Paid Search vs. Paid Social: Which One is Better for Your Startup’s Growth

When it comes to scaling a product or building pipeline, paid advertising can be your fastest lever. But only if you know where to put your money.

You’ve likely heard of paid search and paid social. Maybe you’ve even dabbled in both. One promises high-intent leads ready to convert. The other puts your brand in front of thousands before they even know they need you. But figuring out which to choose (and when) can feel like a guessing game, especially if you're juggling MVP development, finding product-market fit, or stretching a lean budget.

This guide breaks down the real differences between paid search and paid social. We’ll cover how each one works, when to prioritize which, how to spot red flags in performance, and how the smartest startups use both together to drive sustainable growth.

Let’s demystify the ad strategy that actually works and help you make smarter decisions, faster.

The importance of paid advertising in scaling businesses

Paid advertising can be the cornerstone for increasing how you scale growth for your business. It works extremely well if:

1. You are currently building a product or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP is an early version of a product that’s functional) and want to test out the viability of the product in the market. This helps understand Return on Investment (ROI) expectations through Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
2. You’ve nailed Go-To-Market (GTM), achieved Product-Market Fit (PMF), and now want to scale towards a healthier pipeline with more relevant leads.

The most important factor when it comes to paid advertising is that it serves as the top of the funnel for your brand—from discoverability to conversion. You’re reaching out to people who can benefit from what you have to offer and if what you’re offering is truly solving a critical problem in their lives, it’s only waiting to be discovered. Leads essentially move through the funnel almost on their own, cutting down conversion time and effort tremendously. Iterating, retargeting, and optimizing ads through observing user behavior and ad performance can further improve ROI and scale your business without hitting a plateau.

However, paid advertising, on its own, is an umbrella term that trickles down into various verticals which have only diversified with the advent of social platforms, websites, and search engines. Two of the most prominent and widely-used (and widely misunderstood) subsets of paid advertising are paid search and paid social.

What is paid search in advertising?

Paid search is one of the fastest ways to grow by paying for advertising your brand on SERPs like Google and Bing. This is a form for PPC (Pay per click) advertising where you pay for user interactions.

An example of paid search could be sponsored search ads on Google SERP when you search for ‘paid advertising’.

Example of a paid search ad on Google

What makes paid search one of the most potent channels for acquisition is search intent, relevance, and targeting. Paid search has become increasingly more nuanced as well as intricate, allowing users such as yourself to selectively advertise based on targeted keywords and interest, which helps improve CTR (Click-through rate) and eventually, conversions.

The real power of paid search lies in its control and structure. You’re not just choosing keywords, rather you’re choosing how those keywords trigger your ads. Match types help you shape this precision:

• Exact match hits only highly specific queries (perfect for transactional keywords).
• Phrase match catches mid-funnel discovery terms.
• Broad match casts a wider net; useful for early tests but risky if not paired with exclusions.

Search ads can also include ad extensions like sitelinks, callouts, and pricing details, giving your ad more real estate and relevance. If you're in ecommerce, Google Shopping Ads let you showcase product visuals and prices directly on the SERP.

Targeting in search is primarily intent-based (driven by the keywords users type), but you can layer it with:

• Location targeting
• Device targeting
• Demographic filters
• Audience lists (retarget previous site visitors or custom audiences)

It’s this mix of intent and control that makes search ads so lethal when optimized correctly.

Say you’re a research assistant and have a paper to publish before summer break. You search for ‘AI research tool’ on Google, and an ad pops up. You click on the ad, explore the website, and try out the product. It turns out, this is exactly what you were looking for. You quickly get a monthly subscription to start work on your project.

This example gives a complete picture of what discovery and conversion look like from the user’s point of view.

When should you go for paid search?

• If you have a product or a service that’s widely used or well-known, paid search is great because there is a large pool of keywords to choose from.
• It’s the quickest way to reach a relevant audience and capitalize on search intent which is extremely high for search ads.
• Great intent leads to faster conversions and maybe even quicker ROAS.
• Since the leads you get through paid search have high intent, time to conversion can potentially be lower i.e. faster conversions.
• Gives you a competitive edge in your market by finding keyword opportunities with feasible search volume, identifying gaps, and optimizing ads for your budget for best results.

What is paid social in advertising?

Social media has become the primary source for content creation and consumption. Everyone with access to a digital device also has access to social media accounts where personal preferences can be leveraged to show targeted ads to users. These ads can be in various formats - creatives, videos, text, etc. and are displayed to users based on relevance.

Paid social gives you near-limitless flexibility when it comes to formats and targeting depth. You can run:

• Static image ads for quick awareness
• Carousel ads to showcase multiple features or products
• Video ads (short-form or long-form) for engagement and storytelling
• Story/Reel ads that mimic native platform behavior and feel organic

But what makes paid social truly powerful is its audience granularity. You can target:

• By demographics (age, gender, language, location)
• By interests and behaviors (e.g., recent purchasers, fitness enthusiasts, parents)
• Through custom audiences (retargeting site visitors or email lists)
• With lookalike audiences (finding new people who behave like your best customers)

When these formats and audience tools are layered smartly, paid social becomes more than just an awareness channel—it becomes a system for nurturing, retargeting, and building lifetime value.

These ads are great for reaching more people in your target audience and creating brand awareness early on.

Example of a paid social ad creative

Say your interest lies in arts and crafts. As a result, you interact across platforms with art content, search for art supplies, and participate in art-related communities. While swiping through Instagram, you come across a company that sells canvases or specific art stuff you’re interested in. Although, at that moment, you weren’t going to buy anything, the ad made you aware of a new brand that sells what you’re looking for.

When should you go for paid social?

