When it comes to digital advertising, you’d be remiss to ignore the exposure offered by social media today. Each platform has its own unique ad types, and what will work best for your business depends on a variety of factors, including the type of business you own, the interests and demographics of your audience, the size of your advertising budget, and so much more. Here’s a brief overview of some of the most popular social media ad types used by businesses today:

Facebook Ad Types

Over the years, Facebook has developed countless ad units, and its practices have become a very well-defined science.

Lead Generation

Lead ads help you generate new business leads by allowing your audience members to “opt in” using a contact form that is already built into the ad. This ad type can also be used through Instagram.

Website Clicks

Web click ads are a tried and true way of getting more traffic to your website via social media. This is your typical pay per click setup, and it’s a very effective way of getting more people to see what your website has to offer.

Page Likes

Pages likes are hard to get these days – Facebook has become a very “pay to play” type of environment. If you want to build a strong following for your page, this is the way to do it.

Learn more about the many available Facebook ad types here.

Instagram Ad Types

Instagram operates a bit differently than Facebook. Here, it’s less about your ad objective and more about how you’d like your ad to be presented. You can choose from one of the following ad types:

  • Photo Ads
  • Video Ads
  • Carousels
  • Collections Ads
  • Story Ads

The platform, along with Facebook’s ad manager, helps you choose the best format for your goals – whether that’s brand awareness, page exposure, post exposure, or something else.

Read more about the available Instagram ad types here.

Twitter Ad Types

Twitter ads have never been quite as popular as Facebook or Instagram ads have been in recent years, but it would be a mistake to totally dismiss this platform. They offer plenty of versatility, and when you do them right, they deliver pretty impressive results. Twitter offers the following ad types:

  • Brand Awareness
  • Tweet Engagements
  • Followers
  • Website Clicks
  • App Installs

Unlike Facebook, there is only a small handful of options for Twitter advertising, but this should be everything you need to make the most of your time on this platform.