Social Media Advertising Services
Paid campaigns across Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and X — built on your own conversion tracking, not the "Boost Post" button. We run the platform your funnel actually needs, not all of them at once.
Which platform actually fits your funnel
Paid social means paying to put your business in front of a chosen audience — distinct from organic social media management, which builds a following without ad spend. Picking the right platform for your objective matters more than running on every platform at once.
The largest audience and the deepest ad tooling — Advantage+ AI bidding, dynamic catalogue ads, and Threads now bundled in as a placement. Start here unless your buyer is unmistakably B2B.
Costs substantially more per click than Meta — LinkedIn doesn't publish its own benchmark data, and third-party estimates we checked vary too widely to trust a single figure. The audience is pre-qualified by job title and seniority, and Lead Gen Forms convert far better than an off-platform landing page.
Runs through Google Ads rather than a native social platform, but it's where paid social and paid search budgets increasingly overlap — Shorts inventory is the fastest-growing placement in 2026.
A smaller audience than Meta but a less competitive auction, filled with users actively planning a purchase rather than passively scrolling. A strong secondary platform, rarely a primary one.
Platforms compared
Published industry averages, not our client numbers — your account will sit above or below these depending on industry, creative and targeting.
| Best for | Avg. cost | 2026 shift | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta (FB + IG) | B2C, ecommerce, local business | $0.70 CPC (traffic) · $1.92 (leads) | Advantage+ AI bidding is the default path now; Threads added as a bundled placement |
| B2B, recruiting, high-ticket | No reliable public benchmark | LinkedIn doesn't publish CPC data; Predictive Audiences (AI-managed bidding) is the platform's stated direction | |
| YouTube (Google Ads) | Demand gen, video brand-building | No reliable public benchmark | Shorts placements are the fastest-growing inventory; buy runs through Google Ads, not a native social platform |
| Visual discovery, DIY / home / fashion | No reliable public benchmark | Smaller, less competitive auction; purchase-intent audience | |
| X (Twitter) | Real-time, tech / finance / news audiences | No reliable public benchmark | Independent industry data is thin post-2023; audience has shrunk since 2022 |
| Threads | New in 2026, younger feed-first audience | Too new to benchmark | Global ad rollout completed the week of 26 Jan 2026, bundled inside Meta Advantage+ by default |
Meta's CPC/CPL figures come from WordStream's published benchmark report — see Sources. For LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and X, we checked the publicly available third-party estimates and found them too inconsistent (some tracing back to years-old data recirculated under a "2026" headline) to publish as a verified number; we've labeled those honestly rather than guess. Verified 8 Aug 2026.
Where paid social budgets get wasted
Four patterns we see repeatedly when we take over an account.
Boosting a post is not the same as running a campaign
The blue "Boost Post" button on your Page enters the same ad auction as a proper campaign, but with a fraction of the targeting and optimization controls. Real campaigns are built around an objective — Awareness (reach and recognition), Consideration (traffic, engagement, video views, app installs) or Conversion (purchases, leads, and other on-site actions) — and each objective changes how the platform's algorithm chooses who sees the ad.
The trap: a boosted post optimizes for likes and comments by default, which is a vanity metric that costs real ad-auction money. If the goal is leads or sales, that budget belongs in an objective-based campaign in Ads Manager, not the boost button.
AI bidding needs clean data, not just more budget
Meta's Advantage+ suite and LinkedIn's Predictive Audiences can genuinely improve results — but both are only as good as the conversion data feeding them. WordStream's own advisory on Advantage+ is blunt: results can look better on the dashboard while lead quality quietly drops, because the AI is optimizing for whatever event it's told to chase, bots included.
The trap: letting AI bidding run on browser-pixel-only tracking, with no server-side Conversions API and no quality filter on lead forms, teaches the algorithm to find more of whatever counted as a "conversion" — including junk leads.
One platform, every objective
A B2B software company running only Meta boosted posts, or a D2C skincare brand burning budget on LinkedIn Sponsored Content, is optimizing for the wrong auction. Each platform in the comparison above has a different audience, cost structure and intent level — the fix is usually not "spend more," it's "spend on the platform that matches the funnel stage."
