Paid Media

Media that has been paid for refers to any kind of advertising or content promotion on social media, for which brands or individuals pay to push their message, content, or ads out to a targeted group that extends beyond the realm of the brand's organic followers. This context mainly concerns paid ad campaigns run on the mega platforms of social media: Facebook (FB), Instagram, Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, TikTok (as of 2022, the most downloaded app in the world), and Pinterest. Doing ads on these platforms varies from doing boosted posts (to achieve visibility and engagement far beyond what these posts would achieve if left un-boosted) to doing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads or memes (sorry, not sorry) across the platforms where audiences are segmented tightly (by age, interests, geography, behavior, etc.) and where right-time-and-right-place targeting might yield decent click through/investment return ratios across platforms. Because working with the platforms via direct sales (and therefore with the advertisers’ messages) can yield useful audience intelligence and decent metrics, as well as drive audience growth, audience engagement, and in-platform action on the part of the audience, paid media is a common strategy among businesses on these platforms.