Where Should We Advertise in 2024? A Marketer’s Guide to the Best Ad Channels for Any Campaign
As a marketing agency that offers both strategic consulting and full-service ad management, we get asked this question all the time - “Where should we invest our ad dollars?”
There are so many digital ad channel options to choose from (Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Hulu, MNTN, Spotify, Microsoft/Bing, Twitter, and more), many businesses struggle to decide which one might bring the best ROI.
How do we answer this question?
Each ad channel has its own unique strengths, so our answer changes in every situation. Typically, during a short exploratory meeting with a new partner, we ask a series of questions that help us refine our recommendations.
Here are 6 of the questions we usually ask:
What is your ad budget?
What are your goals?
What is your price point?
Tell us more about the nuances of your market
Tell us more about your competition
What marketing assets do you have?
By the time these 6 questions are answered, our team has enough context to make an informed recommendation for which ad channel(s) will produce the best results. Since we invest millions of dollars in ads each year for our partners, we can draw from our experience in each ad platform to make a confident proposal tailored to their unique situation.
We can’t duplicate the experience of a robust back-and-forth conversation in an article like this, but we’ve done our best to provide guidance here.
Although there are nuances that won’t be accounted for in the following recommendations, here are our basic tips for the best ad channels based on the variables contained within each of these 6 questions.
Question 1: What is your ad budget?
Why do we ask this first? Because, A) Some ad channels require a minimum ad spend, B) Most ad channels perform best when a certain investment threshold is made within them, and C) The more you spend in an ad channel, the more data will be collected for machine learning and manual fine-tuning.
If you have a $1,000/month ad budget, you’ll get better results by putting all of it in one ad channel so it can serve enough impressions to exit the learning phase, benefit from the ad platform’s algorithms, and then it can be optimized manually based on early results.
Generally speaking, if you have less than $2,500/month to work with, we will likely steer you towards just one or two ad channels. But if you have $25,000/month or more to invest, we’d recommend a strategy that leverages the strengths of up to 5 ad channels.
Knowing your ad budget will at least narrow down the number of ad channels we’ll recommend using, but that figure alone doesn’t give us enough context to identify which particular ad channel(s) to incorporate. The 2nd question, however, brings the picture into more focus.
Question 2: What are your goals?
There are as many potential marketing goals as there are ad channels, but your specific objective(s) can help narrow down the best ad platforms for your campaign.
In the list of goals below, we’ve included the top ad channels for each one. Again, there are nuances that might change these recommendations, but without knowing more specifics, these are our best tips.
Brand awareness
If you’re launching a new brand or if your existing brand needs a stronger digital presence, there are a few ad channels that are most effective at getting impressions and clicks at the lowest cost. This exposure will not necessarily always be with the most qualified audiences, but when it comes to building a new brand efficiently, these channels are hard to beat:
Facebook Ads: Campaigns with a reach, traffic, or video ThruPlay objective can deliver relatively low-cost impressions. You can also use a Facebook follower campaign objective to efficiently increase your brand’s social following.
Google Display Ads: As long as you have strong creative assets to use in your ads and marketing copy that is concise, clear, and compelling, Google Display can deliver some of the lowest CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) and CPCs (cost per click).
Pinterest Ads: If you have strong content on your site and creative assets formatted for Pinterest, you can find some of the lowest CPM and cost per video view within this ad channel.
Spotify Ads: This platform has a highly engaged audience with the longest session duration among the lot. Keep in mind that most listeners are not able to click on the ads because they’re driving or multi-tasking, but if brand awareness is your goal, these ads can make a lasting impression on those who hear them.
Lead-generation
Facebook Ads: Although many marketers complain about recent changes within Facebook’s ad platform, it remains unparalleled in its ability to generate leads at the lowest cost. Qualified leads can be gained by ads that promote giveaways of free, valuable content like eBooks, live webinars, virtual events, or various pdf downloads.
Google Search Ads: Three factors need to be involved to successfully leverage Google Search Ads in a lead-gen strategy: 1) There is valuable content on your site in the form of blog posts, articles, or podcast episodes, 2) That content aligns with relevant, high-volume search terms which have low cost per click estimates, and 3) You have a pop-up offer on those landing pages with an enticing offer worth exchanging an email address for.
Pinterest Ads: Pinterest is a powerful search engine and content marketing channel and their ad platform can be effective for many market sectors. As long as the same 3 factors mentioned above under Google Search Ads are true, this channel might make our shortlist of recommendations.
Event promotion
Facebook Ads: This is another marketing objective where Facebook is currently unparalleled. Whether you are promoting an in-person or virtual event, Facebook Ads usually have the lowest cost per registration. Event Ads were recently overhauled, so make sure you’re up to speed on the new steps and limitations for setup.