Ignoring where the platform mix moved in 2026
Meta completed a global rollout of ads on Threads the week of 26 January 2026, giving advertisers access to 400 million-plus users through the same Ads Manager they already use — and it's opted in by default inside Advantage+ placements. For India-based businesses, click-to-WhatsApp ads inside the Meta ecosystem remain one of the highest-intent, lowest-friction lead formats available, closer to a phone enquiry than a form fill.
Single-Platform Launch
One platform, one funnel, built and tracked properly — before we talk about adding a second.
The starting point for most accounts: pick the platform from the picks above that actually fits your objective, wire up conversion tracking against your real site events, and run a properly structured campaign for long enough to see whether the channel works before committing a bigger budget to it.
What you get
Audience and campaign structure on one platform, Meta Pixel + Conversions API or LinkedIn Insight Tag wired to your actual conversion events, 3–5 ad creative variants, four weeks of managed optimization, and one platform's worth of honest reporting.
What it's not
Not a multi-platform strategy, not organic content or influencer management, and no promised lead volume — see how we measure for why.
Best for: businesses that haven't run paid social with real conversion tracking before, or want to validate one platform before committing a bigger budget across several.
Multi-Platform Funnel
Meta plus a second platform working the same funnel — reach on one, retargeting or lead capture on the other.
Once a single platform is proven, the next lever is usually a second audience pool rather than more spend on the first one. A B2B business might run LinkedIn for pipeline and Meta for remarketing; a D2C brand might pair Meta with Pinterest or YouTube for top-of-funnel reach.
What you get
Everything in Single-Platform Launch, plus a second platform's campaign structure and tracking, shared audience and creative learnings between the two, and one consolidated report tied to your actual business numbers rather than two separate dashboards.
What it's not
Not every platform in the comparison table — we add the second platform that closes a real gap in your funnel, not the one that's trending.
Best for: accounts with proven single-platform performance ready to add a second audience pool, or a business whose funnel genuinely spans two intent levels — awareness and conversion.
Full-Funnel Paid Social Management
All the platforms relevant to your buyer, one team owning creative, tracking, budget allocation and reporting across the mix.
For accounts running always-on campaigns across three or more platforms, the bottleneck usually isn't any single platform's performance — it's cross-platform budget allocation, creative fatigue, and reporting that ties platform metrics back to revenue. This tier puts one team accountable for the whole mix.
What you get
Ongoing management across every platform your funnel needs, weekly creative refreshes to fight ad fatigue, budget shifted toward whichever platform is actually producing qualified pipeline that month, and a monthly readout against your business numbers.
What it's not
Not a fit for a business still validating its first platform — start with the Launch tier and graduate here once the fundamentals are proven.
Best for: established brands with the budget for always-on campaigns across three-plus platforms who want a single team accountable for total paid social ROI, not per-platform silos.
From audit to reporting
The same six steps whether it's one platform or four.
- Audit & platform selection. We walk through your funnel and pick the platform, or platforms, that actually fit — not the ones that happen to be trending.
- Tracking setup. Meta Pixel plus Conversions API, LinkedIn Insight Tag, and consistent UTM discipline, so every platform reports against the same conversion definition.
- Audience & creative. Three to five ad variants per platform, matched to the objective — an awareness ad and a conversion ad are not the same asset reused with different buttons.
- Launch & learning phase. The first one to two weeks run with a wider budget spread, so the platform's algorithm has room to find your actual buyers before we narrow in.
- Optimize. Underperforming ad sets get cut, winners get scaled, and bids are adjusted weekly against your real CPL or CPA — not against vanity CTR.
- Report. A monthly readout tied to your business numbers — leads, revenue, cost per acquisition — not just the clicks the platform's own dashboard likes to highlight.
How we measure — and what we won't claim
Paid advertising attracts inflated promises. Here's where we stand.
- The numbers on this page are published industry benchmarks — WordStream's Facebook Ads report and the other sources linked below — not our internal client averages. Where we couldn't independently verify a platform's cost data against a current, credible source, we said so on the page rather than publish a number that sounded precise but wasn't.
