Social media advertising: Cost, benefits, and tips for 2026 – Hootsuite

Learn how to use social media advertising to achieve real business results and get the most out of your ad budget.
Social media advertising is a brand’s best bet for reaching new audiences in 2026 (and yes, even the followers who never seem to see your posts).
By putting budget behind your social strategy, you take control of who sees your content, with precise targeting that traditional advertising can’t match.
Keep reading to find out if social media advertising is a good fit for your business, how much you should set aside to get started, and which social networks to prioritize.
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Social media advertising is a form of digital advertising where brands pay to reach their target audiences on a social platform like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or X.
The number of people who see your social media ads is referred to as your “paid reach.” This is different from your “organic reach,” which refers to people who see your content when it’s distributed by a platform’s algorithm.
Social advertising is constantly evolving, too.
Standard Meta (then Facebook) ads are no longer the only way to reach users. Advertisers can now take advantage of the rise of new platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, and others that are constantly updating their advertising capabilities to stay competitive.
Social media advertising helps businesses reach the right people, control their ad spend, and measure results more clearly than most other marketing channels.
Let’s take a closer look at its benefits below:
The most important social media advertising platforms are the ones your target audience actually uses — but for most brands, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram offer the largest reach across age groups.
Here’s a quick summary of age demographics from the Pew Research Center, noting the percentage of U.S. adults who say they use a specific platform.
Source: Pew Research Center
TL;DR: Overall, YouTube and Instagram see strong adoption among Gen Z and millennials, while Facebook offers a broad reach across older age groups. Platforms like Snapchat and TikTok skew younger, making them more effective for targeting audiences under 40.
Of course, age is just one factor to consider when prioritizing your advertising on social media.
Not every channel is the right channel for you. It’s best to understand what value each channel provides and who your target audience is. Where can you find the right audience interested in your product or service? What is your ideal demographic? Do you have enough budget to be on multiple channels without spreading yourself thin? Once you have answers to a few of these questions, it’s easier to determine which platform to use.
For more demographics details, check out our full guide to social media demographics for marketers.
Here are the paid social media advertising campaign objectives and formats available on each of the major social platforms.
For more details, head over to our Facebook Advertising Guide.
These are mostly the same as the options for Facebook, since both types of ads are created through Meta Ads Manager.
Read more in our guide to Instagram Advertising.
Learn more in our guide to TikTok ads
Take a deeper dive into advertising on X.
Get all the step-by-step instructions in our LinkedIn advertising guide.
Learn more in our guide to Pinterest ads.
Learn more about YouTube advertising.
The protein shake brand Good Protein ran a social media advertising campaign on TikTok in which they used Spark Ads to promote creator content alongside brand ads. Creators shared everything from recipes to reviews, while the brand answered questions through video responses.
Why this works: Social media users often trust creators more than brands themselves. Showcasing a variety of voices improved average watch time by 25%.
PureGym ran lo-fi, handheld Reels ads designed to blend seamlessly into the Reels feed. By mirroring the look and feel of organic content, the ads felt more native — helping drive stronger watch time and engagement.
Why this works: Brands can sometimes be tempted to make their ads look a little too slick. But it can be more effective to match the style of the typical organic content found on the surface you’re using. 
Going more casual gave PureGym a 5.6x increase in Thruplays over previous Reels ads. Bonus: The ads were cheaper and faster to create than their usual, more formal ads.
NARS Cosmetics tested shopping ads that allowed customers to checkout via their Instagram Shop versus ads that directed customers to the NARS website to complete their purchase. 
They found that adding the Instagram Shops checkout option increased ROI by 6% and decreased cost per purchase by 24%.
Why this works: This is a prime example of why testing is so important. The ad pointing customers to the NARS website was working just fine. Why mess with a good thing? Would customers be as willing to check out within the Instagram Shops interface? In fact, they were more willing to do so, something NARS would never have known without testing.
Cetaphil leaned into trending topics paired with the Pinterest Trend Badge to show Pinners that they were aligning their content (and new products) with statistically significant trends on the platform.
Why this works: Cetaphil put in the research before launching their campaign. They used keyword research to learn that people were searching for “simple skincare routine” and “skin types.” They used that information to inform their ad creative strategy, leading to a 4.5% increase in brand awareness.
Social media ad costs vary by platform and format, but most brands can expect to pay between $4 and $10 per thousand impressions (CPM) in 2026.
