Paid Media
During the early years of digital marketing, advertising on Google or on a social media platform like Facebook was anything but “traditional.” Now, Google and Meta are dominating paid media platforms. In fact, they have been leveraged so extensively over the years that they are now classified as the most popular online ad platforms.
Even small businesses are reported to spend around $1,000 to $10,000 on Google Ads. It’s not surprising that Google’s advertising revenue hit $56.3 billion in the second quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, Facebook’s ad revenue does not fall too far behind at $55.1 billion.
But with inflation a widespread concern, businesses are looking to stretch their reach without breaking the bank—and one way to do this is through diversifying their online ad spend.
Building brand awareness, establishing trust, and being top of mind are all too important in a highly competitive search and social media landscape. Nowadays, users are interacting with an average of 6.6 social media platforms on a monthly basis. Marketers are challenged to fight through the noise to connect with larger audiences while maintaining an ad frequency that is optimal for influencing customer decisions.
Diversifying online ad platforms helps businesses boost their reach and get the right frequency of exposure for ads. Focusing all of your efforts on a single marketing channel won’t cut it in 2023. Depending on one platform will leave you vulnerable should it undergo any major changes, restrictions, or other unforeseen issues, negatively impacting your business’s success. Not only will spreading your advertising across a variety of platforms mitigate any potential risks, it also ensures your ads reach more potential customers.
When evaluating the cost-effectiveness of pay-per-click (PPC) and paid social campaigns, one of the values that marketers look at is the average cost-per-click for each platform. These values typically take into account all industries.
The following is a breakdown of the average cost-per-click on the top paid ad platforms at the end of 2022:
What makes Google and Facebook advertising so appealing to marketers is they remain relatively more affordable than other platforms. However, the cost of the click and the size of the platform are not the only important factors to weigh.
Each of the above platforms has its own culture and demographic distribution. The cost-effectiveness of online ads needs to also be contextualized with factors such as:
Ultimately, advertising across multiple platforms provides you with more opportunities to collect data.
You’re limiting your ability to make informed, strategic decisions by only looking at data from a single source. Aggregating data from multiple channels offers a more accurate depiction of user behaviour and your audience’s personal preferences. These insights enable you to test out new strategies, design effective campaigns, and produce content that is relevant and tailored to each platform and its user base.
For marketers to determine the best mix of online advertising platforms to use, experimentation and using analytics is key. After zeroing in on the most promising online advertising platforms, marketers can run paid campaigns and compare the ROAS for each platform. Analyzing the results of your campaigns can provide you with key user insights that can inform any future paid advertising decisions.
We’d be remiss to not discuss the efficacy of paid advertising on the internet’s biggest disruptor in recent years.
Though TikTok is relatively new, it has shown rapid growth in recent years. Considering that TikTok users are 1.5 times more likely to purchase something they saw on the platform, its average cost-per-click ($1.00) is reasonable. Especially when taking into consideration that Facebook’s average cost-per-click is $0.97.
Right now TikTok’s paid ad formats lean towards authenticity and interactivity which blend with the user experience of the platform itself. This creates a more positive user perception because it aligns with the user experience (UX) principle of fluidity.
Marketers are encouraged to leverage a relatively new feature on TikTok called Custom Audiences that lets businesses retarget consumers who have already engaged with their business. As TikTok grows organically in the coming months, this will lead to an improvement in its ad offering and more options for e-commerce.
One way brands differentiate themselves in 2023 is by advertising to highly targeted, niche audiences through less conventional channels. We’re talking about thinking beyond Instagram, Facebook, or Google.
There are exciting opportunities for brands if they utilize contextual targeting on platforms like Quora, Reddit, or Spotify for brands is exciting. With this type of AI-powered targeting, brands can reach a hyper-targeted audience who are already interested in their product or service—more so than any other platform. Simply put: contextual targeting allows paid ads to be shown alongside content that is directly related to relevant topics.
Recent data shows that there are over 300 million people using Quora and 430 million people using Reddit on a monthly basis. With careful targeting and campaign execution, Reddit and Quora will be valuable and cost-effective online ad platforms for the right business. Spotify is relatively inexpensive and a great tool to build awareness by running ads across podcasts or genres relevant to your business. Finally, programmatic advertising is another option for brands. While it might be more expensive, you can start off with native ads and place your site on quality inventory.
2023 will require brands to continue to innovate and experiment with how they run their paid advertising campaigns. Sticking to what’s tried and tested won’t deliver the results that you’re used to. And as we head into a recession, it’s more important than ever to reach potential consumers in more unconventional ways.
