- Display Ads - image ads or banner ads
- Video ads
- Text ads
- Sponsorships & Product placements - including influencers
If you don’t fully understand the basics of paid social ads, you might view it as a waste of time or money. With paid social media, you can get your messaging straight to your target audience without figuring out a complex algorithm or competing with other businesses.
This year alone, companies in the US allocated $ 56.85 billion in paid social ads - a 16.2% increase from last year. This might be because consumers respond positively to paid social ads, with 49% of internet users saying they are more likely to buy products from brands whose ads they've seen on social media. You might be missing out on a lot by not understanding and giving paid social ads a shot.
Here's a guide that will help you understand the basics and benefits of paid social ads.
What are paid ads?
Paid ads are a method of displaying advertisements or marketing messages on social media platforms that aim to target a specific audience to generate leads and sales for your business. They can also be used for increasing brand awareness or consideration of your products. Every paid social media ad will have a “sponsored” or “promoted” tag near the post.
What do paid ads involve?
Using the ad tools available to you on social media channels, you can create, schedule and post targeted ads that you want to reach a specific market. With paid advertising, marketers pay the owner of the desired ad space in exchange for use of that space. This is often settled through a bidding process between marketers and the ad space owner. If your bid wins, the space is yours to advertise.
Different Types of Paid Ads
Buying paid ads is essentially buying a person’s attention. That attention is captured by a combination of where and how the ad is delivered. “Where” refers to the environment where the ad is served, and “how” is the type or format of the ad. The most common types of digital ads are as follows:
Facebook
Besides having a massive user base, Facebook's comprehensive Ads manager is a great reason to run your paid ads on the website. They offer campaign budget optimization, saved audiences, block lists, automated rules, and more. Facebook has streamlined the ad targeting process by launching Automated Ads. Brands simply have to input their campaign's objective and the platform will then personalize and manage the corresponding ads. Automated Ads will learn what worked best during your previous campaigns and make suggestions and improvements for your next paid ad campaigns.Instagram
Instagram is one of the leading social platforms, with 1.5 billion global users and US$47.6 billion in revenue in 2021. Think of all the possible ways to advertise on Instagram - photo ads, video ads, carousel ads and story ads. With a heavy emphasis on shopping through Instagram, brands have the opportunity to place a paid ad with a shoppable image on the platform.Twitter
With annual revenue of over US$5 billion in 2021 and 329 million users, Twitter is one of the best social networks to launch your campaign. If you run ads on Twitter, you will only be charged according to the ads' performances. Let's say your campaign on Twitter aims to get more followers, you will only pay for your ads when people actually follow your account. Twitter also offers other useful features to target your audiences, such as keyword targeting, tailored audience and Tweet engagement targeting.