Overall, CPMs have been increasing across major social platforms, a sign that competition for attention is getting tougher.
Here’s a look at 2025 average CPMs for each social media channel:
Keep in mind these are pricing benchmarks, not guarantees. Your actual costs will depend on factors like who you’re targeting, when your ads run, how competitive your industry is, and even the day of the week.
The tips below show how to use paid ads to strengthen your existing social strategy rather than replace it.
High-performing posts make the best candidates for social ads. In fact, the easiest way to advertise on social media is to boost a top-performing, high-quality organic post.
Use what you’ve learned from your organic posts, user-generated content, or influencer partnerships as a starting point for your social media advertising strategy. Make sure to treat each platform as its own experiment, since results will vary depending on the audience.
Testing one ad against another to determine what works best and refine your strategy is known as A/B testing.
Optimizing ads is all about testing hypotheses. That means test, test, and test some more. You need to determine which creative resonates best, explore new platforms your audience might be on, and take advantage of new features and placements that may help give you an edge.
It’s a best practice to test several ads with small audiences to determine what works best. Then, use the winning ad for your main social marketing campaign.
We teach you the details in our guide to social media A/B testing.
It’s awfully hard to achieve your goals if you don’t know what your goals are in the first place.
“Campaign ‘success’ can mean many things,” says Bruce-Kotey. “To determine success, you have to start with a clear goal or OKR.”
Understanding your ultimate goal is critical. It ensures you choose the right social network to advertise on and find the right advertising solution within that platform. Your goal will even guide your creative strategy.
Know exactly who you’re trying to reach to take maximum advantage of the targeting options and maximize your ROI.
Developing audience personas can help you understand exactly which audience segments to focus on.
Pro tip 💡: If you have a brick-and-mortar business, try using “geofencing” to target mobile users so they only see ads when they are close enough to walk in your front door.
Having concrete data on ad performance, and how they contribute to business goals (purchases, leads, and so on) is a key part of proving (and improving) ROI.
Knowing which ads are most cost-effective will ensure you get the budget you need to continue your work.
The major social networks offer analytics to help you measure the results of ads.
You can also use tools like Google Analytics and Hootsuite Advanced Analytics to measure results across networks from a single dashboard. A social media report is a great way to track your results and look for great content to promote with social ads.
When you manage your social ads alongside your organic content, you can clearly see the overall picture of your social content strategy. You can compare performance, juggle your budget, and really dig deep into the relative ROI of each campaign.
If you’re already using digital marketing tools like Mailchimp, HubSpot, or Salesforce, you can integrate those, too, so you have all your sales data in one place.
Here’s how to do it:
The easiest way to create a social media advertisement is to boost a post. You can do this using native tools on some of the social platforms.
However, the more efficient way is to manage your boosted posts for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all from one place, alongside your organic content for all platforms in the Hootsuite dashboard.
Tip: Learn more about the difference between boosted posts and other kinds of advertising on social media.
You can schedule your boosted posts in advance as part of a campaign, and even set triggers so that your best organic posts are automatically boosted when they hit certain performance triggers.
If you have limited time (we see you, solo social media managers!), this is a hands-off way to expand your reach with social media advertising.
Here’s how to do it:
Integrate your paid and organic social strategies to strengthen connections with existing customers and reach new ones. Use Hootsuite Social Advertising to easily keep track of all of your social media activity—including ad campaigns—and get a complete view of your social ROI. Try it for free.
Easily plan, manage and analyze ads and organic content from one place with Hootsuite Social Advertising. See it in action.
Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.
Christina Newberry has been writing about digital marketing since the prehistoric days of 2002, when email opt-ins were every marketer’s biggest goal. With a deep understanding of how to connect to online audiences, she shifted her focus to social media and has been contributing to the Hootsuite blog since 2016.
Analytical, curious, and always learning. Results-driven, with a passion for digital advertising. Over 7+ years of agency-side experience in performance marketing for Fortune 500 brands across an array of industries/verticals and media platforms. Experience in aspects of marketing primarily focused on paid media strategy, media buying, measurement, influencer marketing, Google Ads (PPC), Paid Social, Display Advertising, Youtube Advertising, Bing Ads, and Remarketing. Earned a Master’s Degree in Digital Marketing & Analytics at Aurora University.
Expertise in: Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, Google Ads (Search & Display), Programmatic Ads, Tag Manager, Mobile App Campaigns.
Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.
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