- We don't guarantee a specific number of leads, followers or a CPA figure before seeing your account and industry. Anyone who quotes a guaranteed cost-per-lead before a scoping call is guessing.
- Platform-reported results can overstate reality. AI bidding tools optimize aggressively for whatever event is marked a "conversion," and a lead-form submission from someone chasing a promised discount counts the same as a genuine enquiry unless it's quality-checked. We build in that check rather than take the dashboard at face value.
- We don't run every platform for every client. Quora and Tumblr advertising still technically exist, but for most SMB budgets in 2026 they're a distraction from Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and X — which is why they're not featured as primary picks on this page.
- TikTok ads aren't offered for India-targeted campaigns. The platform has been unavailable in India since June 2020, with no official sign of the ban lifting. We can run TikTok for clients targeting audiences outside India.
- We'll tell you when paid social isn't the right lever. If your funnel is leaking at the landing page rather than the ad, we'll route you to conversion rate optimization or landing page optimization instead of selling you more ad spend against a broken page.
Frequently asked questions
What is social media advertising?
It's paid promotion on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and X, run through each platform's own ad auction rather than relying on organic reach. Unlike organic social media management, budget directly controls how many people see the ad — which is why choosing the right platform and objective for your funnel matters more than trying to be everywhere.
How much should I budget for social media ads?
Most platforms technically let you start with a few dollars a day, but that's rarely enough for the algorithm to exit its learning phase and find real buyers. A realistic test budget for a single platform is usually enough to generate several dozen conversions a month at the CPC and CPM figures in the comparison table above — below that, you're mostly paying for data rather than results. We size the actual number to your industry and objective on the scoping call rather than quoting one figure for every business.
Which social media platform is best for my business?
It depends on your funnel, not a universal ranking. Meta usually wins for B2C, ecommerce and local business; LinkedIn for B2B and high-ticket sales; YouTube for video-first demand generation; Pinterest for visual-discovery categories like home, fashion and DIY. See the platform picks above for the reasoning behind each.
What's the difference between boosting a post and running an ad campaign?
Boosting uses the simplified button on your Page and defaults to optimizing for engagement, with limited targeting and objective controls. A proper campaign, built in Ads Manager or LinkedIn Campaign Manager, lets you choose an actual objective — awareness, traffic, leads or conversions — and gives the platform's algorithm the right signal to chase. Boosted posts are rarely the best use of ad budget once conversions matter.
Do you run ads on Reddit, Quora or Tumblr?
We can, but we don't lead with them. Reddit's ad business has grown into a genuine niche-community option, but reliable public benchmark data is thin compared to Meta or LinkedIn, and Quora and Tumblr's ad platforms have shrunk enough that most SMB budgets are better spent on the five platforms in our comparison table. If your audience is genuinely concentrated in a specific subreddit or community, we'll say so and build a case for it rather than defaulting to it.
Do you run TikTok ads?
Not for audiences inside India — TikTok has been unavailable there since June 2020, with Indian creators and viewers having largely moved to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. For clients advertising to audiences outside India, we can plan and run TikTok campaigns as part of a broader platform mix.
How long before we see results?
Most platforms need a one-to-two-week learning phase before the algorithm has enough data to optimize properly, so early numbers are noisy by design. Meaningful, stable performance — a CPL or CPA you can actually plan around — typically takes three to four weeks on a new platform. Anyone promising validated results within days either has an enormous existing audience or isn't measuring correctly.
Do you guarantee leads or followers?
No, and we'd encourage skepticism toward anyone who does. What we commit to: campaigns built on your real conversion data, honest reporting against the industry benchmarks on this page, and a straight answer if a platform isn't working — including recommending we pull budget from it. See how we measure for the full picture.
Find out which platform is worth your budget
Book a free scoping call. We'll look at your funnel and your numbers, and tell you honestly which platform to start on — and which ones to skip.
Book a free consultationSources
- Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2025 — WordStream / LocaliQ
- India Digital Ad Spend Business Report 2026 — GlobeNewswire / ResearchAndMarkets
- India Digital Marketing Market Size & Forecast — Expert Market Research
- Meta Brings Threads Ads to Every User — PPC Land
- TikTok Ban in India Still Stands, Company Clarifies — Storyboard18