Ecommerce advertising: Strategies to drive online sales
Ecommerce advertising is essential in today’s attention-driven economy. That’s because it lets you showcase products and services to customers where they spend most of their time online.
This guide covers ecommerce ad basics, including the strengths and limitations of current ecomm platforms, strategies, and tactics.
Read on to learn how to drive ecommerce sales effectively.
What is ecommerce advertising?
Ecommerce advertising is publicizing products, services, or an online store using paid placements on websites, apps, or other digital channels owned by someone else.
The goal of an ecommerce ad placement is to drive users to a transactional landing page. Once there, users can quickly purchase a product or subscribe to a service.
Consider the Instagram ad below for Verizon’s Visible service:
- The ad appears among standard posts on Instagram
- A user clicks on the ad and is brought to a landing page on Visible.com
- The prominent “Get Started” button prompts the user to sign up for the service
Note that ecommerce ads may also be called paid ads, digital ads, online ads, or simply shortened to ecomm ads.
The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.
Dig deeper: What is PPC—Pay-Per-Click marketing?
Ecommerce advertising vs. ecommerce marketing
In short, ecommerce advertising is a part of larger ecommerce marketing efforts.
A robust ecommerce marketing strategy might include some or all of the following tactics:
- Ecommerce advertising—covered in this guide!
- Content marketing
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Social media marketing
- Influencer sponsored content
- Affiliate networks
- Email newsletters, drip campaigns, and other promotional communications
Ecomm marketers might also include traditional marketing tactics, such as TV ads, print ads, events, direct mail, and point-of-sale merchandising.
Which marketing tactics you engage in will depend on the specific goals of your campaign.
Dig deeper: Ecommerce news and updates
What types of ecommerce advertising are there?
Ecommerce ad styles, shapes, and sizes can vary by platform and the type of campaign being run.
- Display ads show up on websites using ad networks like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Outbrain
- Search ads appear among results on Google, Bing, or other search engines
- Social media ads show up in feeds on apps like Facebook, X/Twitter, or LinkedIn
- Marketplace ads appearing on online shops like Amazon, eBay, or Rakuten
- Video ads before or between videos on sites like YouTube, Tiktok, or Reels
- Forum ads appear among discussions within Reddit, Quora, or similar sites
More below about what types are available for specific platforms.
Why ecommerce advertising matters
Ecommerce advertising is one of the best ways to get your offerings in front of consumers who already spend a portion of their time online.
Global ecommerce sales are expected to reach $6.8 trillion by 2028, up more than 50% from $4.4 trillion in 2023. While that’s small compared to physical retail sales, it’s still a ton of money.
But this increase comes at a time when online spaces are increasingly becoming overcrowded.
Constantly changing algorithms make it harder than ever for organic content to get in front of the right eyes. And physical advertising, word of mouth, events, and other traditional marketing tactics simply can’t reach audiences the same way.
That’s where ecommerce advertising comes in.
Digital ads help consumers discover your products and services. And if done right, they’ll follow the ad right to your online shop.
Here are some ways ecomm ads can be beneficial.
Easing high acquisition costs
Digital advertising offers a great way to offset the expense of gaining new customers.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a well-known metric that indicates the average amount of money you spend on attracting and keeping your customers.
To calculate it, divide your total marketing and sales spend by the number of new customers you get during a given time period.
What does this have to do with ecommerce advertising?
Digital ads cost a fraction of ads on TV, radio, print, billboards and other traditional (offline) channels.
This means you can reach the same number of potential customers online for far less money than through traditional media.
And you lower your CAC.
In addition, you can optimize pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to target your key audience in ways that aren’t possible with traditional advertising.
The value of ecommerce ads can be seen in the shifting marketing budget allocations over the last few years. In fact, according to EMARKETER, digital ads accounted for as much as 70–90% of total ad spend in 2024, depending on the industry.
The allocation of marketing budget between digital and traditional advertising methods will always fluctuate a bit. But digital advertising is likely to beat out traditional ads for some time given its lower cost and better targeting.
Offsetting reduced organic reach on social platforms
Unfortunately, long gone are the days of building a strong social following and converting many of those followers to active customers. If you want to gain new customers from social media, you need advertising. This includes not only display ads but also boosted posts and sponsored content from influencers.
Now, it’s all about algorithms.
Organic social content can still gain attraction. But converting viral posts into sales is tough, because people prefer authentic, engaging content.
And it’s hard to do authentic, engaging advertising content.
