Struggling to make paid social perform? Here’s what’s working in 2025…
Paid social advertising is evolving quickly. Success in 2025 requires balancing automation, mastering platform mechanics, and focusing on creative testing and quality data. Jon Quinton, Founder, Overdrive Digital previews key insights he will be sharing at SocialDay’s Social Media Fest, backed by real-world examples from Overdrive Digital.
If you’re running paid social campaigns but are struggling to reach a sustainable growth trajectory, the chances are you might be simply focusing on the wrong approach or using tactics that simply don’t work anymore.
The problem is that the world of paid social has changed hugely over the past few years and continues to do so at a rapid rate. For us advertisers, this means needing to constantly be on top of changes, leading most of us to develop a strange sixth sense for shifts in platform behaviour.
In May this year, I’ll be presenting at the amazing SocialDay on what’s working in paid social for 2025. I’ll be including a set of real-life examples from our work at Overdrive Digital to really show you how things pan out.
AUTOMATION VS CONTROL
My view is that the real skill of a paid social advertiser in 2025 is having an extremely good feel for when to use automation vs when to retain control. This delicate balance between playing to the platform’s strengths vs not letting things run wild is a vital skill to develop.
The platform advice in many cases is to take advantage of automated campaigns to make your life easy and efficient. Always challenge this and be cautious of throwing everything into an automated campaign type with no input from yourself. It can work, but know what you need to keep control of.
TECHNICAL UNDERSTANDING
Following the point above, good social advertisers in 2025 are the ones who have taken the time to develop a solid technical understanding of how the platform works.
This means knowing how the AI works, what data the machine learning process needs to perform at its best, and how the pixel collects data and works to optimise your campaign delivery. If you don’t have an understanding of how this stuff works, you won’t stand a chance of getting the most out of your advertising.
Whilst on the surface, it may seem that the growth in AI means advertising has become a less technical process, I believe it’s almost the opposite and marketers must now be more technically savvy than ever. A little technical knowledge goes an extremely long way.
CREATIVE TESTING
If you want to drive great performance in 2025, you must have a solid pipeline of ad creative to test.
Whereas in years gone by, audience targeting was your biggest lever towards success, creative has firmly taken the crown. If you are lacking in creative, then you will really struggle.
In order to see success, make sure you have a flow of ads to test. Use different formats including static images and video to find out what really works best for your business. Test and experiment with different messaging.
The key is having a variety to help you find the winning formula for your ad account.
DATA SIGNALS
Almost every ad platform now relies (to some degree) on an automated optimisation process to make sure your ads get to the right people. In very simple terms, this means you have to clearly instruct the ad platforms on who exactly buys your product.
The more data, the better quality the data and the faster you input it…the better the optimisation process gets. Platforms like Meta thrive on volume.
In practical terms this means you need to make sure your pixel is firing accurately and passing conversion data back into your ad account. You also need to make sure you’re connecting sources such as your CRM to feed in email data.
The more you instruct the platforms, the better your results are going to get.
BASICS
As a closing point, despite the world of paid social changing at a rapid pace, the basics still matter in a very big way.
Make sure you think creatively about how to stand out from the crowd. Consider how to use your ads to truly engage your audience and solve pain points. Make sure you’re doing everything you can to convert your traffic and improve landing pages.
It might feel like advertising on social is getting harder, and it might to a certain degree, however in reality it’s just changing, and our job is to keep on top of it.
Join us in London at SocialDay’s Social Media Fest, 20-22 May, to hear Jon Quinton’s session on how to make sure your paid social is effective and truly contributing to the growth of your business. socialday.co.uk
