Paid media
Aussi : paid advertising, bought media, advertising spend, média payant, publicité payante
Any media you pay for: display ads, search ads, social ads, and sponsorships. You buy access to someone else's audience on a per-click, per-impression, or flat-fee basis.
What it is
Paid media is any channel where you pay a third party to distribute your message to their audience. It sits alongside two sibling categories:
- Owned media: channels you control (your website, app, email list, blog).
- Earned media: exposure you did not pay for (press coverage, organic shares, word of mouth).
Paid media is the fastest way to reach people who do not yet know you, because you rent attention instead of waiting to build it.
Common formats
- Search ads: text or shopping listings on search engines, usually priced per click (CPC).
- Display ads: banners and rich media on websites and apps, often priced per thousand impressions (CPM).
- Social ads: promoted posts, video, and lead forms on social platforms.
- Video and streaming ads: pre-roll, mid-roll, and connected TV placements.
- Sponsorships and native: paid placements in newsletters, podcasts, or content that matches the host format.
- Retail and marketplace ads: sponsored products inside e-commerce sites.
Why it matters
Paid media gives you speed, scale, and control. You can launch a campaign today, target specific segments, cap your spend, and turn it off instantly. It is measurable: most platforms report impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost. The trade-off is that results stop when the budget stops, and costs rise as competition for the same auction increases.
How it is used in practice
1. Set an objective (awareness, leads, sales).
2. Choose channels and audiences that fit that objective.
3. Buy inventory, usually through an auction, at a CPC, CPM, or CPA price.
4. Measure outcomes and compute ROAS (return on ad spend).
5. Reallocate budget toward what works.
Worked example
A company spends 10,000 EUR on search ads at a 2 EUR CPC. That buys 5,000 clicks. At a 4% conversion rate, it generates 200 customers. If each customer produces 150 EUR in revenue, total revenue is 30,000 EUR.
- Cost per acquisition (CPA): 10,000 / 200 = 50 EUR
- ROAS: 30,000 / 10,000 = 3.0x
That 3.0x ROAS is the number a CFO and CMO both watch. If it drops below the margin threshold, spend gets cut or the targeting gets fixed.
AI angle
Modern platforms use machine learning to automate bidding, predict conversions, and generate creative. This lowers the manual work but reduces transparency, so teams increasingly audit the models and the attribution behind reported results.