What are Paid Ads? 10 Reasons to Consider Paid Advertising
Are you tired of relying on organic traffic solely to grow your business? Have you considered using paid advertising to increase your reach and drive more sales?
Paid advertising, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes reach their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. In today’s digital age, it’s crucial for businesses to have a strong online presence. But with so much competition, it can be difficult to get noticed and attract new customers. This is where paid advertising comes in, offering businesses an opportunity to reach a wider audience and get their message across.
In this article, we’ll dive into the world of paid advertising and explore 10 reasons to consider paid advertising as part of your overall marketing strategy. From boosting brand awareness to increasing website traffic, paid advertising has the potential to provide significant benefits for your business. So, buckle up and get ready to discover the power of paid advertising! Before diving into the deep, let’s start with the basics.
Now, let’s look at what the article has to offer:
- A Bit of Paid Advertisement
- Insights of Paid Advertisement
- A Brief History of Paid Advertisement
- Major Types of Paid Ads
- Do Paid Ads Work?
- Most Popular Paid Ads Platforms
- 10 Reasons to Consider Paid Ads
- Boost brand awareness & brand loyalty
- Increased ROI with better reach
- Raw data on customer insights & purchasing patterns
- Stay competitive
- Organic reach on social media is down
- Specific targeting is available
- Remarketing or retargeting ads
- Rank now while you build your organic rankings
- Paid ads are faster
- Track your paid ads results
- Final Words
A Bit of Paid Advertisement
Paid advertisement has become a mainstream tool in the world of digital marketing, providing businesses with an opportunity to reach new customers and increase brand awareness. It refers to online advertising methods where the company attracts more consumers by paying for ad space on search engines, social media, and other websites.
When you can’t reach your sales goals with organic reach, this is the only technique to increase the traffic of your websites and convert them into potential leads or sales. To level up the game, you must work on targeted, result-driven advertising, which can generate more sales and expand your consumer base. One funny fact is that people only consider a company as a brand if they have a wide range of paid ads in the market. So, it also helps you to grow the company’s reputation and brand recognition.
Henry Ford once said, “The man who stops advertising to save money, is like the man who stops a clock to save time.”
So, in the area of digital marketing, it is self-evident for any company to not only rely on free market space but also to seek any paid media space for increased visibility, branding, and sales. According to a marketing survey, 81% of customers conduct internet research before buying, whereas 60% start with a search engine. So, let’s look at how they work and why they’re such a game changer for any business.
Insights of Paid Advertisement
- By the end of 2022, total digital paid ad expenditure had reached US $606 billion globally, and it is expected to cross one trillion US dollars by 2027 (Statista).
- With 2.89 billion users as of July 2022, Facebook was the most popular social network worldwide (Statista).
- According to Facebook’s financial data from 2021, advertisements accounted for an astounding 97.5% of the $118 billion it made (Oberlo)
- Over 28% of all internet users worldwide use Instagram, which has 1.21 billion active users monthly as of 2021 (Statista).
- More than 319 million people use Twitter (Statista)
- LinkedIn has over 774 million members and is the leading B2B display marketer in the United States, accounting for 32.3% of the market (Statista)
- TikTok users now spend more than $2.5 billion internationally, while the number of US users has surged by 72.3% to 23.7 million (Social Pilot)
- In the third quarter of 2022, Google’s ad revenue was $54.48 billion (Hubspot)
- Google estimates that companies profit $8 for every $1 spent on Google Ads (Marketing Evolution)
- According to a poll, 28% of internet users have discovered new products or services through paid advertisement (Marketing Evolution).
- 69% of all Google Ads clicks come from mobile devices (Statista).
- Pay-per-click marketing is cited as the primary business driver by 74% of companies (Statista).
- Paid search accounts for around 39% of a company’s marketing spending (Marketing Evolution).
- According to a survey in 2021, 58% of consumers make a purchase decision based on an online ad (Statista).
