What is Paid Media?

In order to find your way through today’s highly competitive digital world, it’s essential that your business invests in a variety of different types of content. After all, the content you generate and put out there plays an important role in helping you drive brand awareness, attract new customers while enticing existing ones back, as well as boosting your bottom line.

Utilising paid media is one of the ways you can achieve these goals – but what is it, and why is it so important? Keep reading to find out more.

Why is paid media important?

Paid media is a popular strategy many businesses use to connect with their target audience to boost brand exposure, increase sales and conversions, earn new followers and more. Through paid media, you can purchase ad space to promote your business online. Paying for content promotion to spread awareness of your brand enables more people to see what you’re all about, and it can be a highly effective and fast way to generate the results you want, when you want them.

How does paid media work?

Paid media is essentially content that is promoted via paid placements, such as pop-ups, video ads, paid search, which is often referred to as pay per click (PPC), and sponsored social media posts. This type of advertising can help you gain instant access to leads to generate more visibility, revenue and engagement for your brand. Paid media can also help you reach potential customers who may not have found your business otherwise.

The different types of paid media

There are a whole range of different paid media formats. Below, we take a look at some of the most widely used types of paid media:

Paid social media

Paid social media is a type of marketing whereby advertisements or sponsored marketing messages are displayed on popular social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, with the intent of targeting a specific audience. Ultimately, paid social media can help drive engagement and sales just like organic social media can. However, the main advantages of paying for this type of advertising include the speed to market, campaign sustainability and message frequency.

The good news is, most social media platforms offer paid advertising options, giving you the opportunity to really hone in on who will see your ads based on their interests, location and other factors.

Banner ads

Sometimes referred to as display ads, banner ads are usually presented in the form of a pop-up or are embedded in a sidebar. They can be static images, or they can be moving animations. The purpose of banner ads is to direct the web user to your website whenever they are clicked on.

Search engine ads

Search engine ads are a widely used form of digital marketing. While organic search engine strategies use SEO to improve position in search results, you can often purchase a better position through PPC campaigns. This practice involves using paid ads that appear in search engine results pages – and are therefore easier to find by users.

Native ads

Native ads are a type of advertisement that are intended to look like unpaid content. This form of paid advertising ensures that the ads are cohesive with the pages they appear on and are consistent in terms of design. For example, this can take the form of a piece of writing from an online publication that looks like intended editorial content, but it is in actual fact paid for by an advertiser with the intention to promote a product or service.

What is the difference between paid, owned and earned media?

Other than paid media, there are two other main types of advertising that businesses can use to improve their position online. These are owned media and earned media – but how do they all differ from one another?

Owned media accounts for the content that you are in full control of, such as your website, blog and social media accounts. This type of media can take many different forms, from blog posts to case studies. It gives you an opportunity to build your brand, increase engagement, find new customers and more.

Meanwhile, earned media refers to the organic response your brand receives from other sources. It is primarily content that other people produce about your company, such as reviews, press articles written about your brand and shares via social media.

The takeaway

While earned and owned media are effective advertising strategies, there’s no denying the importance of paid media in helping you bolster brand awareness, attract new customers and improve your overall approach to marketing.

As a leading UK PPC agency, our team of highly skilled paid media specialists are able to deliver measurable results across all platforms, whether you’re ready to set up your first paid media campaigns, transform your account or everything else in between.