Social Media Advertising in 2026: Expert Tips & Examples

Social media advertising continues to evolve as one of the most powerful tools for brand growth and customer acquisition. As we move into 2026, understanding where to allocate your social media advertising budget can mean the difference between breakthrough results and wasted spend.

Key Components:

• Strategic platform selection based on verified audience insights and engagement patterns

• Scientific creative testing across social media channels to identify high-performing formats and messaging

• Regular performance analysis to optimize social media advertising spend allocation

• Agile budget management that shifts investment based on actual results rather than assumptions or trends

Social media planning: A scientific approach

A. Understand your audience

Effective social media advertising strategy begins with understanding your audience's digital behavior. Optimizing your social media mix requires clearly mapping where your customers spend their online time and attention.

For businesses without enterprise-level analytics platforms, we recommend two accessible approaches to inform social media advertising decisions:

1. Customer research: Survey your existing customer base about their social media usage patterns, preferred platforms, and content consumption habits

2. Platform analytics: Utilize native analytical tools within each social media platform.

   1. Meta's insights dashboard, for example, reveals engagement distribution between Instagram and Facebook audiences—providing clear direction for social media budget allocation.

      
      

B. How to allocate your social media advertising budget

At Exverus, we have refined a proven social media advertising rule-of-thumb through years of running campaigns for brands like Premier Protein, Theralogix supplements, and New Belgium Brewing:

• 60% Meta (Facebook and Instagram)

• 30% TikTok

• 10% Reddit or emerging platforms

This distribution maximizes social media advertising ROI while maintaining agility for testing new opportunities as the landscape shifts.

Platform-specific strengths

Meta: The ROI champion

Social media advertisers industry-wide agree that Meta is the strongest performer for your paid social return on investment (ROI). The platform's sophisticated targeting infrastructure, extensive user data, and conversion optimization tools make it the foundation of most successful social media advertising strategies.

Instagram Reels beats TikTok on several key metrics, and Meta's ad capabilities are only getting stronger. Click to learn how.

TikTok: A brand exploder

TikTok has emerged as a social media advertising powerhouse for brand awareness campaigns. The platform offers unique ad placements that other social media advertising channels cannot match - including positioning alongside trending content, securing first-open placements, and appearing as the initial video users see upon launching the app.

Although TikTok Shop was a powerful sales-driver in the holiday shopping season of 2025 for product-based brands, most brands see more success with TikTok as an awareness-builder, rather than a converter.

Social media platforms are now brand discovery hubs, and search engines are now mid-funnel. Learn how to meet savvy consumers everywhere they search.

Reddit: The community educator

For brands with products requiring education or strong community engagement, Reddit represents an underutilized opportunity. The platform enables advertisers to integrate messaging within authentic user conversations and valuable community discussions.

Reddit's keyword-based targeting is a significant advantage for social media marketing campaigns. This functionality mirrors Google Search capabilities and enables more cohesive cross-channel marketing strategies. TikTok has similarly introduced keyword targeting, further expanding strategic social media advertising options.

Reddit has evolved from a niche forum into a marketing powerhouse, reshaping how consumers make decisions & how AI answers their questions.

C. Measurement & Attribution

Effective social media advertising requires rigorous measurement to understand what's working and where to optimize spend. Without proper tracking and analysis, even well-allocated budgets can fail to deliver maximum value.

Essential Paid Social Metrics

Different platforms and campaign objectives require different measurement approaches. For conversion-focused social media buying, track:

• Return on ad spend (ROAS): The revenue generated for every dollar invested in social media advertising

• Cost per acquisition (CPA): How much you're spending to acquire each customer through social media advertising

• Conversion rate: The percentage of users who take desired actions after engaging with your social media advertising

ROAS and last-click metrics can be misleading because they capture a narrow slice of the journey, understating long-term brand impact.

For brand awareness-building social media buying, especially on platforms like TikTok, monitor:

• Reach and impressions: How many unique users are seeing your social media advertising

• Engagement rate: Likes, comments, shares, and saves relative to impressions

• View-through rate: Completion rates for video-based social media advertising content

• Brand lift studies: Changes in brand awareness, consideration, and preference metrics

Brand lift studies demonstrate the impact of your marketing on real brand growth over time.

Attribution in Social Media Advertising

Modern social media advertising measurement must account for complex customer journeys. Users rarely convert on first touch—they might discover your brand on TikTok, research on Reddit, and convert through a Meta retargeting ad.

Implement multi-touch attribution models that credit multiple social media advertising touchpoints in the conversion path. Platform-specific attribution windows (typically 1-day view, 7-day click for most social media advertising) provide baseline data, but cross-platform analytics tools offer more complete visibility into how your social media advertising channels work together.

Predictive analytics and big-picture insights make marketing mix modeling tools invaluable to brand marketers of all industries in 2026 and beyond.

Testing and Optimization Cycles

Successful social media advertising programs establish regular measurement cadences:

• Weekly analysis: Identify trends, pause underperforming social media advertising creative, and scale winners

• Monthly reviews: Evaluate overall media strategy, test new platforms, and adjust budget allocation

• Quarterly planning: Reassess platform mix based on cumulative performance data

This structured approach to social media advertising measurement ensures you're making data-informed decisions rather than relying on assumptions or outdated performance patterns.

E. Case Studies & Examples

Theralogix enters the Reddit chat

In Q4 of 2024, our Reddit Ads brand campaign contributed to the supplement maker's +33% lift in web traffic and +634% lift in cross-network search! Click to read more below.

Exverus' new Social Reach ad unit beats Meta's efficiency

In 2025, Exverus partnered up with SeenThis to build a whole new ad unit called Social Reach, which splashes a brand's vertical video assets across Pubmatic's premium open web supply with zero additional production cost. Click to learn more below.

Premier Protein was the first brand to test Social Reach and outperformed Meta Ads by 50% efficiency!

'The Chosen' integrates search & social to drive app downloads

For TV's "The Chosen" mobile app campaign, we stitched Search and Social Media advertising initiatives together in a cohesive digital strategy that successfully drove nearly 1 million app downloads in 3 months at half the projected cost! Learn more below.

To entice viewers, we teased behind-the-scenes footage, access to the stars, and app-exclusive trailers.

In 2026 and beyond, the key to social media advertising success lies not in following industry trends, but in developing deep knowledge of where your specific audience engages and what creative approaches drive them to action.

For further reference:

• Creator Marketing: FAQs for brands in 2026

• Social Commerce in 2026: With or without TikTok

• Social media advertising: How it works & tips for success

• Link in Bio by Rachel Karten

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Based on insights from Inc. magazine's interview with Blake Anderson (founder, 10x) and Ryan Schuster, MBA (Director of Paid Search and Social, Exverus by Brainlabs). Original article: "How to Get the Most Out of Paid Social in 2026" by Annabel Burba, Inc., December 23, 2025.