A Brief History of Paid Advertisement

Paid advertisement has been around for hundreds of years, but the ways and methods of doing it have changed. In ancient Egypt, merchants made posters and flyers out of papyrus to tell people about their products and services. This was the first kind of advertising that we know of. On the other hand, in ancient Rome, people sold their goods and services with hand-painted signs. However, from the 19th century, with the invention of the printing press, modern advertising began to take on a more formal structure. So, here’s a quick look at the history of paid advertising:
1994: The online issue of Wired magazine begins selling banner adverts to marketers for a fee.
1996: Double click (now a part of Google) starts gathering information about the effectiveness of paid advertisement. Moreover, enabling advertisers to adjust their advertisements mid-campaign. The popular payment technique was cost-per-impression (CPM).
1999: The first auction and bidding mechanism for sponsored search advertisements were developed by GoTo.com this year. It received criticism since it cluttered up SERPs, and people started seeing ads irrelevant to their searches.
2000: Google launches AdWords and immediately takes over the sponsored search industry.
2006: Facebook introduced the first social sponsored advertisements, utilizing its extensive data sets to provide highly focused ads.
Major Types of Paid Ads

Paid advertisement comes in various styles and formats in digital marketing. Now let’s discuss some of the major types of paid ads below.
I. Search ads
When a consumer inputs a query into a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing, search advertising appears in the search results. For example, the top search results for “best wordpress plugins” are sponsored search ads. We all know that Google dominates the search engine business, holding more than 92% of the overall market share.
Businesses bid on keywords they wish to rank and then pay for each click. Some keywords are highly competitive and expensive. To get the most out of search ads, marketers must target keywords with higher buyer interest, which means consumers are more likely to convert.
II. Display ads or banner ads
When we think of internet advertising, we automatically think of banner ads since they stick out. They are widespread and come in a range of shapes. These advertisements can be effective, but they tend to target users who do not actively shop for something new.
For instance, a person may be interested in a medical blog but not in an online marketing course. Display advertising is effective if you place it correctly. It can be paid on a pay-per-click basis or displayed for a certain period.
Text advertisements are the most common form on the main Google search page. These ads are often less expensive than display ads and usually target people for actively seeking something specific. They can be compelling but rely mainly on solid keyword research and A/B testing.
III. Social media ads
In the past few years, social media advertising has grown significantly. This advertising uses text, graphics, and video to target consumers according to their preferences, demographics, and geography. Depending on the business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok are all potential platforms to explore.
As I said, one of the keys to paid advertising is to be present where your target audience is. As they are likely to spend a lot of their time on social media, there is no better place to do it. Revenue from social media advertisements on both desktop and mobile platforms has increased significantly in recent years. To select the right social media platform, you must first understand your customer profile and ensure that your brand can create engaging, helpful content and connect with followers.
IV. Email sponsored ads
Email-sponsored advertising is one of the paid ads that appear in users’ inboxes without sending an email. For example, you may have observed ads on Gmail, such as two emails in the promotion areas with an ad tag. This email-based advertising is highly targeted depending on user activity. Email advertisements, unlike email marketing, may be distributed to people even if you don’t have their email addresses.
V. Google shopping ads
Google shopping ads are search advertisements, displayed when people search for keywords linked to a specific product and highly intend to buy them. This ad type is highly engaging. It displays additional relevant data to online customers, such as product titles, photos, pricing, special offers, seller information, availability, reviews, and more.
Similar to text advertising, Google Shopping ads display underneath the search bar, but since they aren’t simply texting, they get more user attention. Using product information from the feed, Google chooses which product to show in Shopping advertisements for a user query.
Although there is paid Shopping advertising, Google stated in 2020 that companies could list their items on Google Shopping for free if they formatted their product pages correctly. If they fail to do it, then each click will cost them money. However, the paid listings show at the top of Google Shopping and function similarly to Google Search, which combines organic and paid listings.
VI. Video/Instream ads
Video advertising appears at the beginning of videos, whereas Instream commercials appear in the middle of a video. Adults in the United States spend an average of 103 minutes a day watching online videos; thus, video ads can reach a large population. Customers respond more to video advertising than text, regardless of the medium, because video content utilizes visuals, music, and text to create a fully immersive experience.
