Do social paid ads work?

The effectiveness of social paid ads remains a mystery.

A recent research by eMarketer revealed that customers weren’t interested in buying staff while they were on a social platform, and millennials were least likely to click on an ad on social media.

In fact, this may explain why Twitter chose to abandon the buy button this year. I can imagine why most of the time paid social ads fail to reach the customer. For one thing, customers don’t expect to see ads on social media, they even don’t trust them. For another, the development of adblocking software enables customers to skip ads.

However, while many users were not clicking on an ad on social media, there were still 34% of the respondents saying they did. In some cases, users are not sure what they are clicking on is an ad or a normal post. 

Moreover, according to the research, those who did click on an ad were about 3.5 more times likely to buy a product than those who didn't. Personally, this shows how hyper-targeting the social paid ads are.

In conclusion, people dislike ads on social media, especially millennials. However, this doesn’t mean brands should pause their social ads completely – it means they need to adjust their strategy to make the efforts on social media more effective. For example, make the ads so native that customers don't know what they are looking at are ads. In addition, combine social advertising with influencer marketing--let the trusted influencers have real conversations about brands and products.