What is paid media? Benefits of paid channels for businesses

Paid media is a familiar concept to anyone working in marketing. Businesses have to pay to get the benefits it offers. If you want an effective, successful media campaign, it is worth learning about this approach. Mona Media will help you understand more about what paid media is and the types of paid media that many people use today.

What is paid media?

Paid media, also called paid communications, is a media channel that organizations, businesses and individuals all pay to use. Paid media includes posts by celebrities connected to a brand, ads in newspapers and other media, ads on websites and ads on PPC, CPM, CPC…

The goal of paid media is to grow a business's revenue, raising both brand awareness for customers with high efficiency, and it is one of the three Digital Marketing most popular types at the moment.

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Benefits of paid media for businesses

Paid media gives a business a number of benefits, such as:

Reach to potential customers

A business gets more chances to reach customers, spread the word about its brand and promote its products and services. Even a young business can find more customers through celebrity influence, professional online ads and press coverage that come with paid media.

More traffic to your website and fanpage

Marketing experts rate paid media highly for measuring engagement on website. After a paid media campaign, website traffic grows faster.

Stronger brand recognition

Paid media marketing has a big influence, and good ads strengthen brand recognition. When many people visit the website, it also climbs more easily to the top of the search results, which gives the brand more chances to be noticed and spread.

Easily measure

Besides strong engagement, better brand recognition and more website traffic, paid media is also easy to manage. Advertisers can measure how it performs through metrics and analytics, then improve or scale up the campaign.

More opportunities in the market

Paid media content is highly creative. It uses striking banners, combines several ad formats on social media and invests in ads that feel natural, so it attracts potential customers. Paid media improves your chances of finding new customer markets, reaching your target customers and converting them, and it can raise revenue more than free forms of advertising.

Common types of paid media

Here are the most widely used types of paid media, for your reference.

Paid social media

Social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are growing fast. Almost everyone with a smartphone uses at least one of them.

Paid social media studies the behavior, habits and interests of social media accounts to “draw a portrait of the customer”, then picks the best way to reach them.

Paid social media can also automatically remind users to message or like a business page, which boosts engagement. When just one customer sees your ad, their likes, shares and comments are seen by dozens or hundreds of their friends. This helps build brand recognition, sparks curiosity and raises the chance that people take action.

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Banner Ads

This is a visual form of paid media based on images, shown on a website for a set period of time. With banner ads, a business can easily draw visitors to its landing page or to the advertiser's website.

Native Ads

This is a media format made up of text and vivid images, and it is the most visual of all. It includes ads that can influence conversion rate, shown on websites as sponsored content, in-feed ads or display ads.

PPC and PPI

PPI and PPC are both paid media models for ads on search engines, and you can easily spot them on blogs, websites and other media. PPI means paying for each impression, and PPC means paying for each click.

As soon as an ad starts showing on a platform, PPI charges you whether or not the user clicks on it. With PPC (Pay Per Click), the business only pays for the customers who click on the ad.

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OOH and DOOH

OOH (out-of-home) is outdoor advertising without digital technology. DOOH (digital out-of-home) combines OOH with digital technology to create striking ads that catch more eyes.

With DOOH advertising, a business can reach customers faster and more professionally, and build a stronger emotional link between the brand and its customers. It usually runs in large outdoor spaces such as bus stops and big posters.

Large screens on downtown buildings and main roads are a good example, with motion effects and high-tech visuals. DOOH (digital out-of-home) is regarded as the most effective, far-reaching use of high technology in media, and it is widely used today.

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Paid, earned and owned media compared

Businesses new to paid advertising, and marketers new to the job, are often unsure whether to choose Paid, Owned or Earned Media. When running a campaign, Marketing Online deciding whether to start with Owned, Earned or Paid Media means first understanding these three forms of media advertising.

• As we said above, Paid Media is the field of paid media advertising. Getting PR articles on online news sites, or articles and reviews from influential celebrities, takes Paid Media.
• Owned Media is a form of owned media. This kind of promotion usually runs on social channels the business owns, such as Facebook, YouTube or Instagram.
• Earned Media refers to media that is not paid for but is created and shared by other people about a company, product or service. It can include press articles, blog posts, users' opinions on social media, product reviews or videos posted on YouTube. Earned media comes from the public's natural interest and engagement, and it is often seen as more valuable than paid forms such as traditional advertising. It can help build and strengthen customers' trust in a brand or product.

How paid, earned and owned media relate in marketing

Paid, Owned and Earned Media are carried out differently, but they are closely connected. Marketers can combine all three in one advertising strategy, or run each form of digital media on its own.