Because of the increasing popularity of Instream video advertisements, several social media platforms have modified and expanded their video ad offerings and analytics. Thus bidding, view counting, and reporting may differ significantly between platforms.
To effectively assess and exploit video ad results, advertisers must understand how each platform counts and pay for video ad views, as they are not all the same. For example, watching a video for three seconds or more on Facebook and Instagram is considered a view. On the other hand, on YouTube advertising, however, seeing a video ad for 11-30 seconds is counted as a view.
VII. Native ads
Native advertising is similar to camouflaging in that you make your ad seem and feel like the rest of the content on a website or social media. Native advertising is paid adverts relevant to a website’s content. These advertisements do not interfere with the user experience, and people do not tune them out like other advertising. Native adverts resemble content rather than ads.
One thing to remember is that clickbait will not work here; native advertisements convey true tales that the audience needs to hear. Native advertising works so well because its offerings are not forceful or aggressive. Furthermore, the content of your native ad does not have to fit the appearance and feel of your website; instead, it should reflect the makeup of the publisher’s website.
The goal of native advertising is to engage your audience with exciting tales, ideas, and actual information. Businesses must be ethical to have the genuine impact they want. Your native advertisements must be labeled as sponsored or promoted to be authentic. Remember that native advertising allows you to disguise your advertisements as another piece of content.
VIII. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is evolving, with 80% of marketers claiming it is a successful ad approach and almost 90% claiming it provides the same or higher ROI than other marketing channels.
When looking for influencers, knowing what you want and, more importantly, what you can spend is critical. You have to be more specific about your target audience and spending budgets. Celebrity influencers demand high fees and generate significant cash, but they are costly. For many companies, it’s more cost-effective to seek micro influencers — individuals with 10,000 or fewer followers in your business sector.
However, before any firm uses these marketing strategies, they should be aware that if a social media influencer with whom they have been working becomes famous for the wrong reasons, the brand may also become famous negatively.
Influencer marketing is where social media influencers give endorsements and product placements to their followers. Influencers often fall into one of two categories: they have specialist knowledge about something linked to a company or social influence that allows them to connect with potential consumers effectively. Furthermore, influencers frequently create an amusing and instructive way to increase customer knowledge of a brand’s products or services.
Do Paid Ads Work?
You bet they do! According to the source’s most recent predictions, media owners’ global ad income in 2022 was 808 billion USD. This estimate increased over the previous year’s estimated 759 billion dollars. The market is estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2026. North America is likely to continue to be the most significant regional ad market, followed by Asia Pacific. Western Europe comes in third place, with ad expenditure that is less than half that of North America.
However, every marketer’s first choice is organic, inbound, and SEO, but they must acknowledge the power of paid. It’s a fast-growing, high-dollar industry, and if you want fast, measurable outcomes, it’s a surefire way to get them.
SEO remains our favorite, but the organic search cannot guarantee top placement on Google. And, because the top-ranked result is nearly always an ad placement and has close to an 8% click-through rate, you can’t beat the visibility and results that sponsored ads to provide.
Most Popular Paid Ads Platforms

Advertising has become essential to marketing strategy in the current digital era. As businesses try to get customers’ attention, paid advertising is becoming more popular and influential in reaching the right people. With so many platforms, figuring out which will give your business the best results can be challenging. Let’s discuss some of the popular paid ads platforms below:
I. Google ads
Google Ads is the paid advertisement platform provided by Google. It enables you to reach a large section of the population and target advertisements very precisely. Google Ads has various automated features and will take you through the ad creation process, making it an excellent place, to begin with, paid advertising. Google Ads allows you to build a wide range of ad types, including:
- Search ads
- Google shopping ads
- Mobile app ads
- Display ads
- YouTube ads
- Display ads
Google also provides various targeting choices, such as location, interests, buying intention, income, etc.