YouTube Ads: If your event is a concert (live or virtual), and the artists have a strong following on YouTube, this can be an effective channel for raising awareness and securing registrations.
Fundraising
Facebook Ads: In most cases, Facebook Ads outperform all other ad channels when it comes to acquiring new donors or prompting repeat donations from current donors. The strength of Facebook’s platform for fundraising is much greater when you have a large current following to use for retargeting and lookalike audiences.
Google Display & Native Retargeting Ads: If you have thousands of current donor emails and are not blocked from using those lists in retargeting and Similar Audience targeting, it can be effective to use Google Display and/or native retargeting (i.e., StackAdapt, Outbrain) for fundraising. We hesitated to include this option here because these channels don’t usually compare to retargeting the same audiences within Facebook, but if you have a large enough budget, it helps to have a multi-channel approach where your audience is intercepted in a variety of places.
Job postings
Facebook Ads: Employment ad objectives in Facebook have some restrictions and limitations, but they remain the most effective ad channel for recruiting new talent.
LinkedIn Ads: The ad platform for LinkedIn isn’t as user-friendly as most marketers would like and since it is also one of the most expensive for CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click), and CPA (cost per acquisition), we rarely recommend it. If it was between Facebook and LinkedIn for a job posting, we’d go with Facebook. But if you have the budget to do both, since LinkedIn is the most natural platform for job-related content, it would be worth investing some of your ad budget there.
Sales
Even though the goal most marketers have in mind for their campaign is sales-related (increasing revenue and market share), we deliberately saved this goal for last, because it is a segue to the 3rd question below.
Question 3: What is your price point?
The answer to which ad channel(s) you should invest in with a sales objective in mind will vary depending on the price point for your product or service. Some ad platforms are much more effective at low price point categories and others are better at promoting higher-priced products or services.
Low Price points
For the sake of this article, we’ll define low price points as one-off sales (not recurring revenue) where the retail price is less than $15 (also referred to as impulse-buy price points).
Facebook Ads: Facebook remains a strong ad channel for promoting products that are at impulse-buy price points (under $15). The CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click) can be hard to beat, especially when your products are available for purchase within Facebook via a catalog and store. The contained user experience for purchasing within the app can result in healthy conversion rates.
Amazon Ads: Since Amazon Ads are at the point of sale, the traffic you’re intercepting there is in a buying mindset, and they are searching for products like yours, this ad channel has quickly become the go-to platform for many digital marketers. That means competition is strong and CPC (cost per click) can be high, making it difficult to recoup your CPC if the retail price is under $15. It is possible, especially in categories where your competition hasn’t figured out or prioritized Amazon as an ad channel yet, but the ACOS (advertising cost of sale) will be higher than what you’d see for products over $15.
High price points
For the purpose of this article, in addition to defining “high price points” as products over $15, we also recommend including lifetime value into the equation. If the initial purchase is under $15, but it is a subscription service with recurring monthly revenue or if you have success with repeat business and have a high lifetime value per customer, the ad channels below are recommended.
Amazon Ads: If your products are over $15 and they are available for purchase on Amazon (as a vendor, seller, or via KDP), our top recommendation is usually Amazon Ads. They intercept customers who are in a buying mindset and are searching for products like yours. And with the trust that customers have in Amazon’s customer service, shipping speed, and return policy, the conversion rate is typically higher than any other ad platform. For higher price point products, Amazon’s CPM (cost per thousand impressions), ROAS (return on ad spend), and ACOS (advertising cost of sale) are hard to beat.
Google Shopping Ads: If direct sales are a priority and your products or services align with high-volume search terms, Google Shopping Ads are highly recommended. They hold the most prominent real estate in search results pages (at the top of the page or in the top right side), so they are often preferred over Google Search Ads which usually appear further down the page.
Facebook Ads: Even though this ad channel excels at impulse buy price points, don’t write it off for high price point marketing, especially if you, A) Have an existing audience with which you can retarget and create Lookalike audiences, and B) Have your products available for purchase in a Facebook catalog and store.
Google Search Ads: Even though Google Shopping Ads often push Google Search Ads further down the fold on search results pages, they are still highly effective and when structured properly with extensions and callouts, the links in your Google Search Ad can guide customers straight to the products they’re looking for.
Note: If your budget is large enough (i.e., over $25,000/month), it is often recommended to leverage all 4 of the ad channels above in your marketing plan.
Question 4: Tell us more about the nuances of your market
There are other factors that impact our ad channel recommendations, such as the nuances of your particular market.
Are you a nonprofit?
