Search & social · also called social advertising, social ads
Paid social
Paid social is advertising on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest and X, where ads appear in feeds, stories and short videos.
Paid social means paying a social platform to put your message in front of its users, as opposed to "organic" posts that rely on followers and sharing. Ads appear as sponsored posts, stories, short videos and messages, and are bought through each platform's self-serve platform tools.
Social platforms are walled gardens: they use logged-in first-party data about interests and behaviour for targeting, run their own auctions, and report their own results. Their algorithms increasingly automate the whole campaign (audience, placements, creative) with products such as Meta's Advantage+. Measurement relies on pixels, conversions APIs and platform lift tests, since cross-site tracking has become harder after App Tracking Transparency.
Paid social can deliver huge reach and efficient CPA, but advertisers have limited transparency into placements and must trust platform reporting. It overlaps with influencer marketing when brands pay to boost creators' posts. Social ad fraud tends to look different from open-web fraud: fake accounts, fake engagement and scam advertisers rather than spoofed domains.
Think of it like this
Paid social is like paying a popular café to hand your leaflet to the customers most likely to be interested, based on what they have ordered before.
An example
A skincare brand spends US$50,000 on Instagram and TikTok ads, reaching 3 million people and driving 2,000 purchases at a US$25 CPA according to platform reporting.
Related terms
Walled garden
A walled garden is a large platform, such as Google, Meta, Amazon or TikTok, that controls its own users, data, ad sales and measurement inside a closed ecosystem.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is paying or partnering with social media creators to promote products to their followers through posts, videos or livestreams, which must be disclosed as advertising.
Lookalike audience
A lookalike audience is a group of new people who statistically resemble an advertiser's existing customers or best users, found by a model to extend reach beyond known contacts.
Conversions API (server-side tracking)
A conversions API sends conversion events, such as purchases or sign-ups, directly from an advertiser's server to an ad platform, instead of relying only on browser pixels.
Self-serve platform
A self-serve platform is an ad buying or selling tool that customers operate themselves through a web interface or API, without the vendor's staff running campaigns for them.