II. YouTube ads
YouTube advertising enables you to pay to reach YouTube users. While you may create YouTube advertisements through Google Ads, you can also go straight to YouTube. Because YouTube advertising needs you to create a channel, you’ll need to set up a business account if you still need to get one. Then you may make videos and publish ads on the site. YouTube ad formats include:
- Bumper ads
- Discover ads
- Non-video ads
- Skippable and non-skippable in-stream ads
III. Facebook ads
Facebook Ads enables you to reach millions of individuals who use the site daily. Its ads target system works on likes, demographics, and whether they follow your competitors. You may also establish “lookalike” audiences to target individuals similar to your existing customers. Facebook ad types include:
- Boosted posts
- Video ads
- Image ads
- Poll ads
- Carousel ads (multiple images)
- Slideshow ads (using short videos)
- Collection ads (for mobile devices to click through to a product or service page)
- Instant experience ads (users click to view a full-screen ad)
- Lead ads
- Dynamic ads
- Messenger ads
- Stories ads
- Augmented reality
As you can see, there are several Facebook ad types. You may also push your Facebook advertising to Instagram to reach a larger audience.
IV. LinkedIn ads
LinkedIn advertisements allow you to access a more professional audience, making them excellent for B2B firms or those targeting business users. LinkedIn advertising may reach people on mobile or desktop and can be targeted based on business title, industry, and other factors. LinkedIn advertisements include the following:
- Text ads
- Lead ads
- Sponsored content
- Dynamic ads
V. Instagram ads
Instagram is a photo-sharing app with one of the most extensive advertising options available. Businesses may use sponsored advertisements to promote Instagram stories, and videos to attract more followers. Other sorts of Instagram advertisements include:
- Image ads
- Carousel ads
- Collection ads
- Explore ads
- IGTV ads (long-form video)
- Reel ads (Short videos, similar to TikTok)
Instagram is a good platform for almost any business because of the variety of ad formats and targeting choices. Shoppable posts containing links to a purchase page are one of the most exciting ad solutions. Users may convert without ever leaving the app. When consumers click on a single item or the entire image, they are taken to the brand’s Instagram store, where they may purchase directly from Instagram.
VI. Twitter ads
Twitter advertisements may be a suitable fit for your marketing strategy if your target audience is between the ages of 25 and 34. Almost three-quarters of all Twitter users are between the ages of 25 and 34. Twitter provides numerous ad formats, including:
- Promoted advertisements with photos, video, carousel, moment, or text ads to achieve success
- Follower advertisements to enhance your follower count
- Twitter takeover, which positions your brand in the frontline of trending topics.
- Twitter Live ads promote your live videos.
Twitter advertising can also show genuine tweets in users’ timelines. Make your advertising more engaging by including polls, chat buttons, website links, apps, and branded notifications.
VII. Pinterest ads
If you work in the service or creative industries, Pinterest Ads could be worth a look. According to the survey, it is the 14th most popular social networking app in the world, ahead of both Twitter and Reddit. Pinterest ads are highly graphical and fit very well with organic content. Pinterest Ads come in a variety of formats, including:
- Standard pins
- Carousel ads
- Video pins
- Shopping pins (similar to Instagram’s shopping ads that link directly to products)
- App installs
Pinterest also provides flexible tools and customizable targeting choices, allowing companies to develop ads that push users to do a specific action, such as installing an app or increasing brand recognition.
VIII. TokTok for business
TikTok has a reputation for being for youngsters, but their viewership may be a little older than you think. While 25% of TikTok users are aged 10 to 19, over 43% are aged 20 to 39. TikTok advertising appears more natural, which can increase its effectiveness. TikTok is perfect for influencer marketing, but they also provide various direct ad formats, including:
- In-feed ads
- Top-view ads
- Brand takeovers
- Branded hashtags
- Branded effects
- Promoted
- Video ads
IX. Amazon ads
You must recognize Amazon if you offer physical goods. The leading e-commerce giant earns more than 380 billion USD yearly and is the largest e-retailer in the United States.