In fact, slightly negative, mildly controversial, and somewhat risqué content tends to get the best organic engagement on social media. However, that type of content doesn’t mesh well with brands who are trying to promote the positive aspects of their products and services.
The good news is that ecommerce ads can help you still get to the right audiences you need by:
- Targeting users who are engaging with topics related to your offerings
- Retargeting users who have visited your site
- Cultivating relationships with influencers who genuinely use and enjoy your products
Ongoing algorithm changes to social feeds will always present marketing challenges. But by taking advantage of the new opportunities those changes offer, you can make up for past tactics that have less impact now.
Further reading: Mastering social media content creation
Uncovering PPC campaign opportunities with AI
If you haven’t discovered the ways AI can help your paid campaigns, you may be missing out on real gains.
The artificial intelligence boom over the last few years has shaken up the marketing world quite a bit. There are pros and cons here, but at the end of the day it’s almost impossible to avoid embracing some amount of AI in your marketing efforts.
A few of the most effective uses of AI in ecommerce advertising include:
- Optimizing targeting, bidding, and other paid campaign elements
- Restructuring paid search accounts
- Auditing paid search efforts
Most big platforms have incorporated AI into their offerings, such as Google’s Performance Max and AI Max, Amazon Ads, or Meta’s Advantage+ (requires Meta login). More on these below.
In summary, AI offers a great way to find and optimize your ecommerce campaigns that isn’t available through other channels.
Enhancing omnichannel attribution and visibility
Integrating paid ads into your attribution strategy is critical for obtaining reliable data and ensuring a consistent customer experience.
Most online purchases today aren’t as simple as:
- See ad
- Click link
- Buy product
Customers have more data than ever. They’re also savvier and take time to research and consider their options before trying a new product or buying from a new vendor.
That means the buyer’s journey is also a lot more complex than it used to be.
Imagine an average consumer named Marie is looking to buy a product that you offer:
- Marie sees a social media post while randomly scrolling and thinks, “Oooh, I need that”—but she’s just chilling and isn’t ready to buy anything at the moment.
- The next day, Marie remembers the post and searches Google. She sees the product page in the results and visits your website to learn more. She’s still not quite ready to buy, but she signs up for your email newsletter to get a reminder later.
- A few days go by, and Marie gets the newsletter in her inbox. She’s been mulling it over and is ready to buy—but then her dog reminds her it’s dinner time, preventing her from making the purchase right then.
- Later that night, Marie’s on some other website altogether and sees a retargeted ad for your product. She remembers that she was going to buy it and got distracted. She clicks on the ad and completes the transaction.
It’s entirely possible Marie ultimately would have bought that product without the paid ad at the end of that sequence. But the retargeting campaign helped close the deal before it would have otherwise.
Whatever marketing attribution model you use, having digital paid ads as part of your omnichannel strategy is a good way to shorten the time from initial contact to conversion.
Best ecommerce advertising platforms
The best ecommerce ad platforms offer:
- Fine control over the ad campaigns you want to run
- Diversity of ways to target audiences
- The ability to optimize and test ad placements on the fly
- Insights using robust AI integration and standardized reporting
In short, the best ad platforms are those that’ll help you reach your conversion, revenue, and growth goals.
According to 2024 data, the top digital ad platforms by revenue are:
- Google: $190.5 billion
- Meta: $146.3 billion
- Amazon: $52.7 billion
While larger platforms might work for your needs, make sure to check out some others that might give you more direct access to niche audiences.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the best ecommerce ad platforms, along with pros, cons, and ideal use cases.
Google Ads
Google Ads is by far the most popular ecommerce advertising platform. No matter how big your business is, at some point you will want to check out what Google Ads has to offer.
Before getting into the details of this platform, however, an important distinction needs to be made.
Google Ads vs. AdSense
Google Ads and Google AdSense are distinct offerings from Google that address opposite sides of the ecommerce advertising economy.
Google Ads (once known as AdWords) is used by advertisers who want to promote their products, services, and brands. This represents the demand side of ecommerce ads, where people and businesses pay for the opportunity to advertise products, services, and brands in the spaces provided by publishers.
Google Ads lets advertisers:
- Target the goals they want to achieve, such as more sales, leads, traffic, or brand visibility
- Select the type of campaign they want to run, including search ads, display ads on apps and websites, Google Shopping ads, or videos ads on YouTube
- Add related information depending on the campaign type, such as featured products or apps, app to link or what landing page to send people to when they click an ad
Google AdSense is used by publishers to display ads within their content in exchange for a portion of the fees paid by advertisers. This represents the supply side of ecommerce ads, where content producers provide space for advertisers to place advertisements.