If you’re a nonprofit, it’s hard to compete with free, so before paying to promote your mission via standard paid ads, we often recommend that you first take advantage of the $10,000/month in funds available via Google Grant Ads and the $3,000/month available via Microsoft/Bing Grant Ads.
Are you a local service?
If you are in the service industry and want to reach local customers searching for what you offer, Google’s Local Service Ads (LSA) are a good option to consider. They appear prominently at the top of search results pages just like Google Shopping Ads but for local, service-related searches.
Not all services are listed as an option, but if yours is currently included, this is a strong place to start advertising.
If you have a large enough budget, we recommend pairing this with a geotargeted Google Search Ad which offers more real estate on the search results page to say more about your brand’s story and why they should choose you over the competition.
Question 5: Tell us more about the competition
Do your competitors have the advantage of being first-to-market? Does their brand have a more loyal following? Are they investing heavily in ads in a particular channel?
Your answers to these kinds of questions about the competition will help you choose the best ad channel(s) for your campaign.
For example, if your brand isn’t as strong as the competition, brand awareness might be the best goal for your next ad investment and the ad channels listed under Brand Awareness in Question 2 would make the most sense.
If your competition is investing heavily in advertising, try to find their gaps and invest there. This could mean avoiding an entire ad channel that they’re obsessing over or it could mean building a campaign that works in their blind spots within the channel in which they’re the most active.
If the competition is dominating in Google Shopping or Search Ads, they might be ignoring Microsoft/Bing’s equivalent PPC (pay per click) ad channels. You can often win bids for the same terms in Microsoft at a much lower CPC than in Google. The volume will be lower than Google, but the cost is often less.
Or you can work around the blind spots within their Google Ad strategy by bidding on variations of terms that they’re not paying attention to. Use a tool like SEMrush to identify what they are and aren’t bidding on.
Competition can be fierce in Amazon, but Amazon has been investing heavily in expanding the targeting options within their ad channel, meaning that there are plenty of ways to intercept your customers.
Amazon has quickly become one of the most powerful and effective ad channels, but it is also one of the most complicated, so we recommend working with an experienced Amazon Ads partner like Amplify. We have tools that help us identify your competition’s blind spots, so you can beat the competition without outspending them.
Question 6: What marketing assets do you have?
The 6th question that comes up when we have an exploratory call with a potential new client is related to what marketing assets are available for the campaign. Since some ad channels do better than others with various formats of marketing material, the makeup of your list of assets might change our recommendations.
These are the kinds of questions we’ll ask about your assets:
Do you have a compelling promotional video or clear instructional video?
Will a live webinar be part of the strategy?
Do you have powerful endorsements or testimonials from celebrities, influencers, or satisfied customers?
Do you have a variety of quality images from a professional photoshoot?
Do you have any free downloadable resources related to your product (an eBook, coloring pages, or leaders/student guides)?
Is your landing page or website set up properly for conversion tracking and does it have a healthy conversion rate?
Additional Video Questions
It gets even more granular than this. For example, tell us more about your videos. Are they square, vertical, or horizontal? Are they captioned? How long are they? Your answers to each of those questions might alter our recommendation, because…
Amazon Ads and YouTube Ads work with landscape videos
Facebook Ads work best with square and vertical videos under 30 seconds that are captioned
Pinterest and TikTok use vertical videos (Pinterest can also use square)
Certain types of ads (skippable, non-skippable, preroll, midroll, Reels) require different lengths
Click here for a directory of links to the creative specs and file size requirements for all ad channels.
additional Content Marketing Questions
We might also need to get more granular about your content marketing assets. If they align with high-volume, relevant search terms and have a history of converting sales, we might recommend a PPC (pay per click) strategy within Google, Microsoft/Bing, and Pinterest.
Those 3 ad channels work well when promoting quality content. But if your conversion tracking isn’t set up properly on your site or if there is a bad user experience in your checkout process, we’d recommend investing in ads that drive to a retail partner’s site until those issues are resolved.
Conclusion
Although these 6 questions are asked whenever we meet with clients about their ad strategy, other factors also come up in the course of the conversation. These nuances aren’t easy to duplicate in an article, but we hope we’ve provided enough clarity here to guide you and your marketing team.
I want to close by saying that one thing is true of every ad platform - they are all complicated. They are powerful and effective, but there are so many ways to structure a campaign, it can be very difficult for someone who is not in these platforms daily to figure out how to use them effectively.
Working with an agency is a great way to ensure that your ads make a difference. And the results that come from their expertise will more than cover their cost.
If you’d like to explore a partnership with Amplify, we’d be honored to have a conversation. Just click the link below and fill out a short form to tell us more about your project.
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