How to Advertise on Social Media: A Modern Guide for Publishers & Brands

Social media is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s where audiences spend their time, shape their opinions, and discover the brands they trust. If you’re not running paid social campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn, in this day and age, you’re missing out on high-intent users, real-time engagement, scalable performance, and most importantly, revenue.

In this guide, we’ll walk through exactly how to advertise on social media in 2025 and beyond, including audience targeting techniques, creative strategy and platform integration, format selection, and why programmatic and social ads together drive unbeatable ROI.

Ready to scale your social media ad strategy? Partner with Next Millennium 

Why Should You Advertise on Social Media?

According to Statista, the social media advertising market worldwide is projected to reach US$276.72B in 2025, underscoring just how critical these platforms have become for marketers aiming to scale and personalize campaigns. Read More Here

With over 5.2 billion users across platforms, social media has become the most effective way to build awareness, drive conversions, and maintain customer relationships. It allows brands to speak directly to consumers and adapt messaging based on data and trends.

Whether you're a publisher monetizing content or a brand running paid campaigns, social offers:

• Highly targeted audience segmentation
• Access to mobile-first consumers
• Affordable CPMs and CPCs compared to traditional display
• First-party engagement data that enhances performance

When done right, social media advertising isn’t just an add-on, it’s a growth engine. The platforms also act as early indicators of audience sentiment, helping brands pivot quickly and stay aligned with consumer behavior. With tools like sentiment analysis, predictive modeling, and dynamic creative optimization, social media allows brands to be more agile than ever before.

What Are the Best Social Media Platforms to Advertise On?

Here’s a breakdown of the top platforms to advertise on, and how they fit into a broader marketing strategy:

Meta (Facebook + Instagram)

• Reach: Over 3 billion combined users
• Best For: Brand awareness, retargeting, lead gen, video ads
• Why It Works: Meta’s ad ecosystem uses powerful interest-based targeting, retargeting, and lookalike audience tools. It’s especially strong for ecommerce and lifestyle brands.

Instagram, in particular, is ideal for visual storytelling. Features like Instagram Stories, Reels, and in-app shopping allow brands to create seamless experiences that convert. Facebook remains strong for older demographics and community-building through groups and events.

TikTok

• Reach: 1.5+ billion active users globally
• Best For: Engagement, product virality, UGC, short-form video
• Why It Works: TikTok’s algorithm rewards entertaining, native-feeling content. It allows brands to tell authentic stories and connect with younger audiences in real time.

TikTok is a powerhouse for influencer partnerships and user-generated content campaigns. Brands that embrace trend culture and lean into raw, unpolished creative tend to perform best.

LinkedIn

• Reach: 900+ million professionals
• Best For: B2B lead gen, hiring, company branding
• Why It Works: LinkedIn Ads are hyper-targeted filtering users by job title, company, seniority, and more. Ideal for software, education, recruiting, and industry-specific campaigns.

LinkedIn’s native lead gen forms, Sponsored InMail, and thought leadership content allow brands to build authority while capturing high-quality leads.

YouTube

• Reach: Over 2.7 billion monthly users
• Best For: Brand storytelling, product launches, explainer videos
• Why It Works: With skippable ads, in-stream video, and contextual placements, YouTube delivers long-form engagement and high brand recall.

YouTube also integrates tightly with Google Ads, offering retargeting opportunities and advanced demographic targeting. Combined with detailed watch behavior analytics, it’s ideal for brands with strong video assets.

Each platform has its strengths, and most advertisers benefit from a blended cross-platform strategy. When coordinated correctly, the synergy between platforms can amplify results across the funnel.

What Types of Social Media Ads Can You Run?

Choosing the right ad format is key. Social platforms offer:

• Display/Banner Ads: Great for visibility and upper funnel awareness
• Video Ads: High engagement, especially short-form (6-15 seconds); ideal for Reels, YouTube pre-roll, and TikTok
• Carousel Ads: Ideal for showcasing multiple products or features
• Story/Reel Ads: Designed for mobile, vertical scrolling behavior
• Lead Form Ads: Built-in forms for quick submissions without leaving the app

New formats like shoppable posts and live video ads are also gaining traction, especially in retail, fashion, and consumer electronics. These ad types blur the line between content and commerce, creating seamless purchase experiences.

