What is paid social
Paid social is a digital marketing channel that deploys paid for or sponsored ads through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and many more. The ad usually takes the form of an image, video or carousel to promote a brand’s messaging or offer. Unlike social media marketing, sometimes referred to as organic social media, paid social has a similar commercial and bidding model to display. Platforms like Facebook and TikTok require brands to bid on keywords and audiences, using a CPC or CPM cost model to determine the awarding ad space.
Paid social is often a strategy that is managed by agencies or internal brand teams, though with the help of Awin’s MasterTag, paid social technology providers can enable enhanced campaign performance and optimizations all while operating on a CPA cost model.
There are quite a few different social media platforms that offer brands different opportunities and audiences. LinkedIn ad campaigns are likely more relevant for B2B brands who want to sell products or services to businesses. Instagram and TikTok’s users skew more towards Gen Z and millennials, with both platforms being used as a method of product discovery, perfect for the retail space.
Other terms associated with paid social:
Paid social media marketing
Sponsored content
Social media advertising
Native advertising
Paid media
The purpose of paid social solution
Like display and paid search, paid social offers brands an exceptional way to target specific audiences, demographics and regions compared to other digital marketing channels. The channel offers a way for brands to increase their brand awareness and reach new audiences within those social platforms, audiences they typically would not be able to reach otherwise.
Paid social campaigns also offer a way of driving increased impressions, views, clicks and traffic to a brand’s website with fairly quick turnaround. This is great for brands looking to promote a hot offer, a new product launch or increase site visits during a key sale period.
A paid social technology partner offers campaign management and industry expertise to drive results for brands through the affiliate channel. The key benefit being use of JavaScript tags to improve performance, track campaign performance and optimize key performance indicators through a CPA cost model typically found within the affiliate channel. This means results will be more optimized towards conversions or leads as opposed to purely driving results on upper-funnel metrics like impressions and views.
Additional examples of paid social solution:
Photo and image ads
Video ads
Native ads
Carousel ads
Story ads
Influencer ads
How does this solution work and what information does it leverage
This solution uses JavaScript tags to enable the paid social solution on the advertiser’s website. The tag is used on the brand website to help with campaign optimization and conversion tracking. The tags can be deployed as a plugin through a brand’s existing Awin MasterTag. This functionality allows brands to deploy solutions without needing to involve their internal technical teams, saving time and resources.
The Awin Advertiser MasterTag should be unconditionally appended to every page on the site, including the confirmation page, but excluding any page that displays or processes payment information. Once deployed through the MasterTag, paid social partners will have access to the needed website data to properly load their script and deploy the solution on the brand’s behalf.
Some partners may require tags outside of the Awin MasterTag to enable full functionality of the paid social campaign
Common data points used by paid social solutions include:
Traffic and URL data
Conversion data
Benefits of this solution
Granular targeting capabilities
Increased impressions, views and traffic
New revenue stream with a ROAS effective CPA cost model
Reach new customers and audiences
Examples of the solution in action