Google AdSense lets publishers:
- Choose where to place ads on their website, app, videos, or other content
- Select the types of ads that can be included or excluded in their content
- Optimize and experiment with ad placement, categories, and automation
In addition to AdSense, Google has two other publisher-focused advertising products:
- Google AdMob: focuses on ads for mobile apps
- Google Ad Manager: lets publishers display direct-sale ads in addition to ads from Google’s ad network
This guide focuses only on Google Ads.
Pros of Google Ads
The biggest benefits of Google Ads are its wide reach, preset campaign types, and the ability to connect with other Google and third-party products.
Of all ad platforms, Google Ads still has the biggest reach with an estimated 77% market share of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising using the platform.
Why is it so big?
Ads are still the primary way Google—and its parent company, Alphabet—makes money. Therefore, the company has incorporated its offerings into as many of its products as possible:
Search ads appear within Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keyword searches as sponsored links like the example below.
Display ads show up on websites and apps across the Google Display Network. The following example came from the New York Times’ Wirecutter.
Google Shopping ads show up as a search feature for queries that Google deems to have transactional intent. Here’s how shopping ads might appear in search results.
Video ads appear before, during, and after YouTube videos, like the one below.
In addition to campaign types mentioned above, Google Ads lets you easily set up cross-channel ad campaigns with two other presets:
- Performance Max uses AI to create, test, and refine ads across the networks mentioned above
- Demand Gen is a newer offering that lets advertisers have finer control over image and video ads in places like Google Discover, Gmail, and YouTube (especially YouTube Shorts)
In addition to setting up campaigns, Google Ads has a ton of other tools such as Keyword Planner, conversion and attribution tracking, and billing tools.
Perhaps the most notable is the ability to link Google Ads to a wide variety of other Google and third-party products. There are far too many to mention here, but you can see available connections in your Google Ads account by clicking on “Tools” > “Data Manager” and then browsing or searching for the one you want.
Cons of Google Ads
The worst aspect of Google Ads is that it has so many features, it can be painstaking to wrap your head around everything that’s available.
Also, while digital advertising is still a relatively cost-effective solution compared to traditional advertising, the costs of ads on Google have been rising.
There also have been reports of poor customer support, account suspensions, unhelpful reps, and other frustrations that have left some users mistrusting Google Ads.
When to use Google Ads
Even with its annoyances, most advertisers are going to benefit from knowing how to use Google Ads, simply because it’s the biggest player around.
If you run a small-scale business, it’s a good idea to start trying different features and testing different setups for your campaigns, goals, and tools. Learning and adjusting your strategy as you go will help you avoid making costly mistakes later.
For medium-size and enterprise companies, establishing the right connections to your other data tools is going to give you a wealth of information to optimize your ad performance over the long haul—helping you drive down your CAC.
Read more: How to set up a paid search campaign in Google Ads
Meta ads
Meta ads appear on the company’s main social media and messaging platforms:
- Facebook: The flagship social media site billions of people have come to know and tolerate
- Instagram: The photograph and video sharing site Meta purchased in 2012
- Threads: The conversation-style Instagram extension designed to woo users away from X (formerly Twitter)
- Reels: The TikTok-like short video feature integrated into Instagram and Facebook
- Stories: The disappearing-video feature included in Instagram and Facebook
- Messenger: The direct message functionality usable from Facebook, Instagram, and a standalone app
In addition, they can be pushed to the Meta Audience Network, which like Google AdSense allows content publishers to display Meta ads in mobile apps and on websites.
There’s also potential for new ad opportunities as Meta introduces new products, such as its standalone AI chat app.
Pros of Meta ads
Meta ads benefit from the company’s significant user base, incredibly fine audience targeting, and integration of AI.
With more than 3.4 billion active daily users across its product set, Meta boasts a massive opportunity to reach people around the world.
Not only is the potential audience large—you can get incredibly specific with the targeting based on data provided by Meta users themselves.
Some of the audience targeting options include locations, age, demographics, interests, and behaviors.
The presence of these targeting options doesn’t mean you should use them all—narrowing your options too much can undercut the usefulness of the campaign. But it’s nice to know you can get a little more specific when you need to.
