Paid Social
Paid MediaAlso: Social Media Advertising · Social Ads
Quick definition
Paid social refers to advertising run on social media platforms, where you pay to reach users based on demographic, interest and behavioural data rather than search intent. Unlike search advertising, paid social interrupts users who are not actively looking for your product. Success depends heavily on creative quality and targeting precision rather than keyword relevance.
How it varies across Australia
Australian businesses that succeed with paid social typically have strong creative assets, clear audience segmentation and a structured retargeting layer. Those that struggle often run single-image ads with no variation, broad audiences and no measurement of post-click behaviour.
Explore benchmarks →The largest paid social platform by reach in Australia. Meta's ad platform uses its extensive behavioural and interest data to target users across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network. Strong for B2C, e-commerce and broad awareness.
The primary B2B paid social platform. Allows targeting by job title, seniority, industry, company size and LinkedIn-specific behaviours. Significantly higher CPMs than Meta but reaches decision-makers more precisely.
The fastest-growing paid social platform in Australia, particularly for audiences under 35. Requires native-style video content to avoid feeling like an ad. Highly effective for awareness and product discovery when creative is strong.
Prospecting reaches new audiences who have never interacted with your brand. Retargeting reaches people who have visited your site, engaged with your content or are on your customer list. Retargeting typically converts at higher rates and lower cost.
What it actually means
Paid social advertising works differently from paid search. In search, you reach people who are actively typing in a query. In social, you reach people who are scrolling through content with no immediate purchase intent. You are interrupting them, so the quality of the interruption matters enormously. Platforms like Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest sell access to their user data and attention. You define who you want to reach (by demographics, interests, behaviours and custom lists), design creative that stops the scroll and direct traffic to a landing page or conversion flow. The platform optimises delivery toward users most likely to take the action you are buying (clicks, purchases, leads, video views).
In paid social, the creative is the targeting. A great ad finds its audience. A mediocre ad burns through a great audience.
The Australian context
Australia's paid social landscape follows global platform trends but with some nuances. Facebook has an older skew compared to global averages, making it particularly effective for financial services, home improvement and health products targeting 35 to 60 year olds. TikTok's Australian user base is younger and highly engaged with lifestyle, beauty and entertainment content. LinkedIn is the primary B2B platform for Australian professional services, technology and government audiences. Pinterest has a significant Australian audience in home, fashion and food categories.
Where people get this wrong
Running campaigns without a retargeting layer is the most wasteful common mistake. Paying to drive traffic from prospecting and then not retargeting those visitors wastes most of the value built. The second mistake is measuring paid social by last-click attribution only. Paid social often influences purchases that happen days or weeks later via a different channel. Multi-touch or data-driven attribution gives a fairer picture of what social is actually contributing.
Related terms
Common questions
How much should I spend on paid social?
There is no universal answer. A meaningful test of a single audience and creative combination requires enough budget to generate statistical significance, which typically means at least a few hundred dollars per ad set per week. Many businesses see their first meaningful results with around $1,000 to $3,000 per month, enough to run structured tests. Below that, results are too noisy to learn from.
Is paid social better for B2B or B2C?
Meta and TikTok primarily suit B2C. LinkedIn is purpose-built for B2B. That said, B2B businesses often run remarkably effective awareness campaigns on Meta targeting professional interests and job titles. The platform matters less than whether you have defined your audience and have creative that speaks directly to their problems.
Does iOS 14 still affect paid social tracking?
Yes. Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, introduced with iOS 14.5, reduced the accuracy of pixel-based tracking for Meta Ads. Implementing the Meta Conversions API (server-side tracking) recovers some of the lost signal. GA4 with server-side tagging via a tool like Stape further improves attribution accuracy.
What creative formats work best?
On Meta and TikTok, short-form video (15 to 30 seconds) with a clear hook in the first two seconds consistently outperforms static images. User-generated content (UGC) style videos that look organic rather than produced tend to perform particularly well because they blend into the feed. On LinkedIn, single image ads with direct, benefit-led headlines tend to outperform video for lead generation.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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