Remember that Amazon is much more than simply an online shopping site. They also provide a streaming service, web hosting, a music platform, and Alexa. It helps businesses to reach a broader audience. Ads on Amazon might have a more significant ROI since they target customers ready to buy. Other ad types available on Amazon include:
- Product ads
- Store ads (promote your Amazon store)
- Audio ads
- Video ads in streaming services
- Programmatic advertising
10 Reasons to Consider Paid Advertising
In today’s digital age, advertising has become essential to any business strategy. Social media and online marketing give firms several methods of reaching their audience. Organic reach and content marketing boost traffic and engagement over time, whereas paid advertisement helps firms reach their target audience rapidly. This article lists 10 reasons why businesses should use paid advertising. Whether you’re a small company owner or a marketing expert, this article will deliver practical insights into the benefits of paid advertising and why it should be a concern for your company.
I. Boost brand awareness and brand loyalty
Social media users, or practically everybody, see ads when they browse online for buying intention or causal search. Paid ads can build a presence and reach out to potential customers instantly, creating organic brand loyalty quicker. Conversely, the right audience is usually more willing to engage with brands they support. For example, they follow their favorite brands on social media for a better user experience.
So it is evident that any brand can create brand awareness and build brand loyalty by using paid and non-paid advertisement media. However, it is a fact that paid media can capture this goal far better and faster than free media. That’s why small to big companies spend millions to billions of dollars a year to prove that right.
II. Increased ROI with better reach
Every advertising media, from Google to Facebook, continuously invest and improve their advertising platforms for powerful audience targeting. The result? Helping brands who understand the gameplay create better brand visibility by boosting their sales.
In terms of dollars and cents, popular paid media can give any company faster sales in an easy, quick, and affordable manner in depth and breadth. From the investment perspective, it is a very effective mechanism for any company to evaluate their return on investment (ROI) on their marketing spending. In addition, paid ads have the highest reach among potential consumers compared to free ads.
III. Raw data on customer insights and purchasing patterns
Like most things, everything on the internet can and may be used to generate insights. Paid media adverts enable you to gather raw data on your customers’ purchasing preferences and trends. This insight allows you to target them more precisely to increase sales.
Marketers want consumer insights and buying patterns to develop better marketing and promotional strategies. The more information they have on their target consumer, the better they can brand and sell their products or services. That is why every firm uses sponsored ads to understand its customers better.
IV. Stay competitive
No company can dominate with free media advertisements in this highly competitive marketplace. I am not recommending that you avoid all accessible free advertising mediums. However, beyond a certain point of growth, any organization must rely on paid media advertising through Google or any other social media site. In today’s world, when social media platforms influence practically every part of a person’s life, from job to fitness, health to leisure, refusing to promote on social media may result in a loss of long-term business revenue.
Whether you want to drive engagement, improve website traffic, app use, or online sales, paid media advertising may help you do it all. Social media gives your company significantly more online visibility than organic postings alone. So, to compete, every organization must make sure they are visible to their potential customers.
V. Organic reach on social media is down
Organic reach on social media refers to the number of individuals who have viewed your content through unpaid distribution without you spending money to reach a specific audience.
Because of new analytics, most social media platforms have been seeing a decrease in organic reach over the past few years. Furthermore, it is now a pay-to-play model for brands or businesses. According to studies, the average reach of an organic Facebook Page post is 5.20%, which is very low. As a result, just one out of every 19 followers sees your non-promoted material.
So, the only way to bypass this system is to increase your sponsored social ad spend. You may use paid advertisement to reach a specific audience and use your content to boost your brand with precise targeting and generate more qualified leads. However, consider the value of organic marketing because a consistent and innovative organic approach is the foundation of every excellent paid ad campaign.
VI. Specific targeting is available
Paid ad targeting may be highly detailed, allowing you to reach people, who are interested in your brand. It also helps you to meet the demographics of your sales profiles and stay in the exact geographic location you want to target. Assume you own a restaurant and may target potential customers within a 2-3 mile radius of your shop. This targeting is not possible with organic SEO or social media. So, paid media is the only option here.
Analyze your audience’s insights across your digital platforms to identify common aspects such as keywords, geographic location, characteristics, job roles, interests, and common topics. All of this data may be used to improve your paid ad targeting and attract more quality leads and consumers.