Or you can leave it up to Meta’s Advantage+ AI technology to identify the right audience.
Cons of Meta ads
The biggest downsides of Meta ads include its overall clunkiness, lack of transparency, and frequently rejected ads.
The Meta Ads Manager does not have the most user-friendly interface in the world.
The desktop version is especially annoying when moving between the three-tiered ad levels (Campaign, Ad set, and Ad). It also opens links into new tabs or windows seemingly at random.
The mobile app version is a little bit better, but still suffers from having to click too many times when navigating.
A bigger problem than the UI is the lack of transparency.
Meta struggles to provide adequate reporting data about AI involvement in campaign performance related to its Advantage+ enhancements. This has been an ongoing problem, despite promises to improve.
Nonetheless, the company still aims to fully automate ad creation and management by the end of 2026.
Another complaint is that Meta is inconsistent with ad approvals and account-level issues.
When to use Meta ads
Meta ads seem to be especially good at attracting new B2C and ecommerce customers for top-of-funnel content and retargeting campaigns. If these are your bread and butter, then it could be a good platform to use, despite some of its less desirable qualities.
And despite transparency concerns, some people have seen performance improvement with Advantage+ targeting. This can be a good sign that Meta ads are useful for supporting social campaigns and boosting overall visibility and awareness.
Dig deeper: Meta ads for lead gen
TikTok ads
TikTok ads are more than just sponsored videos that appear in someone’s feed.
Through the TikTok Ads Manager—one of the tools offered through TikTok for Business—you can create:
- Image-carousels
- Search ads
- Messaging ads
- Unique interactive elements such as add-ons like stickers and branded effects that creators can use on their videos
Beyond TikTok, ads can also appear in selected other ByteDance-owned apps like CapCut, Lemon8, or Fizzo. (The last two currently have ads available only in selected countries.)
TikTok also has an ad network named Pangle, which can be used to show TikTok ads in third-party apps.
Pros of TikTok ads
TikTok ads are great for reaching younger audiences, sharing organic product and brand interactions, and connecting with creators for sponsored posts.
Currently, the two biggest age groups on TikTok are 18-24 and 25-34—basically covering most of Gen Z and the younger side of Millennials.
This is where you want to be if you have a product that appeals to those groups since:
- Many younger users are less active on Meta’s platforms
- Gen Z in particular prefers TikTok search over Google
One of the unique aspects of TikTok’s native ads is the ability to turn an organic post into a “Spark Ad.” This lets advertisers use posts made by other creators as ads, rather than uploading creative elements of their own.
The example below shows a creator who routinely does skits as a “Boomer Mom” talking about McAfee Scam Detector. Posted as her own video, it can then be used by McAfee as an ad.
Another way that advertisers can collaborate with creators is through TikTok One, which replaces the former TikTok Creator Marketplace.
Cons of TikTok ads
A major snag to working with TikTok ads—at least for U.S. advertisers—is the still looming possibility of a ban.
Even if a ban doesn’t happen, it’s possible that as Meta’s Reels and YouTube Shorts mature, they will start to siphon away TikTok users.
Especially since some users have started to express disfavor towards the alleged high number of ads on the platform.
When to use TikTok ads
The audience skewed toward a younger demographic means that TikTok ads are best suited for college-age adults and young professionals.
Furthermore, TikTok Shop integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like Amazon, WooCommerce, and Shopify, among others. This makes it easier to get your products before the app’s user base—while possibly getting some creators to help sell your stuff for you.
Finally, TikTok ads tend to be more expensive, partly because of the time and effort it takes to create video ads, and partly because of the increasing prices influencers and content creators can demand for promoting brands and products.
Dig deeper: TikTok advertising: A comprehensive guide
Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads lets advertisers share their promotions across a host of channels.
This includes:
- Amazon store search and product detail pages
- Streaming products like Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV, Freevee, and IMDb
- Alexa devices
- Kindle devices
- Third-party apps and websites in Amazon DSP (demand-side platform) network
Below is an example of a sponsored brand ad in an Amazon.com search for keyboards.
Pros of Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads’ chief selling points are its distinctive suitability for ecommerce ads, its integration with Amazon’s web store, and its higher-than-average conversion rates.
There’s a strong case to be made that even though Google rakes in more ad money overall, Amazon Ads is better for ecommerce ads.
Given that Amazon is the largest ecommerce marketplace in the world, this makes a lot of sense.
On top of that, ads that appear on Amazon.com have incredibly high conversion rates (if perhaps a bit lower than a few years ago).
