By David Tomas, on 17 March 2023
Social media ads are a versatile advertising option that allows you to build specific campaigns on different social media networks, allowing you to use their platforms and targeting options to show your ads to potential consumers. They are a great way to connect with your target audience, allowing you to offer highly personalized and relevant content. Social Media Ads can be incredibly profitable and versatile when used properly, and allow brands to meet different business goals at relatively low costs.
Meta (Facebook & Instagram), TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and Pinterest are some examples of Social Media platforms that allow you to run paid advertising and can be a great addition to your digital marketing campaigns.
What Platforms Can I Use?
So what is the best platform to invest in? While you may think the answer lies in knowing which social media platform has the largest user base, that's not necessarily it. The truth is that it depends on where your target audience spends the most time. When making your decision, you need to think about where you can find your audience on social media, what kind of campaign you're looking to create, and how you can optimize your ad investment.
Below is a summary of the different types of social media advertising options.
Social Ads on Meta: Meta (formerly known as Facebook) is the world’s largest social media platform, with one of the largest user bases. Although they are different platforms for the user, in terms of the advertiser's perspective, it allows you to run ads on both Facebook and Instagram from the same place (joint or separately, as well as Messenger and Audience Network), allowing you to reach out to a massive database with one single campaign. Its advertising platform is very visual and reliable, with a high-functioning algorithm offering multiple types of campaigns for almost any goal, and incredible segmentation options, from demographics to lookalike audiences.
Social Ads on X: X, formerly known as Twitter, lets advertisers create campaigns adapted to different objectives such as conversion, lead generation, and app installs. If you want to make the most of it, combine it with an artificial intelligence tool.
Social Ads on YouTube: Make the most out of video marketing on YouTube by telling your audience stories they'll connect with. It is a platform where users go to consume video content, and where they are used to longer content than on other platforms.
Social Ads on TikTok: TikTok advertising is an exciting option, and it's safe to say that the ads will be just as creative as the content on the platform and reach a large, well-segmented audience.
Social Ads on Pinterest: Pinterest brings a largely female audience to social media and is an absolute hotspot for topics like weddings, cooking, or fashion. This makes it very useful for advertisements in these areas and is a platform where users go to look for inspiration and ideas, with high levels of engagement.
Social Ads on LinkedIn: This social media platform has a large professional user base and offers an advertising solution for those looking to reach out to a corporate audience through B2B marketing. Although it can tend to be somewhat more expensive, it allows you to hyper-segment according to professionally oriented information, such as previous or current job titles, years of experience, companies, etc.
Before we delve into the various types and examples of social ads, let's consider what they are, how they are designed, and why they're so important in digital marketing today.
About 500 million Tweets are published per day. On Meta, over 350 million photos are uploaded a day and millions of shares occur in just a minute. Amidst this staggering amount of content, how can you make your advertising campaigns stand out on social media?
The look and feel of an ad, as well as what you're transmitting, will have a major impact on the success of your social ads, so it's important to nail the design and the content.
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
Seamless Integration with User Content
Social media ads are designed to blend seamlessly with the platform's organic content, making them less intrusive and more readily accepted by users. This integration encourages advertisers to create content that genuinely interests their audience, enhancing user experience even further.
Versatile Campaign Objectives
Social media platforms are equipped to support a wide range of marketing objectives. Whether your goal is to generate leads, increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or boost sales, social media advertising can be tailored to meet these needs effectively.
Precision Targeting
The extensive time users spend on social media platforms, coupled with the vast amount of information shared, provides advertisers with a rich database for targeted advertising. This enables precise segmentation, reaching out to audiences most likely to engage with your ads.
Customizable Ads
The diversity of ad formats on social media, including images, videos, stories, carousels, and shopping ads, allows for creative flexibility. This variety ensures that you can align your ads with your brand's aesthetic and messaging, making your content more relatable and engaging.
Enhanced Engagement
Social media naturally fosters interaction and engagement. Ads on these platforms can do more than just convey a message; they can encourage user interaction through likes, comments, and shares, amplifying your message's reach and impact.
Brand Development
The interactive nature of social media makes it an excellent venue for building and reinforcing brand identity and loyalty. Even if brand awareness is not your primary objective, the exposure and reach afforded by social media contribute significantly to brand recognition.
In-Depth Analytics
Access to comprehensive analytics and insights about ad performance is a significant advantage. Metrics on reach, engagement, and conversion rates provide valuable feedback, enabling data-driven decisions and campaign optimization, to continuously improve your campaign results.