• The most effective way to reach a large audience and improve brand awareness.
• If you have your target audience figured out, paid social is great for retargeting to keep your audience engaged with your brand.
• If your product has a long purchasing cycle, retargeting with social media ads can be great for nurturing leads through the funnel.
• Great for early brands looking to make a first impression.
• Low-effort brand marketing: create social accounts and begin branding efforts without delay or much help.
• Great for driving engagement and running campaigns for efforts other than just branding. Example: workshops, projects, events, community, etc.
• Improved probability for word of mouth and viral marketing since you’re reaching a larger audience.

What is the difference between paid search and paid social?

Table below compares the main characteristics of paid search and paid social:

Understanding where each channel fits in your funnel

To get the most out of paid media, it helps to think in terms of the marketing funnel—how people move from discovering your brand to converting into paying customers. Paid search and paid social play different but equally important roles across these funnel stages:

• Top of Funnel (TOFU) – This is where paid social thrives. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn help you get in front of audiences who didn’t know you existed but fit your target persona. It’s about reach, curiosity, and sparking interest.
• Middle of Funnel (MOFU) – Here, retargeting kicks in. You’re showing ads to people who engaged with your brand but didn’t convert. Both paid search (via RLSA or branded search) and paid social (via custom audiences or video views) can nurture leads here.
• Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) – This is paid search’s sweet spot. You’re capturing high-intent users searching for exactly what you offer (e.g., “best CRM for freelancers” or “AI email assistant for founders”). These clicks convert faster and more efficiently, especially when landing pages and keywords are aligned.

When you map your budget and creative strategy to this funnel structure, you avoid common mistakes like running bottom-funnel search ads to cold audiences or wasting social ad impressions on audiences ready to buy. Each stage requires different messaging and different channels are better suited for each.

Why startups are choosing both paid social and paid search for advertising

When you treat paid search and paid social as separate silos, you pay twice for the same user journey. High-performing growth teams line the two channels up like cogs in a single flywheel:

1. Seed demand with paid social
   • Launch broad-interest or lookalike campaigns on Meta, TikTok, or LinkedIn.
   • Optimise for video views or landing-page views to build warm audiences at a low CPM.
2. Harvest intent with paid search
   • Retarget those warm visitors on Google or Microsoft Ads with branded or high-intent keywords.
   • Layer RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) so only users who have seen your social creatives see your search ads and cut wasted spend on cold clicks.
3. Cross-channel creative echo
   • Echo the same headline or value prop from social into your search ad copy and landing page. Recognition sharpens click-through rates and lifts Quality Score.
   • Keep a single offer running across both channels (e.g., “Start a 14-day trial”) to avoid message mismatch.
4. Measurement loop
   • Track view-through conversions in social and assisted conversions in Google Analytics. These often reveal 10-25% more revenue than last-click models show.
   • Shift budget every two weeks: scale the channel delivering the cheapest CAC, cap spend where ROAS stalls.
5. Budget ratios that evolve
   • Launch phase: 70% social / 30% search (drive awareness fast).
   • Growth phase: 50% social / 50% search (balance nurture + intent).
   • Mature phase: 30% social / 70% search (maximise bottom-funnel efficiency while protecting the brand).

Run both channels for at least one full buying cycle (often 90 days) before judging performance. Momentum compounds: every extra 1,000 social impressions feeds new high-intent searches; every extra search click refines your social lookalikes. When they work in concert, paid social pulls people in and paid search closes the deal, thus creating a loop that scales without saturating a single channel.

Paid search vs. paid socials: How do you know what’s best for you?

It can be difficult to choose between paid search or paid social to begin with and budget constraints further limit your decisions. But there are some questions you can ask that can help you out -

• What are your short and long-term plans when it comes to scaling your company?
  • Do you want instant results or do you have room to experiment and learn about the intricacies of advertising? Paid search is more result-driven while paid social is more about putting yourself out there and seeing how the audience interacts with your brand.
• Do you want to see quick results or have room to experiment?
  • If generating leads and straightforward ROI is your primary goal then paid search ads can be right for you whereas paid social can be better for building brand awareness.
• If you’re planning to go ahead with paid search, what are the keywords you’re targeting?
  • Paid search relies entirely on keyword targeting. Not landing on the right keywords or not being able to figure them out can be a sign to not go ahead with it. If however you do find the right keywords, observe and iterate for better results.
  • If the targeted keywords have low search volume, you will not see many impressions, let alone conversions. What’s more, targeting broader keywords to compensate for search volume will only result in irrelevant and lower intent traffic. In this case, your best bet is to opt for paid social to reach a larger, relevant audience.

Here’s some advice

Realistically, any form of advertising requires time to understand and optimize. At least 3 months’ worth of time and budget is necessary for any sort of efficient ROAS and you have to have the patience and appetite to endure through that phase.

Paid search and paid social can be expensive, and allocating a small budget might mean that you don’t put enough capital to understand how ads are working for you. If the budget is too low, for example, you won’t see enough results to have any concrete proof of whether or not paid media worked for you. In fact, the results at the end of the 3rd month might be irrelevant to the 1st month because the patterns are not comparable or even coherent. On the other hand, if you allocate a lot of budget in a short time then the results can be biased because of seasonality or external factors that are not great indicators of reliable pattern.

This is what we’re here for

All this can be extremely overwhelming. Learning advertising from scratch isn’t a cake walk and given everything you already have on your plate, it might be too much for you to stomach. This is what we’re here for—Kaya specializes in conducting everything from research to results to analytics.

Consider us as part of your team. We don’t function as a typical marketing agency and deliver 10x faster growth for a fraction of the price.

• We will launch your campaigns for you across channels and constantly optimize to scale growth.
• Dashboards that give you a transparent view of your ads—how are they performing, important KPIs, analytics, and ROI.
• End-to-end task management tool so you can spend time on growth and not spend time managing projects.