example of a Promoted LinkedIn ad on a desktop display.
Video ads allow brands to deliver engaging content through short clips or longer videos. These ads can be used to demonstrate product features, share customer testimonials, or tell a brand story. Video ads often capture attention more effectively than static images.
An example of a sponsored Instagram ad on a mobile device.
Carousel ads enable advertisers to display multiple images or videos within a single ad. Users can swipe through the carousel to view different content. This format is perfect for showcasing a range of products, detailing a step-by-step process, or telling a multi-part story.
An example of a carousel ad on a desktop display.
Story ads appear in the stories section of social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook (Meta). These full-screen vertical ads are often immersive and can include images, videos, and interactive elements like polls or swipe-up links. Story ads are great for capturing users’ attention in a casual browsing environment.
An example of an Instagram story ad on a mobile device.
Sponsored content blends seamlessly with the organic posts in users’ feeds, often appearing as a native part of the platform.
Influencer ads typically include a “sponsored” tag and are designed to look and feel like regular posts, making them less intrusive and more engaging.
An example of a sponsored TikTok influencer ad.
Dynamic ads automatically tailor ad content to individual users based on their interests and behaviors. These ads are particularly effective for retargeting, as they can show users products they’ve previously viewed or similar items that might interest them.
In this dynamic ad creative example, the ad images and promotions changed based on the audience’s weather.
What are the best platforms for social media advertising?
“The best platform is the one that yields the best results for your business, increasing the odds of engagement, conversions, and sales. Then, you can launch a paid social strategy that targets the right people at the right time.
When determining the best platform for your social media advertising, consider your campaign goals in addition to your target audience. If you want to target homebuyers (typically between the ages of 35-44), advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube makes sense.
Or, if you’re promoting beauty products for older women, your campaign goal might be to increase brand awareness and engagement, which is most likely to happen on Facebook and Instagram.”
Each social platform offers unique features and targeting options that can enhance your campaigns and deliver measurable results.
Explore some of the most effective social media platforms for running paid social media campaigns.
Facebook offers various ad formats for creative and engaging advertisements, including images, videos, carousels, and slideshows.
You can set a choice of six campaign objectives for your campaign, including:
Tips for Advertising on Facebook:
Instagram excels at creating visually appealing, immersive advertising campaigns. Ads can appear in feeds, Stories, Reels, the Explore page, and more, featuring images, videos, carousels, CTA buttons, and links to encourage user interaction.
With its robust shopping functionalities—Buy buttons, Instagram checkout, product tags, and shoppable posts—Instagram is a top platform for social shopping.
LinkedIn provides access to a professional user base of over 950 million, ideal for B2B marketing and targeting specific industries or job titles.
LinkedIn supports various content formats, including articles, videos, and SlideShare presentations, enabling businesses to share in-depth and informative content.
28% of TikTok users agree that TikTok inspired impulse purchases, more than any other platform. TikTok allows your brand to connect with a highly engaged younger audience and drive sales.
Influencer marketing is one of the most popular ways to advertise on TikTok.
Click to see the full TikTok-sponsored post.
YouTube, the second-largest search engine and third-most visited website, is ideal for general advertising. With various ad formats, such as skippable, non-skippable, and bumper ads, YouTube offers flexibility in reaching audiences.
Quality content on YouTube can also boost your organic SEO traffic by adding backlinks in your profile description.
Bellroy, a sustainable accessories retailer, grew sales with shoppable YouTube videos.
We’re committed to helping you achieve your paid social advertising goals. Whether you want more conversions, clicks, or views, we use data-driven insights and creative strategies to drive real results.
X provides feature-rich options for audience segmentation by keywords, interests, and more. Advertisers can create custom CRM lists for precise targeting. Ads can appear in search results, profiles, and timelines, matching readers’ interests. Brands can also promote trends to appear in the trending box.
X offers various ad formats, including image, video, text, and carousel ads. Advertisers can leverage tools like Amplify to promote content in relevant videos watched by their audience.
So you’ve created your first ad and are now wondering how to optimize it. Below are some strategies I’ve found helpful in my time working on social media campaigns.
With paid social, you want to spend your money on the people interested in your product and most likely to convert.
You first want to gather demographic information about your audience. Use audience insights from each existing social media account. With Facebook’s Audience Insights, you can see age and gender breakdowns, education levels, job titles, relationship statuses, and more.