Cons of Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads suffer a bit by creating a crowded and competitive field, higher CPC, and setup can get complicated.
Part of the competitiveness of Amazon Ads is due to its positive aspects. Because it has a high conversion rate and is more suitable for ecommerce, Amazon Ads attracts advertisers that want to see quick sales and more direct attributions.
That makes it harder to stand out in a crowded field.
The greater competition also pushes up bid prices for ads. Between 2020–2025, the average CPC for Amazon Ads rose 38%, from $0.71 to $0.98.
Finally, Amazon Ads can be a lot to manage. Like other ad platforms, it has started introducing AI tools to provide more automation, but the long-term benefits remain to be seen.
When to use Amazon Ads
If you sell through Amazon, then Amazon Ads is a must.
Given the array of options available, be sure to spend some time testing your results so that you don’t waste time—or money—on solutions that aren’t right for you.
Dig deeper: Amazon Advertising guide
Pinterest Ads
With over half a billion monthly users, Pinterest lags behind Instagram, but only a little bit.
Pinterest allows a number of different ad types, including:
- Standard-sized images and videos
- Full-width videos
- Image carousels
- Single-item shopping ads
- Collections and ideas
- Showcases
- Quiz ads
This board of Father’s Day gift ideas includes a mug that links to the ecommerce product page.
Pros of Pinterest Ads
The primary pros of Pinterest Ads include a visual-based platform that works well with product advertising, a relatively low cost to advertise, and high-spending users.
Pinterest’s inspiration boards are its main draws. Users can save items they like, and then use them to spur their own creative pursuits.
The highly visual nature of the social media site prompts users to take interest in the products that appear among the things that inspire them.
The cost of those ads is relatively low as well, ranging from about $2–$5 CPM.
On the other hand, users tend to spend a lot more. Luxury brands have done well on the platform, and the return on ad spend (ROAS) is a whopping 32% greater than other platforms!
Cons of Pinterest Ads
Where Pinterest Ads lag is the limited discoverability, the amount of time it can take to gain traction, and overall non-transactional nature of the site.
Like with TikTok, some consumers are choosing Pinterest over Google to search for products.
And it turns out that most of those searches (96%) are unbranded.
This isn’t great for anyone relying on a strong, established brand to drive sales. That said, it could allow smaller, unknown brands to get a foothold in a crowded environment. It’s the uncertainty that makes it unreliable.
Pinterest also seems to be a longer-term play than other ad platforms. It can take time to establish a presence and understand how to properly engage Pinterest’s algorithm, which downplays engagement metrics unlike TikTok and Meta’s platforms.
The biggest barrier, however, is that people go to Pinterest to be inspired, not necessarily to buy things. The fundamental intent of the site is, in some ways, opposed to ecommerce. (That could be changing, however.)
When to use Pinterest Ads
The average age of Pinterest users is a little older than TikTok, falling within the 25-34 range. Also, about 70% of Pinterest users identify as women.
If those demographics align with your product set, Pinterest could be a goldmine. Especially considering that they’re willing to spend more than users of other platforms.
More importantly, because people go to Pinterest for inspiration, ads and products that inspire are certain to perform better than those that simply push the product messaging on every other platform.
Further reading: Pinterest SEO: Your guide to brand discovery
Snapchat Ads
A stronghold amongst Gen Z, Snapchat offers several ad types:
- Single video and image ads that can show up in stories or as spotlights
- Story ads that include a series of images or videos that provide a little bit longer narrative
- Collection ads that let brands show different colors or styles, complementary products, bundles, or other groups of products that go well together
- Commercials that can last up to three minutes and which users can’t skip right away, allowing for better engagement
- AR Lenses and Filters that lets brands create interactive elements users can add to their snaps
Pros of Snapchat Ads
Snapchat Ads are great for reaching a younger audience. They also offer a less cluttered advertising field that offers easy ecommerce shop integration for direct-response purchases.
Approximately 65% of U.S. adults under 30 use Snapchat. In fact, people between 18–24 account for more than a third of the app’s total audience.
That means Snapchat could be even better than TikTok at reaching those audiences.
In addition, Snapchat saw an 60% increase in active advertisers year over year, showing that its changes in direct-response ad strategy are working.
Those direct-response changes have also led to better integration with ecommerce shops, with particular emphasis on sellers who use Shopify.