• Ads Paid Media helps a brand appear in top positions, where customers see it more easily. A brand's stories and messages attract customers, which builds brand recognition and helps find potential customers.
• Earned Media helps spread the brand and builds customers' trust in it. A business's chance of winning loyal customers depends heavily on Earned Media.
• Owned Media is advertising through useful information shared with customers. This information helps customers make informed decisions and prompts them to buy.

If a business wants to build brand awareness and strengthen trust, it should choose Paid and Owned Media. After that, it should keep using Earned Media to deepen brand awareness and raise credibility further.

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Case studies of successful paid media

Many Vietnamese businesses have succeeded with campaigns Marketing built on Paid Media. Successful paid media case studies include Bách Hóa Xanh and Biti's Hunter. The strong influence of Paid Media helped these brands secure their position in the retail market and post big revenue gains.

Bitis Hunter

Biti's started in 1982 and has spent more than 40 years with Vietnamese customers. The brand was already well established, highly trusted and known for product quality. But it was only when the Biti's Hunter campaigns took off and were well received that Biti's revenue reached a record high.

Famous songwriters, singers and artists appeared in Biti's Hunter ads and set off a big wave of shopping among many users.

Soobin Hoàng Sơn's song “Đi Để Trở Về” (Going Away to Come Back) in late 2016 and early 2017 became an ad campaign with a big impact. In later ads, Biti's Hunter used the songs “Đi Để Trở Về 2, 3, 4, 5, 6” with many other well-known names. Its breakthrough stood out even more with ads inspired by messages such as Love Yourself – Bước Về Phía Mặt Trời (Walk Toward the Sun), Cảm Hứng Tự Hào Từ Đường Phố (Pride Inspired by the Streets) and Go For Love. Many customers wanted to own Biti's Hunter products right away.

Điện Máy Xanh

The “Blue Whirlwind” of Điện Máy Xanh also gave the brand new breakthroughs in brand recognition, trust and buying momentum. Fun, creative ads with a distinctive message, imagery and melody set off a big shopping craze for Điện Máy Xanh.

Điện Máy Xanh's Paid Media campaign used two platforms, Facebook and YouTube, to create the blue whirlwind in summer 2016. The ads delivered a clear message through fun visuals and sound, and reached customers very effectively.

Buzzmetrics reported that the Blue Whirlwind brought Điện Máy Xanh more than 400,000 comments and shares in just over a month. This strategy let Điện Máy Xanh claim its place and grow its brand and influence well beyond competitors such as Nguyễn Kim, Điện Máy Chợ Lớn and Pico. Yet Điện Máy Xanh entered the market after those electronics retailers.

The power of Paid Media can change how businesses compete, support healthy competition and give you the momentum to pull ahead of rivals in the same field.

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Paid media FAQ

While learning about Paid Media, people often have more questions about this approach. Here are the questions people ask most about Paid Media.

Is paid media expensive?

Paid media is paid communications. This channel uses the influence of well-known people and media with deep reach to do marketing, so its cost is fairly high. In return, the results are better than other campaigns.

Paid media does better than other forms at spreading and building the brand, raising user trust, widening your customer base and driving purchases. If you want to advertise on Facebook to raise your conversion rate, you can look at our Facebook Ads service provider at MONA Media.

Should a business use Paid, Owned and Earned Media?

Using Paid Media together with Owned or Earned Media helps a business grow well in the online market. Some businesses now combine all three into a “Paid – Owned – Earned” strategy, which in short means “Pay – Own – Spread”.

The combined effect of the three helps build brand recognition, reach customers quickly, convert sales and build trust, and it leaves a stronger brand impression. With this strategy, businesses can compete fairly and effectively against rivals. Even young businesses using “Paid – Owned – Earned” have a good chance of overtaking heavyweight competitors in the same field.

When should you not use Paid Media?

Paid Media has a big influence and wide reach through many ad formats. Prepare your finances and budget for it, and make sure your product or service quality and brand image are solid. If your ads have strong influence and convert well but your service is poor, it works against customers' trust.

In that case, a business can quickly make a name for itself, but it can also be pushed out of today's harsh online arena full of competitors. If your business image, website, and product or service quality and value are not in good shape yet, do not use Paid Media yet.

From the information above, paid media is a paid channel, but its benefits are hard to deny. MONA hopes this article has helped you understand what paid media is, along with other useful related points, so you can choose and use the type of paid media that suits your business best.