KORTX Intelligence builds a detailed profile of your target audience using thousands of user attributes, such as their online behavior, preferences, and insights into their lives.
How does KORTX Intelligence help identify audiences for paid social advertising campaigns?
“Our KORTX Intelligence research provides a wealth of data points about how specific audience personas spend time on social media platforms and details about demographics, shopping habits, and even device usage. More often than not, we discover that these insights lead to new social media strategies and untapped opportunities. It’s important to look beyond Meta as the default option and really dig into where brands can impact all social platforms.”
Then, you can find out which social networks your audience prefers. Tools like Keyhole.co can help you analyze which platforms to use depending on your audience. Enter a hashtag, and Keyhole will provide demographic information about how various markets use social networks.
You can also analyze your competitor’s content strategy to inform your own. Tools like Buzzsumo’s Content Analysis tab will analyze the top shared content across social networks in your industry. Look for patterns and take notes. What content formats do these audiences prefer? What social channels work best for your competitors?
Based on your research, you should be able to narrow your target audience down to a specific demographic. From here, you can tailor your marketing efforts so your ad spend goes as far as possible.
When you’re getting started, look at what ads are running best. Researching competing ads, preferably direct competitors, can inspire your own paid social campaigns.
You can find past Facebook and Instagram advertisements through the Facebook Ad Library.
TikTok also has a Creative Center or Top Ads, so you can see the most successful ads on the platform, though you can’t search for specific businesses.
It may be tempting to check in on your ad after one day or a week and make hasty adjustments but paid social media strategies take time. Ad networks like Facebook can take at least a week to optimize your campaign.
Wait at least a month without interference, giving the ad network time to learn what’s working, what’s not, and how to adjust accordingly.
Platforms like Facebook offer Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO), which allows for testing multiple variations of copy, headlines, and visuals to optimize performance and automate the selection of the most effective combinations.
When you’re unsure which media or ad parts resonate with your audiences, dynamic creative will mix and match them in new ways to improve your ad performance.
Example: A clothing retailer can use dynamic ad creative with Facebook. Facebook will take the different combinations of product images, headlines, and CTAs and test them against the audience you set. Then, it will automatically select and display the winning variations for different audience segments, resulting in better goal outcomes.
An example of selecting multiple creative images for a campaign.
Ad platforms were built to help you optimize your ads, so let the ads platform do its thing while your campaign runs.
🤔 How often should you update or change your ads?
A general rule of thumb is to switch out creatives every 4-6 weeks based on their performance, avoiding unnecessary changes to highly successful ones while addressing underperforming ones earlier.
📚 Related article: What Is Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) & Why It Matters?
Learn how Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) can make your advertisements timely, efficient, and incredibly personalized.
It may be tempting to grab an image, jot down some copy, put it into a social ads platform, and let it do its thing, but you need to do so strategically.
Consider the goals of the campaign. Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, or generate conversions? Clearly defining your objectives will help shape your targeting, messaging, and overall campaign strategy.
It’s also important to be realistic about return on investment (ROI). Paid social advertising can yield impressive results, but it’s not an instant guarantee of success. It takes time to optimize campaigns, test different approaches, and fine-tune targeting to achieve optimal performance.
Set realistic expectations and understand that not every campaign will deliver immediate results.
📏 What metrics do you use to measure a paid social campaign?
Paid social advertising offers various ad objectives that cater to different campaign goals. Whether you aim to increase video views, drive traffic, or generate conversions, you can select the appropriate ad objective, such as cost per video view, cost per landing page view, or cost per conversion.
Don’t be afraid to break the mold and experiment with your paid social campaigns. Running campaigns takes time and offers a valuable learning experience to determine what strategies and approaches work best for your brand.
Let a campaign run for at least a month without making any major adjustments in the initial week (or even the first few days).
Even if things initially appear discouraging, resist the urge to intervene too soon and allow your campaign to gather valuable data and insights.
Whether it’s capturing the attention of Gen Z on Instagram or reaching older demographics on Facebook and LinkedIn, paid social advertising offers a versatile and impactful approach to connecting with consumers.
As social media continues to evolve, brands should consider adding a paid social media strategy to complement other tactics. A good strategy can help you reach audiences you’ve never seen before.
Lean on our team’s expertise to generate new business through your paid social strategy.
Josh Pheneger is an Account Strategist at KORTX. He likes to play golf, explore the city, and spend time in coffee shops.
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