With growing internet penetration rates, ad spending has also gone up significantly, and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) has actually kept up pace with rising ad spending — primarily due to significant expansion in market size.
However, only looking at internet accessibility paints an incomplete picture. The devil and the profits are in the details. Not just the internet, but high-speed internet has become more accessible than ever.
While paid search ads remain dominant, the availability of high-speed and economical internet access has skyrocketed the popularity of social ads, and not without good reason. This includes ads placed on social media and influencer marketing.
But how do you figure out which one works best for your use case? This article provides a detailed overview of both to help you determine where and how much your ad dollars should go.
Understanding Paid Search » Benefits & Issues
Paid search is a marketing strategy in which advertisers pay search engines for ad placement on SERPs. These are also called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads.
Paid search helps to understand and leverage customer behavior by tracking engagement from click-through to final sale.
There are three main types of paid search ads:
- Local ads (showing business details near the location of the user)
- Text ads (appearing at SERP with URLs and copy)
- Shopping ads (featuring product images and purchase info)
Ad position on the SERP is influenced by several factors, such as bid amount, ad and landing page quality, keyword popularity, search context, and ad extensions. Higher bids and better ad quality improve placement and ROI.
Benefits of Paid Search Ads
Paid search offers numerous advantages for businesses, such as:
- Precise Targeting: Reaches a very specific audience and retargets individuals who previously visited the site.
- Increased Website Traffic: Effective paid ads capture the attention of the target audience, resulting in more traffic to your website.
- Quick Setup: Ads can be set up in under an hour and immediately appear in search results.
- Geotargeting: You can advertise to target users in specific geographical areas.
- Immediate Results: Paid search ads provide faster outcomes compared to traditional organic search methods.
- Conversion Tracking & Analytics: With paid search ads, you can monitor performance in real-time and gather detailed user engagement data.
- Budget Control: Paid search ads enable you to tailor campaigns based on budget, ensuring cost efficiency and maximizing ROI.
Downsides of Paid Search Ads
Paid search offers many benefits, but it’s also important to be aware of its drawbacks.
- High Competition: Certain keywords can be highly competitive, significantly driving up the cost-per-click.
- Limited Ad Formats: Most paid search ads are text-based. While product listing and display ads can include images, options are limited compared to other ad formats.
- Trust Issues: Users often trust organic search results more than paid ads, knowing that paid placements are bought rather than earned.
- Comparison Risks: The nature of search engines means the ads are often placed side-by-side with competitors, making it easy for users to shop around.
- Budget Constraints: The ad disappears from search results once the budget is exhausted, halting visibility immediately.
- Wasted Spend: Ineffective audience targeting, poor keyword selection, and inadequate goal tracking can lead to wasted marketing budgets.
- Lack of Viral Potential: Text-based ads lack the viral quality that social media ads benefit from, limiting their potential for organic sharing.
Common Issues Brands Face with Paid Search Ads
Businesses often experience certain issues with paid search campaigns. Some common issues include:
- Higher Cost: Popular keywords might have high cost-per-click in competitive sectors. Therefore, small businesses may find it costly to compete.
- Click Fraud: This involves rivals or automated bots clicking on your adverts, wasting ad money without any real customer interaction.
- Repetitive: The repeated appearance of the same advertisements might cause the audience to become less engaged, and they might begin to ignore or skip over them.
Consistent Monitoring: Running a good paid search campaign requires constant optimization. This includes everything from keyword research to bid management and performance analysis, which may become time-consuming and difficult for companies without internal knowledge.
Industries That Excel in Paid Search Ads
Despite the challenges, some industries benefit more from paid ad campaigns than others. Some examples are:
- E-commerce: Ecommerce companies benefit from sponsored search because users search with high purchase intent (e.g., “buy wireless headphones” or “best running shoes”). This makes paid search ads effective for sales and conversions.
- Healthcare: Patients often search for healthcare services online. Some examples of these searches are “pediatric dentist near me” and “what’s the best skincare for acne.”
- Law: Lawyers can use sponsored searches to target legal need based search terms such as “divorce lawyer in New York” or “personal injury attorney.” These ads are required for lead generation in a competitive industry where customers need rapid help.
- Real Estate: Real estate is another industry where customers generally shop with a purchase intent, making paid search ads extremely effective.
- Travel: Sponsored searches for terms like “cheap flights to Paris” and “luxury hotels in the Maldives” benefit from high purchase intent, similar to e-commerce companies.
Understanding Paid Social » Benefits & Issues
Paid social advertising involves placing ads on social media platforms to target specific audiences based on their interests, behavior, demographics, and even recent life events.
These ads can appear in various formats on different social media platforms. They may be sponsored posts, stories, or video ads. Social advertising works very well in building general brand awareness and increasing engagement.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn offer detailed targeting options based on user behavior and demographics.
For example, a fashion retailer might use sponsored posts on Instagram to target users interested in the latest trends, while a B2B company could leverage LinkedIn ads to reach industry professionals.
Benefits of Paid Social Ads
Some benefits that paid social ads provide include:
- Interest Generation: Paid social ads excel at creating awareness by reaching users who fit your target demographic. The aim is to capture their attention, drive engagement, and convert them into clients.
- Increased Engagement: These ads allow you to connect with your target audience across various social media platforms, resulting in better engagement.
- Advanced Targeting: Social platforms offer an array of targeting options, such as custom audiences, retargeting, and lookalike audiences, which enhances advertising efficiency and results.
Downsides of Paid Social Ads
There are a few drawbacks of paid social ads as well. These include:
- Unpredictable ROI: Unlike paid search, where users have high intent, return on investment can be less predictable with paid social ads. Not all users who come across your ad are looking to buy; they could just be casually scrolling through their feeds.