Cons of Snapchat Ads
Drawbacks of Snapchat Ads include rocketing cost per mille (CPM) costs, a heavy investment in untested AI developments, and continued unprofitability of its parent company Snap.
The successes of Snapchat’s direct-response strategy has attracted new advertisers, but it has come at a big cost.
Literally, the CPM for Snapchat ads shot up by 27.6% over a 12-month period ending in February 2025. In comparison, Tiktok went up about 9% over the same period, and Meta only 1%.
Over that time, Snapchat has been working on enhancing its Lens using AI. While the enhancements could lead to more advertising opportunities—such as augmented reality gaming integrations—their impact is still untested.
Also untested is the full impact of its updates to target cost per action (CPA) bidding. Snapchat’s transparency on ad analytics has always been a bit of an issue, and continued tweaks are not guaranteed to improve things.
All this to say that Snapchat has a lot of eggs in a variety of baskets—and it’s not clear yet which ones might end up helping or hurting advertisers.
When to use Snapchat Ads
If the idea of direct-response sales to a younger audience appeals to you, then Snapchat can be a good opportunity.
Similarly, if you’re allocating some of your marketing budget to experimentation, Snapchat could be a good place to do so, given its ongoing attempts to achieve profitability.
Reddit Ads
Reddit’s most common advertising offerings are various forms of promoted posts that appear in users’ feeds.
These include:
- Free-form ads that can include a mixture of text, images, videos, and gifs
- Image and video ads
- Carousel ads that let users flip through multiple images and videos
- Conversation ads that promote discussions around a product or brand
- Ask Me Anything (AMA) conversations that promote products and services
Here’s an example of a promoted post ad that appears in a Reddit feed.
A higher-impact ad opportunity includes creating an immersive “takeover” experience in a specific category or even across the entire Reddit ecosystem. A tamer version is available with “first view” ads that get impression priority over other ads, without fully taking over.
Pros of Reddit Ads
Reddit Ads are excellent at targeting niche, highly engaged communities. It also has a relatively low cost with okay conversion rates.
Since inception, the whole point of Reddit has been to allow users to gather and discuss common interests as a community. These communities, known as subreddits, can be broad, but many are very small—and rather passionate!—and tied to niche topics.
This makes it possible to get incredibly specific with audience targeting on Reddit in a way that can be more effective than, for example, targeting Facebook users’ interests and groups.
In addition, rates for Reddit ads tend to be lower than other platforms. While the click-through rate (CTR) can also be lower, conversions after the click perform well, especially when using retargeting strategies.
Cons of Reddit Ads
Reddit’s pain points lie in the platform’s unique culture and behaviors, the potential for making unintentional missteps, and the ineffectiveness of overly broad targeting.
Reddit has its own self-enforced code of conduct, known as “reddiquette.” It can take time to learn the rules and figure out how to engage productively with redditors on their own terms.
In fact, brands who are unfamiliar with Reddit etiquette can find themselves at best being ignored—or at worst actively under scrutiny.
Finally, because users tend to stick to discussions within communities of interest, broad-scale campaigns tend to underperform.
When to use Reddit Ads
Reddit is almost the inverse of Pinterest in terms of demographics. If you want to reach a younger audience that skews heavily male, it can be a good place to do so.
Keep in mind that the best performance will come with spending some time learning Reddit’s culture and identifying which communities will respond best to your ads.
If you’re not willing to put in that effort, then maybe Reddit ads aren’t for you.
Further reading: Reddit SEO
How to build an ecommerce advertising strategy
To build an effective ecommerce advertising strategy, you need to consider the needs of both your business and your customer, and then understand how they intersect.
Here’s an overview of how to get started, with links to additional information in each step.
1. Define business goals
Before you start any ecommerce campaign, you need to know what success looks like.
- Are you hoping to rapidly increase revenue?
- Are you looking to grow your customer base?
- Do you need more qualified leads?
- Do you want to clear out inventory to make room for new products?
- Do you want to build awareness of your ecommerce shop?
All of these may be goals you want to achieve. But you should choose just one to focus on for any given campaign.
2. Choose key performance indicators (KPIs)
Once you know your desired business outcomes, you can choose the metrics that best indicate success or failure.
Metrics that measure campaign success include:
- Cost per click (CPC) and cost per mille (CPM): An increasing CPC or CPM can indicate growing competition for similar ecommerce products.
- Click-through rate (CTR): This can tell you whether people are engaging with your ads—but be careful, because CTR can also be misleading.
