Advertising has been around for hundreds of years.
Ever since the first newspaper was printed, ads have been present. Now they have flourished into all aspects of our society.
You can’t walk down the street without an advert popping out at you. Those Big Mac billboards are too hard to resist!
They’re all designed to do one thing and one thing only; to get your attention in the hope you will be influenced to buy that company’s product or service.
Most of us now have smartphones, so we don’t even have to leave our beds to be targeted by companies. Social media dominates our short attention spans and marketers are taking advantage of this.
With paid social media advertising now leading the way for digital marketing lets take a look at what paid social is exactly and trends to look out for in 2023.
What is Paid Social?
Paid social refers to paying for advertising space on social media platforms. Marketers leverage the data that these social media platforms have so they can get hyper targeted with their advertising campaigns.
That means they can show their adverts to people who it will most likely relate to. This is very powerful as every pound that’s spent on these campaigns can be maximised.
So when all you cat lovers on Facebook start seeing advertisements for those adorable cat fleece jackets, you know why!
Why is Paid Social Important for Businesses?
Advertising in general is super important for business.
You can have the best product or service in the world but if nobody knows about it then you’ve got no hope.
Having a proper paid social strategy for your business could be one of the biggest determining factors in its success.
Why would you not want the ability to reach millions of potential customers?
That question was rhetorical in case you didn’t get the memo….
Paid Social Trends for 2023
Let’s look at what the paid social trends for 2023 are.
Continued Growth of Social Commerce
Unless you’ve been living under a very large rock you’ll already be aware that online shopping is extremely popular these days.
What has now happened is that to make everyone’s lives that much easier, social media companies have put a shopping feature within their platforms.
If you see a nice handbag or t-shirt on a paid social media post you can now buy it directly from the platform using a ‘tag’.
Wow!
You don’t even have to take an extra few minutes to go online somewhere else and buy it. It can all be done from one place. These social media platforms are the gift that keeps on giving, eh?
These types of posts are going to only get more and more popular as everyone prefers convenience and speed above all else. It’s why Amazon has turned into a trillion dollar company, they are fast, easy to use and extremely convenient.
User Generated Content (UGC) and New Platforms
UGC has been around for a while but it’s only in recent years that it has taken off. UGC took off massively with the explosion of platforms like TikTok. This levelled the playing field in terms of content creation and it gave birth to a whole new generation of content creators.
UGC isn’t going away anytime soon, in fact it’s only getting more and more popular. It’s for this reason that UGC is being used in paid social campaigns more frequently.
These ads can be more relatable to users due to their laid back low production style. You could easily implement it into your paid social strategy with little investment and a dose of creativity.
Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR) Advertising
VR & AR are creeping their way into many different industries and social media is one of them.
We’re all fascinated about their capabilities, but what could they do for paid social? Meta will have a huge role to play in this no doubt.
(Lord) Mark Zuckerberg even made an announcement about the Metaverse and showed some of its functionality. The virtual world is both terrifying and extremely exciting!
VR and AR seem to be a big part of Meta’s plans which means paid social will integrate with them too.
If you have a business and can start to adopt VR and AR into your business sooner rather than later you could be a step ahead of the competition.
Short Video Ads
Short and snappy videos are all the craze these days.
With attention spans reduced to that of a goldfish, it’s understandable why short videos are dominating our screens.
Paid social campaign managers are jumping on this trend and creating fun engaging short videos to sell their products and services.
This is a trend that isn’t slowing down thanks to the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
Paid Social at Blaze Media
Paid social is a crucial part of any marketing campaign as its ability to reach potentially millions of people fast is unmatched.
If you are interested in setting up a paid social media campaign for your business then please contact us. We have an in-house paid social team made up of experts in running paid campaigns across all social media platforms.