News
News Article
Marketing+
Tue
08
Apr 2025
As the digital ad landscape gets more competitive, brands need to think beyond Google and Meta to get ahead. But where should they be investing? What underutilised platforms and strategies are delivering real ROI?
Paid advertising is a way for businesses to reach their target audience, drive traffic to their website - and, in turn, more conversions - as well as boost search engine optimisation efforts.
In this month’s editorial, we asked our network of agency leaders to uncover the hidden gems in paid advertising - the channels, formats, and tactics brands might be overlooking but shouldn’t be - including ways external support can help deliver an effective paid strategy.
Take a look at our calendar of free virtual strategy workshops, designed to tackle the key challenges facing in-house marketing leaders.
There’s a big opportunity hiding in what we're calling, 'Challenger Platforms'. These are channels like Reddit, Spotify, Quora & Twitch who have all been investing hugely in upping their ads game, but they're still not getting the credit they deserve.
Everyone else is still fighting for space on the big-name channels, which absolutely have a place in your strategy, but these challenger platforms are delivering serious results, often without the crowd.
For example, Reddit saw a 56% year-on-year increase in ad revenue, Spotify Ads are growing fast too, and most brands don’t even realise they’ll get studio-quality audio ads created for free, because Spotify wants more people on the platform.
In my opinion, right now the most exciting ad opportunities aren’t on the platforms you’d expect or hidden in super tactical tips and tricks, they’re in the platforms that no one is looking at closely enough.
From a Paid Social background, I would be inclined to use TikTok. There is still the stigma that this channel is for a younger demographic or that the product they have is too expensive and won't perform well on the channel.
My question to this is how do you know if you haven't tested it. If you have no data to back this argument up, then you could essentially be missing out on getting your brand in front of a massive audience.
Also, when you consider that social search is on the rise and users are turning to the social channels to search for products that help solve a problem they are experiencing or for reviews of a product they are researching, if they can't find you on there, you could be limiting your new customer acquisition.
View our Round-Up: Organic vs. Paid Social Media - The Case for a Hybrid Approach
We are seeing fantastic success moving our clients away from the dependency most businesses have with Google Ads, whilst Microsoft Ads offer a smaller audience size, we currently see that performance can be 2 or 3x better than the exact same campaigns within Google Ads - why? Often due to significantly less competition seen on the platform.
Alongside this, we are seeing a huge surge in businesses open to paid social spending, with the right tracking and campaign set-ups, we are seeing very impressive results, particularly across Meta & TikTok for both Lead Generation and E-commerce clients.
Social requires well-thought-out creative strategy, and this is where we see agencies can have the biggest impact for clients who haven't got the internal resources or time to create consistent, high-quality and, best-practice social creatives that are necessary to maximise performance.
Wanting to kick-start your paid advertising strategy? Make sure you're getting the most out of your investment. The GO! Network offer cost-free advice on best-practise, provide independent agency recommendations, pitch management, and more - get in touch to get started.
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