- Impression share (IS): Greater IS indicates you’re beating out competitors for the same available ad space. Understanding why you may lose IS over time can be useful knowledge, as well.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS): Knowing how much you’re making after ad expenses is useful information, and ROAS can help you calculate that. Just be aware of potential ROAS pitfalls and how to offset them.
Metrics that measure business success include:
- Conversion rate (CVR): If you’re getting clicks from your ads, but they aren’t converting and achieving the goals you established in step one, then you may need to engage in some conversion rate optimization (CRO).
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Whereas ROAS measures ad expenses against the revenue a customer brings in, CAC measures includes not just ad spend but all of the marketing, sales, and vendor costs spent in gaining a new customer.
- Lifetime Value (LTV): Projecting how much a customer spends on average over the course of your entire relationship with them is a great way to determine other metrics—like how much you’re willing to pay to acquire and keep that customer.
There may be other metrics you want to use when needed. Some of them, like LTV:CAC or lifetime benefits (LTB) are calculated from the metrics above and can give you a finer understanding of your ecommerce ad campaign’s impact.
Dig deeper: How to track and measure PPC campaigns
3. Understand your customer journey
Customer journeys were never as simple as some models implied.
But as time goes on, not only do all the same traditional (i.e., offline) media channels exist, but we have an increasing array of new media channels. There are desktop and mobile devices, of course, but also smart TVs, watches, and speakers, as well as connected appliances and digital AI assistants.
Understanding all the ways your customers touch your brand—both before and after they convert—is essential to building a loyal, long-term relationship.
4. Map channels to funnel stages
The standard marketing funnel has three phases leading up to conversion:
- Awareness: The consumer realizes they have a particular need and starts exploring what options can help them out.
- Consideration: The consumer starts actively comparing and contrasting different products and solutions to whatever problem they’re trying to solve.
- Purchase: The consumer becomes a customer by purchasing the product (or otherwise closing the transaction).
Understanding how different ad platforms and ad types match up to these phases can make or break your campaign.
On the flip side, placing ads in the right places to cover the entire funnel can be a great way to maximize your advertising efforts.
Read more: How to implement a full-funnel PPC marketing strategy
5. Determine your creative strategy
To some extent your creative strategy will be determined by which channels you chose in the step above.
In general, advertising has become more visual. Not just in image and video apps like Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube, but also on Google and Amazon.
That said, text isn’t wholly dead. Developing content that informs, compares, and convinces is crucial to getting that high- and middle-funnel traffic.
Whether you go with text, image, or video formats, don’t forget that your ad creative should be responsive.
And don’t sleep on audio!
Podcasts are more popular than ever, and they’re better produced, as well. Many podcasts are also watchable now, meaning that creative which works both as an audiovisual ad and an audio-only ad could pull double duty.
6. Choose ad budget allocation framework
The total budget for an ad campaign includes more than the costs of bids and clicks.
Some examples of additional campaign costs include:
- How much will it cost to produce the creative pieces?
- Will you need to pay influencers or affiliate partners?
- Is there an incremental cost for collecting, storing, and analyzing data from the campaign?
The money for those things will come out of your total ad budget.
Then, you’ll need to allocate the remainder between the various ad channels and placements you want to pursue.
A good rule of thumb when allocating ecommerce advertising budget is to follow the 70-20-10 rule:
- 70% toward proven tactics
- 20% toward high-impact (and possibly a little riskier) tactics
- 10% toward experimental, complicated, or high-risk tactics
You should also feel comfortable adjusting these allocations as necessary, especially if you notice that a high-impact or riskier tactic is working well over the course of a campaign.
Further reading: PPC campaign budgeting and bidding strategies
7. Review performance and iterate
“Set it and forget it” does not work in the marketing world, and especially not with ecommerce advertising. Be prepared to continually measure, test, and refine your tactics over the course of the campaign.
Some of the newer AI enhancements like Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ make their own performance tweaks.
However, they may not offer the data you need to do your own assessment, so it’s important to keep an eye on things while your campaign runs—and your fingers ready to stop the campaign if something goes off the rails.
Read more: PPC budgeting: When to adjust, scale, and optimize with data
Targeting and segmentation tactics that work
One of the most important aspects of any ad campaign is reaching the audiences who will want your products.
But finding them can be hard.
On the one hand, if you knew who they were, you would have already reached out to them! On the other hand, being able to uncover new audiences is what helps your business thrive and grow.
Here are some things you can do to ensure you’re reaching the right audience.