How to Build a Strong Social Media Advertising Strategy

1. Define Clear Objectives

Start by defining what success looks like: brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, app installs, or sales. Your campaign goal determines creative, format, targeting, and platform. Without a clear goal, measurement becomes difficult and optimization is nearly impossible.

2. Know Your Audience

Use first-party data, lookalike modeling, and platform-specific insights to segment your audience. Behavior, location, device, and interest-based targeting help refine performance.

Understanding audience pain points and motivations is critical, especially on platforms like TikTok and Meta, where micro-segmentation can drastically impact engagement rates.

3. Align Your Creative With the Platform

What works on TikTok may not work on LinkedIn. Match your visuals, tone, and CTA to each platform’s user behavior and consumption style. Native-feeling content performs best. Test multiple versions of creative to see what resonates most.

4. Leverage Automation and Retargeting

Don’t just advertise once, follow users across platforms using retargeting pixels and dynamic product ads. AI and machine learning can optimize ad delivery based on real-time performance.

Automation can also help with budget allocation, bidding strategy, and even creative testing. Platforms like Meta and Google offer Advantage+ and Performance Max to automate campaign elements.

5. Test and Optimize

Social advertising is not a one-and-done game. A/B test creative, placements, CTAs, and budget distribution. Let data, and not assumptions guide campaign decisions.

Make sure to analyze performance across multiple dimensions: cost-per-click, conversion rate, click-through rate, and ROAS. Use this data to inform your next iteration and avoid audience fatigue.

How Does Social Media Advertising Compare to Programmatic Display?

While both rely on audience targeting, the key difference lies in scale and scope:

Programmatic allows advertisers to extend reach, reinforce messaging, and drive conversions wherever they are online, while social media creates engagement and awareness though immersive, in-feed experiences. Together, they form a holistic funnel strategy—from discovery to conversion.

The Next Millennium Difference: Extend Social and and Expand Your ROAS 

What if your social audiences could go beyond the walled garden? 

Social platforms are powerful, but limited. Rising CPMs, shrinking ROAS, and channel saturation make it harder to scale cost-effectively. Next Millennium gives your social media audiences a second life, across high-performing sites on the open web, using the data and creative assets you already have,

Shift Your Strategy. Expand Your Reach. Maximize Results.

The opportunity:

• Allocate budgets to the open internet for:
  • Underpriced inventory
  • Advanced audience targeting and retargeting
• Use audiences from Meta and Google data to target audiences across high-performing sites. 
• Deploy floodlight tags to analyze, clone, and own your audiences for long-term impact. 
• Combine advanced targeting with high-impact ads and CTV to expand reach and drive results. 
• Dedicated account support

Why it works:

• Break free from walled gardens: Extend your Meta and Google audiences across the open web targeting users on premium sites, mobile apps, and CTV.

• Plug-and-play: Accessible through your preferred DSPs, our solutions seamlessly integrate into your existing strategies with fast setup and zero disruption to existing campaigns

• BYOD (Bring Your Own Data): Use your existing datasets to fuel immersive, high-ROAS campaigns. We’ll layer in contextual signals, predictive modeling, and real-time optimization to boost performance.

• Exclusive Curated Inventory: Access high-performing sites via PMP on major DSPs; combine our exclusive inventory and leverage audiences in your DSP

• Full service creative:  We turn standard assets into high-impact creative that are ready for display, video, and CTV. Beautiful, fast, and included.

Our approach ensures your ads aren’t just seen, they're remembered and acted on. Whether you're new to paid social or scaling a mature ad strategy, our solutions are built to deliver.

Next Millennium Drives Advertising Success Through Programmatic Advertising

Social media is powerful, but only when paired with strategy, creative agility, and performance-driven tech. Whether you're a brand launching a product or a publisher monetizing your audience, advertising on social media offers scale, speed, and ROI, when you do it right.

The key to winning in 2024 and beyond is integration. Combine your social efforts with programmatic, CTV, and first-party data to create consistent messaging and maximize reach. Social media isn't just a piece of your ad puzzle, it’s a dynamic, data-rich channel that deserves its own strategy and optimization framework.

We help you go beyond the limits of paid social with more control, better efficiency, and smarter use of your audience data. Let Next Millennium help you craft a smarter strategy that drives measurable growth.