VII. Remarketing or retargeting ads
According to Google Support, users browse websites six times on average before making a final purchase decision, and 75% of visitors who left shopping carts usually return to complete a transaction later on.
So, how can you re-engage your clients who have visited your website but have yet to purchase? The solution is remarketing or retargeting ads.
Remarketing and retargeting advertisements are two methods for targeting your audience. Retargeting ads target consumers based on their activity rather than demographic characteristics such as location, age, or income.
For example, If anyone purchases AirPods Pro from Apple’s website, they are retargeted on Instagram. I mean, they will see those relevant ads from Apple by adding small code on the user website to monitor their behavior, known as “cookies.” So retargeting advertising is targeted to people who have already visited your website. A cookie is a tiny file that is automatically kept on a person’s computer and is used to record preferences and other information.
According to a report, this is significant because just 2% of users of most websites become customers on their first visit. Retargeting ads assist you in converting the remaining 98% of your prospects. Furthermore, retargeted clients are three times more likely to click your ad than a cold prospect, and it may increase ad interaction by up to 400%.
VIII. Rank now while you build your organic rankings
Do you have a new business? Or a new website? Or an old website that does not rank organically on Google? If your website needs to rank on the first page of Google results, paid advertising allows you to place advertisements for keywords and attract high-quality visitors.
Organic search rankings take time and money but bring in high-quality traffic. While you’re establishing your content materials and working on your Google reviews for your Google My Business profile, consider sponsored advertisements to fill the gap.
Just be careful not to rely entirely on sponsored advertisements. Organic search rankings take time to establish. You should develop that capacity while running sponsored advertisements and keep your website independent of spending on sponsored ads.
IX. Paid ads are faster
If you want to launch your new product or service tomorrow and have everyone’s attention on it, there is just one option: paid advertisement. Unlike SEO, social media, and email marketing, sponsored advertising may reach your target audience as soon as you click “create ad.”
SEO and other advertising strategies are outstanding for long-term success, but paid advertisement can bring people sooner than expected. We know how SEO works, so ranking is a long game. Paid advertising, however, may jump-start your business quickly and effectively, allowing you to continue generating revenue while your SEO strategy takes off.
Consider it a powerful addition to SEO rather than a replacement for it. SEO will deliver the desired results tomorrow, but paid advertisement will help you jump-start your performance today.
X. Track your paid ads results
If you can’t observe how each advertisement is performing, you shouldn’t purchase paid advertising. The wonderful thing about online paid advertising is that you can track everything. When it comes to internet advertising, Google Analytics is an absolute requirement. This analytics program is free and straightforward to set up.
You should become familiar with Google Analytics Custom Campaigns once it is set up. These choices enable you to generate a unique URL for each ad, allowing you to track the overall performance of your ad. Using Google Analytics in this method will provide you with a single dashboard from which to compare all of your ad campaigns.
All other paid advertising media, like Google, utilize their analytics system, which is free when you purchase their packages. Everyone does their best to track your campaigns’ insights and outcomes. Facebook is the most popular social site for paid advertisement, giving beneficial information from insights to outcomes. It is up to marketers to analyze the data for decision-making and future steps in their marketing.
Final Words
Paid advertising is an essential component of any sales and marketing funnel. Marketers can choose from several options, platforms, formats, and campaign types, but it’s only possible to go through some channels. So, they must concentrate on one or two media to get the best results.
Paid advertisement is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Expect to see the results from paid ads in more than a week or two. Allow your advertising time to run and fine-tune your strategy for the most significant results. Collecting trends and data will give you a clearer view of which advertising actually converts.
Initiate with a small daily budget to evaluate how well your advertisements perform, then experiment with different wording, pictures, or videos to determine which ads get the best results. You’ll notice the power of paid advertisements in only a few weeks if you stay focused on your goals and start small.
I know — it’s a lot to take in. But with some research and planning, you can create a paid ad campaign that delivers measurable results. Because at the end of the day, all we want to know about our revenues and business growth.
Have any questions about paid advertising or want to share your own thoughts? Drop a comment, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
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