Retargeting strategies
Retargeting is when you show ads to people who have previously visited your website, or perhaps even a specific product page on your site.
There’s two primary ways that retargeting occurs:
- Pixel retargeting is when you add code to your website that lets the ad platform track visitors, whom they can then identify later
- List retargeting is when you provide a list to the ad platform of visitors or other contacts, such as from a database or uploaded as a CSV
Retargeting is such a fundamental aspect of advertising that all of the ad platforms mentioned provide some way of doing so.
All of the other aspects of a retargeting campaign are the same, such as identifying your goals and deciding where to place your ads. However, since you now have more information about the audience, you should be sure to use it to your advantage.
One way to do that is to craft creative elements that speak to the user’s behavior:
- For example, if they viewed a specific product page, make sure your ad focuses on that product
- However, if the customer viewed multiple products, try rotating between ads for the different products they looked at to see which one might encourage them to come back
Another way you can approach retargeting is to develop a series of ads that works down the marketing funnel. The customer may see each ad in sequence, and the ad that syncs with their place in the funnel will prompt them to click.
Dig deeper: How to maximize your Google Ads remarketing campaigns
Lookalike and custom audiences
Lookalike and custom audiences give you a great way to find new customers that behave similar to people who have bought from you in the past.
Lookalike audiences are those that closely match your existing customer base.
- Most ad platforms have lookalike audiences, including Google Ads and Meta ads.
- Some others refer to the same idea by other terms, such as Pinterest’s “Actalike” audience targeting.
Custom audiences narrow in on specific online or offline behaviors that you track, including anything from visiting your website or viewing your social profile, to attending an event or signing up for a newsletter.
- Custom audiences can be used in list-based retargeting campaigns (see above).
- Separately, custom audiences can be targeted for campaigns based on similarities to existing users.
Demographic and psychographic targeting
Demographic and psychographic targeting are distinct approaches to segmenting an audience:
- Demographic targeting uses data-driven information to target an audience, such as age, gender, relationship status, financial bracket, or geographical location
- Psychographic targeting uses activities, interests, and opinions to target people who are psychologically inclined to be interested in your product
Both demographics and psychographics have always been an important part of online advertising. When targeting an audience for an ad campaign, you should always try to look at where demographics and psychographics overlap.
For example, say you sell pet food and pet care products. You may find from your sales data that pet owners tend to:
- Are between 28-45 years old
- Fall within a certain income bracket
- Live on the west side of town
If you target ads based on that information alone, then you’re going to include a lot of people who don’t have pets but who are in the target age range, income bracket, and geographical area.
Likewise, you’ll ignore potential people who do have pets but who might, say, live on the east side of town or who fall outside the selected age range or income bracket.
However, if you add psychographic data, you can better target the groups you want.
For example, you might be able to target based on:
- What topics they search for in Google
- What groups or pages they like on Facebook
- What influencers and brands they follow on various social media accounts
- What subreddits or Pinterest boards they follow
But if you have that information, why not use it and ignore the demographic data?
Because interest alone doesn’t necessarily indicate a need or the ability to buy the product.
By combining the two types of data, you can better target the audience that is mostly to convert and help you reach your campaign and business goals.
Further reading: Content creation: A psychological approach
Intent signals and behavior-based segmentation
Behavior-based segmentation refers to targeting an audience based on the actions they take, especially repeated actions and habits.
Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform.
This includes things like:
- What products do they buy?
- How often do they visit a particular website or use a particular app?
- Are they more likely to click a banner ad, image ad, interstitial, etc.?
- Do they tend to search for the same or similar keywords over and over?
- When they add something to a shopping cart, do they buy it right away or tend to leave it there for a period of time?
Note that actions used in behavioral targeting are different from the general activities people engage in as part of psychographic targeting.
Behavioral targeting is about how people operate, while psychographic targeting is about their interests.
Features like Google Ads’ in-market segments allow you to target people based on behaviors that signal an interest—and possibly an intent—to purchase items like yours.
Start your ecommerce advertising journey
The best way to get started with ecommerce ads is to dive in and get started.
Start small. Use the information in this guide to walk through your first few campaigns. Soon, you’ll start to get the hang of things. And once you understand the concepts, you’ll be able to pick out the pros and cons of different platforms for reaching your advertising goals.
You can also use an advertising toolkit that makes it easier to manage the two biggest ad platforms—Google and Meta—in a single place.
Explore more on
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