What is paid advertising?

Paid advertising is the broad category of marketing in which a business pays to have its message placed in front of a defined audience, rather than waiting for that audience to discover it organically. For founders weighing a limited marketing budget, understanding what paid advertising involves — and where it sits relative to organic channels — helps inform a more deliberate decision about when and how to invest.

Paid advertising encompasses a wide range of formats and platforms: search ads that appear when someone types a relevant query, social media ads served to defined audience segments, display ads shown across websites, video ads on streaming platforms, and more. In each case, the business pays the platform — typically on a per-click, per-impression, or per-conversion basis — to reach an audience that would otherwise be unlikely to encounter the business's content organically.

Paid advertising can generate results quickly, but requires continuous spend to maintain — when the budget stops, so does the traffic. For early-stage businesses, the decision to invest should be grounded in understanding what a customer is worth and whether the likely cost per acquisition makes financial sense. Our guide to paid advertising for UK founders covers the main formats and when each is most appropriate.