Flexibility
The flexibility to quickly adapt your advertising strategy on social media (whether it's tweaking your ads according to the optimizations needed, adjusting your budget, or responding to emerging trends) ensures that your campaigns remain relevant and effective, maximizing your marketing investment.
4 Key Design Takeaways
When creating a social media campaign to achieve maximum visibility on Meta or Twitter, work with distinctive images, strong contrasts, and striking colors. These can stand out amongst the blue and white colors of the platforms themselves.
Don't overuse filters.
Make sure that all image elements are easily legible. Avoid overlapped logos and or text that covers important parts of the background image.
If you are offering discounts, it helps to include them in the image by using colors that are associated with sales, such as red for the previous price, and green for the reduced one.
If the objectives for your social ads campaigns are app installations, purchases, or registrations, it is important to use designs that are optimized for conversions.
Examples of Social Media Ads
Sephora and Meta
Multinational beauty retailer Sephora used a video ads strategy on social media to grab the public's attention. Videos are known to have a high engagement rate so, to capitalize on this, Sephora created a stunning campaign.
Its high production value and beautiful visuals led to great results for the brand. They saw a 41% increase in CTR and a 32% higher return than they had from previous campaigns.
Duolingo
Duolingo's recent ad campaign featuring the owl's "death" went viral due to its unexpected dark humor. In the ad, the iconic green owl, known as Duo, dramatically "dies" as a result of a user neglecting their language lessons. The exaggerated scenario and Duo's over-the-top reaction to being ignored made it both shocking and hilarious to viewers.
This campaign ties into Duolingo's playful, sassy brand voice, which often comes across as cheeky or sarcastic on social media. The brand has built a reputation for delivering iconic, witty responses to user comments—whether it's teasing users for not practicing their lessons or engaging with funny memes. People love the humor and personality Duolingo brings to its marketing, making the app feel more like a quirky companion than just a language-learning tool. This was the parting message written by the brand and one of many celebrity reactions to the campaign:
The company recently announced, however, that with help from its users' interactions, Duo may be able to come back to life. This incentives the users to spend more time on the app and boost engagement rates.
Examples of Cyberclick's Social Media Ads
Mistol: Visibility and Product Positioning
After launching Mistol All in One, Mistol partnered with Cyberclick to increase brand awareness and highlight the product's efficiency, convenience, and eco-friendly features in the Spanish market.
To achieve greater awareness, diffusion, and product positioning, we opted for a multichannel social ads strategy (on Meta and TikTok) paired with an influencer marketing strategy that showcased the product through engaging, food-related content. Influencers participated in cooking challenges featuring traditional Spanish dishes, demonstrating Mistol's cleaning power after preparing their meals.
In the social ads campaigns, we leveraged influencer-generated content to maximize engagement and resonance with the audience. This approach allowed potential consumers to see the product in action in an authentic and relatable way, reinforcing Mistol’s relevance in the culinary community.
The results were significant:
- +267% increase in views compared to the previous campaign
- 91% positive feedback regarding the new Mistol All in One product
- 218,000 interactions generated throughout the campaign
This campaign successfully strengthened Mistol’s brand positioning, improving its association with both dishwashing efficiency and the food-loving audience in Spain.
UOC: Consolidation, Brand Growth, and Lead Generation
The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is a pioneering e-learning university committed to driving individual and collective change by providing lifelong education. UOC aimed to increase brand awareness and positioning while also attracting prospective students through the use of valuable and engaging content.
In collaboration with Cyberclick, a dual strategy combining social ads and influencer marketing was implemented. For social ads, full-funnel paid campaigns were launched on Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok to maximize visibility, drive traffic, and generate quality leads for enrollment. The influencer marketing strategy focused on key platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch, with mid-tier influencers creating authentic content to connect with potential students. A standout partnership with influencer Juliana Canet helped reinforce UOC’s positioning, particularly among Catalan-speaking audiences.
The campaign achieved outstanding results:
- The content resonated strongly with potential students, significantly boosting brand visibility and positioning.
- High levels of user engagement and interest were recorded across platforms.
- While brand awareness was the primary goal, the campaign successfully generated valuable leads and enrollments for UOC.
This collaboration showcased the power of integrating influencer marketing and paid social strategies to effectively reach and engage a digital-first audience in the education sector.
