Paid Media Plan 2025: A Guide to Creating Online Ads

Paid traffic campaigns strengthen your brand’s digital presence, offer audience targeting options, and reach a wide, relevant, and highly engaged group of consumers—many of whom access platforms daily.

Already convinced it’s time to start (or improve) your investment in this strategy?

Getting ahead and planning now for next year gives you a major advantage. You’ll have time to run tests and make optimizations before 2025 starts—so you can kick off with high-performing paid media campaigns.

If you’re not sure where to begin, keep reading this article.

We’ll walk you through every step to building a paid media plan—and share tips for beginners.

What is Paid Media?

Paid traffic refers to ads that drive visitors to your pages or website via clicks that send them directly there.

This type of traffic requires investment in paid media across digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

Paid, Owned, and Earned Media

It’s important to note there are different types of media acquisition—and they should all be considered in your media plan:

• Paid media: Involves advertising on third-party platforms (like social networks or search engines) through paid placements—think online ads, radio spots, TV commercials, etc.
  
• Earned media: Also known as organic or word-of-mouth, this refers to any exposure you get without direct payment—such as shares from clients or partners.
  
• Owned media: This includes channels your brand controls, such as your social media pages, website, blog, or proprietary platforms like company radio, newsletters, or internal TV.
  

Want to learn more about why paid media is worth investing in—and who it’s best for? Check out our in-depth article:
“Turn Your Paid Traffic into a Qualified Lead Machine.”

10 Steps to Build Your Paid Media Plan

Ready to invest in paid media? Let’s walk through a step-by-step plan to get started:

1. Define your media goals

Every plan begins with clear objectives.

If you don’t know what your paid media campaigns are supposed to accomplish, it’ll be impossible to decide on channels, budgets, or which metrics to track.

Start here.

2. Do a competitive benchmark

Next: research.

Look at what other companies in your industry are doing with paid media—both direct and indirect competitors.

Go beyond the ads themselves: analyze platforms, landing pages, ad copy, offers, and visuals.

It’ll help you identify best practices—and what not to do.

3. Choose the right KPIs

Pick your key metrics carefully.

Good KPIs are important, easy to understand, measurable, and actionable. They’ll help you track progress and optimize, especially if you’re new to paid media.

KPIs also help justify budget and support future decision-making.

4. Select your ad platforms

Now it’s time to decide where to advertise.

There are tons of paid media channels available—but you don’t need to be everywhere. Choose the ones most aligned with your audience and objectives.

If you’re working with limited knowledge or budget, focus on 1–2 channels and master them before expanding.

5. Allocate budget across channels

With budget and platforms defined, distribute your investment accordingly.

If you’ve run similar campaigns in the past, use that data to guide your decisions.

And remember: with digital ads, you can reallocate budget later. Start with a test, then optimize based on performance.

6. Align campaigns to each stage of the funnel

Your paid media plan should address all funnel stages—top, middle, and bottom.

Many companies make the mistake of only running conversion-focused ads. That’s short-sighted.

Instead, plan content that nurtures cold, warm, and hot leads across the entire buyer’s journey.

This not only improves ROI but helps identify weak points in your funnel.

7. Target the right audience for each campaign

Different platforms attract different audiences. But that’s just the start.

Use each ad platform’s segmentation tools to narrow your audience by age, gender, location, interests, and more.

You can also run remarketing, use lookalike audiences, or layer custom segments to fine-tune who sees what.

And don’t forget to match each campaign’s messaging to its stage in the funnel.

8. Research relevant keywords

Keyword research is critical to ensure your ads reach the right people—especially for platforms like Google Ads.

Start with broader terms, then drill down to more specific ones.

Use tools like SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, and Ubersuggest to find high-volume, low-competition keywords.

Look at metrics like search volume, keyword density, and CPC to guide your choices.

9. Look for ad inspiration

Remember we talked about researching competitors?

Go further. Look at brands in other industries too—you’ll get fresh ideas and unexpected insights.

Visit the Facebook Ads Library, or check out our articles like “11 Facebook Ad Examples” or “Ad Headlines: How to Create Impactful Ads.”

10. Track your results consistently

Back in step 1, you defined goals and KPIs. Now it’s time to track them.

Decide how you’ll analyze the data, how often, and where it’ll be stored.

These insights are essential for optimizing and reallocating your budget effectively.

Tips for Beginners

Still feeling a little unsure? No problem—here are a few extra tips:

Keep testing and optimizing

The best way to learn paid traffic is by testing.

All platforms let you pause or adjust campaigns in real-time—so take advantage. Start small, measure, and iterate.

Start small, scale gradually

Not ready to invest heavily? No problem.

Start with a modest budget. As results roll in, increase your investment in what works: best channels, audiences, and creatives.

Set up tracking pixels

Facebook and Google offer tracking pixels—small pieces of code you install on your website.

They help you collect visitor data, run remarketing campaigns, and build better custom audiences.

Separate campaigns by goal

When building your paid media plan, keep your campaigns grouped by objective.

That way, you can easily measure results—and know exactly what’s working and what needs tweaking.

Retarget existing traffic

Already getting solid website traffic?

Use it.

Focus your paid media efforts on users who’ve interacted with your brand—via remarketing or retargeting. These people are much more likely to convert.

Download the Paid Media Plan Template

Enjoyed this article?

Then grab a free resource we built just for you:

Download our Paid Media Planning Template here.

👉 Tip: Make a copy of the file in your Google Drive to customize and edit it!