---
title: "What is paid social? | AdBuyMCP"
description: "Advertising inside social platforms, bought against platform-owned interest, demographic and behavioural audiences."
url: "https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/paid-social"
---

[Home](https://adbuymcp.com/) / [Glossary](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary) / Paid social

Channels and formats

# What is paid social?

Advertising inside social platforms, bought against platform-owned interest, demographic and behavioural audiences. The platforms optimise delivery inside their own inventory using signals no third party can see.

Also called social advertising social media ads

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What it means here

## Here is what the term means for a UK buyer

The definition above holds anywhere. Buying media in the UK adds the detail below, including where AdBuyMCP does something different.

Social was £11.5bn of the UK market in 2025, on AA/WARC figures published in April 2026. For most buyers running social on its own, the platforms' own ad managers are free and the right tool. An AdBuyMCP awareness plan leaves paid social to you, alongside search, LinkedIn lead gen and outbound, and reaches your market on out-of-home, streaming TV, podcasts and ChatGPT ads. In AdBuyMCP's catalogue, interest terms score 62, demographics alone 48 and a bare city buy 38.

Read next

- [Search and social beside an awareness plan Goes deeper](https://adbuymcp.com/compare/google-and-meta)
- [The four channels in an awareness plan Channels](https://adbuymcp.com/channels)
- [What UK awareness advertising costs Cost](https://adbuymcp.com/cost)
- [Most B2B buyers have vendors in mind before they search Guide](https://adbuymcp.com/guides/uk-media-buying-for-b2b-marketers)

Type your company website or work email to see who we think buys from you and what reaching them 3, 5 or 12 times a week would cost.

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Related terms

## These terms sit next to this one

Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.

- ### [Paid search](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/paid-search)
  Advertising against what someone typed into a search engine, bought by keyword and match type and usually paid per click. The only major channel where the buyer is responding to stated intent rather than inferring it.
- ### [Lookalike audience](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary#lookalike-audience)
  An audience built by finding people who resemble a seed group (usually the advertiser's existing customers) on whatever signals the platform holds. The resemblance model is the platform's and is not disclosed.
- ### [Deduplication](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary#deduplication)
  Removing the double-counting that occurs when the same person is reached by more than one channel or placement in a campaign, so that combined reach reflects distinct people rather than the sum of each channel's separate count.

Same group

## These terms are also in Channels and formats

The channels UK advertisers buy, and the words the sellers use for them.

- [Connected TV (CTV)](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/ctv)
- [Addressable TV](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/addressable-tv)
- [Linear TV](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/linear-tv)
- [Digital out-of-home (DOOH)](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/dooh)
- [Out-of-home (OOH)](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary#out-of-home)
- [Cinema advertising](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/cinema-advertising)
- [Digital audio advertising](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/digital-audio)
- [Podcast advertising](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary/podcast-advertising)

[All 81 terms](https://adbuymcp.com/glossary)