- Distractions: Social media is a beehive of various genres and content formats, all scrambling for the user’s attention. This may reduce engagement with ads, as users can get distracted by other posts or notifications, thereby losing track of the advert.
- Higher Production Costs: Advertisements on social media need to be highly creative and visually attractive to stand out. This can raise production costs. For example, a compelling video ad would need professional production, editing, and design work.
Common Issues Brands Face with Paid Social Ads
Some common problems that brands may experience with paid social ads are:
- Ad Fatigue: The more your ad is shown to social media users, the higher the number of times people view it. This may, at times, cause what is termed as ad fatigue. In other words, the audience gradually becomes less responsive to your ads.
- Lower Purchase Intent: People on social media are often in a mode of discovery and not necessarily looking for products, which can lead to lower conversion rates than those on paid searches.
- Algorithm Changes: Social media platforms’ algorithms, which are updated frequently, can significantly affect ad performance. You must continuously adjust your strategies to stay on top.
- Privacy Concerns: Due to increasing data privacy concerns, some operating systems and platforms have started limiting how user data can be used for ad targeting. This reduces the effectiveness of targeting strategies based on detailed user data.
Industries That Excel in Paid Social Ads
Certain businesses naturally generate more effective results with social media ads. Some of these are:
- Fashion and Beauty: Instagram and Pinterest are two platforms populated by fashion-conscious individuals.
They have one thing in common: an interest in trends, styles, and aesthetics. Fashion brands use this opportunity by weaving a solid brand identity here. - Entertainment: Streaming services, movie releases, and gaming companies use video ads and interactive content to drive subscriptions or ticket sales by engaging users.
A popular streaming platform advertising an upcoming series through small teasers can generate buzz and get immediate engagement on social media. - Consumer Goods: Snack and home goods brands tend to find success with paid social ads by developing content that feels appropriate to the target audience and is also highly shareable.
For example, a campaign where a popular soft drink brand encourages users to share their experiences with the product can be highly effective.
Paid Search vs Paid Social: Key Differences
When it comes to digital advertising, paid search or paid social is a common dilemma for many businesses.
Both have their unique applications and can drive significant traffic and conversions. However, knowing the subtle differences is critical when deciding where to invest your ad budget.
| Attribute | Paid Search | Paid Social |
| Target Audience | Active users seeking information, products, or services with high purchase intent. | Social media accounts based on interests, behaviors, demographics, and interactions along with search queries. |
| Ad Formats and Creative Options | Text with scant opportunity for visual creativity. Main formats include search ads, PLAs (product listing ads), and display ads. | Formats span from static images and carousels to video content and interactive stories. |
| Bidding Strategies and Cost Structures | Pay-per-click system where advertisers place bids on keywords. The cost is dependent on the competition for the keyword, ad relevance, and quality score factors. | More bidding choices are available, including CPC, CPM, CPA, and CPV for video ads. Advertisers can select the bidding model that best suits their campaigns. |
| Measurement and Attribution | It can get complicated because of multiple touchpoints. Social ads often work in the awareness and consideration part of the funnel. Therefore, multi-attribution models are used to allocate credit across all touchpoints. | Can get complicated because of multiple touchpoints. Social ads often work in the awareness and consideration part of the funnel. Therefore, multi-attribution models are used to allocate credit across all touchpoints. |
When to Use Paid Search and When to Use Paid Social
The choice between paid search and paid social depends on your unique marketing goals, target audience, and type of business. Here’s when to deploy each:
When to Use Paid Search
- High Purchase Intent: Use paid search when targeting users with high purchase intent. This is ideal for direct response campaigns where immediate conversions are the goal.
For example, a company launching a new line of home appliances can use paid search to capture users searching for “best smart refrigerators,” driving immediate sales. - Local Searches: Paid search can also be particularly effective for local businesses. This involves targeting customers in a nearby area actively searching for solutions. For instance, a new cafe could use keywords such as “best coffee shop in Albuquerque” or “best hot chocolate near me.”
- Niche Markets: For businesses in ultra-specialized markets with their own set of search terms, paid search can effectively reach a small but highly targeted audience.
A company selling specialized medical equipment can use paid search to target terms like “buy MRI machines” to find hospitals and clinics looking for their services.
When to Use Paid Social
- Brand Awareness and Engagement: You can use paid social ads when building brand awareness and engaging prospects.
For example, a new fashion brand can use Instagram ads to show their latest collection, reaching users who follow fashion trends but are not actively looking to buy. - Audience Targeting: Paid social ads can be used to set up highly specific targeting by demographics or interest.
For example, a travel agency can use Facebook ads to target users who are interested in travel and adventure. - Content Promotion: Use paid social media to build brand authority through content marketing.
For example, a tech company launching a new software product can drive traffic with sponsored content on LinkedIn.
Wrapping It Up: Choose Your Ad-venture Wisely
In digital marketing, a careful balance between paid search and paid social is essential. Understanding and deploying these correctly is your ticket to advertising success.
Paid search can be envisaged as a reliable compass leading potential customers to what they are seeking.
On the other side, paid social teems with life like an interesting map, inviting users to interact with your brand’s story through attractive visual content and discover something new they might want on their journey.
Paid ads are a necessity in digital marketing, and exclusively going for one option limits the scope of your marketing campaigns to certain parts of the funnel. The real magic happens when you can blend these strategies, creating a comprehensive approach to meeting users at every stage of their journey.
Ready to take your digital marketing game to the next level with paid ads? Learn how to integrate paid search and paid social — resulting in an unbeatable strategy! Connect with Improtics and start your path to digital mastery today!
