Paid Media for Ecommerce: Strategy & ROI (2026)

What paid media means for ecommerce

TL;DR: Paid media for ecommerce spans Google Shopping (3-8x ROAS), Meta ads (2-5x ROAS), TikTok (1.5-4x ROAS), and programmatic display. Most brands should allocate 35-45% of budget to Google, 25-35% to Meta, and distribute the rest across TikTok, Amazon, and programmatic based on performance data.

Paid media is any marketing channel where you pay for visibility. Google Shopping ads, Meta (Facebook/Instagram) campaigns, TikTok promotions, programmatic display, influencer sponsorships — if you're paying to put your brand or products in front of people, that's paid media.

For ecommerce businesses, paid media is typically the primary customer acquisition channel. Organic search, social, and email drive meaningful revenue, but paid media is what scales. When you need 1,000 new customers next month and you needed them yesterday, you turn to paid channels because you can control the volume (within budget) and measure the return directly.

The challenge isn't whether to do paid media — it's how to do it profitably. The landscape is fragmented across a dozen platforms, each with its own auction mechanics, targeting options, and creative requirements. Budget allocation decisions are non-obvious. And the metrics that matter (ROAS, CAC, LTV) require disciplined tracking that many ecommerce companies get wrong.

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The core channels

Google Ads (Search + Shopping)

Google captures demand that already exists. When someone searches "buy running shoes size 10," they have purchase intent. Google Shopping and Search ads put your products in front of these high-intent shoppers.

Google Shopping is the workhorse for ecommerce paid media. Product listing ads (PLAs) show your product image, price, and store name directly in search results. Performance depends heavily on your product feed quality — titles, descriptions, images, pricing, and availability data that Google uses to match your products to search queries.

Google Search complements Shopping for branded terms, category terms, and competitor terms. Bidding on your own brand name (defensive bidding) is usually cheap and prevents competitors from stealing clicks. Category terms ("best running shoes") are more expensive but capture shoppers earlier in the journey.

Performance Max is Google's AI-driven campaign type that runs across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, and Gmail simultaneously. It optimizes budget allocation across these surfaces automatically. Results vary — some brands see better ROAS than manual campaigns, others find the lack of control frustrating. Test it alongside your manual campaigns rather than replacing them immediately.

Typical ROAS: 3-8x for mature ecommerce accounts on Google Shopping. Below 3x, your unit economics likely don't work. Above 8x, you're probably not spending enough to capture available demand.

Meta (Facebook + Instagram)

Meta excels at demand generation — putting products in front of people who weren't actively searching but match your target audience profile. The targeting capabilities, while reduced from pre-iOS 14 levels, are still the most sophisticated in social advertising.

Prospecting campaigns target new audiences based on interests, behaviors, demographics, and lookalike audiences built from your existing customer data. Creative quality is the primary lever — the same audience with better creative produces dramatically different results.

Retargeting campaigns re-engage people who've visited your site, added to cart, or engaged with your content but haven't purchased. Dynamic product ads (DPA) show people the exact products they viewed, which drives high conversion rates at relatively low cost.

Advantage+ Shopping is Meta's AI-driven campaign type (similar to Google's Performance Max). It combines prospecting and retargeting in a single campaign and lets Meta's algorithm optimize across audiences and placements. Early results are promising for ecommerce brands with sufficient conversion data.

Typical ROAS: 2-5x for ecommerce. Meta is generally lower ROAS than Google because it's generating demand rather than capturing it, but it reaches audiences that Google can't.

TikTok

TikTok has evolved from an experimental channel to a meaningful ecommerce advertising platform. Its strength is reaching younger demographics (18-34) with video-first creative that doesn't look like traditional advertising.

TikTok Shopping integrates product catalogs directly into the platform, enabling shoppable video ads and live commerce. The in-app shopping experience is still maturing, but early adopters in fashion, beauty, and consumer goods are seeing strong results.

Creative requirements are different. TikTok ads that look like ads perform poorly. Content that looks native to the platform — user-generated style, trending audio, authentic presentation — outperforms polished brand creative. Many brands work with creators to produce ads that feel organic rather than producing studio-quality video.

Typical ROAS: 1.5-4x, highly variable by vertical. TikTok is still in the efficiency-building phase for many advertisers, and creative iteration is key to finding what works.

Programmatic display

Programmatic advertising automates display ad buying across thousands of websites through real-time bidding. Platforms like Google Display Network, The Trade Desk, and Amazon DSP place banner, native, and video ads across the internet.

Retargeting is where programmatic display earns its keep for ecommerce. Showing product ads to people who browsed your site across the websites they visit subsequently keeps your brand top-of-mind during the consideration phase.

Prospecting via programmatic is lower-intent and lower-ROAS than search or social, but it builds awareness at scale. Contextual targeting (showing outdoor gear ads on hiking content) and audience targeting (reaching people who match your buyer profile) are the primary approaches.

Typical ROAS: 1-3x for prospecting, 3-8x for retargeting.

Amazon Ads

If you sell on Amazon, Amazon Ads is non-optional. Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads drive visibility within Amazon's marketplace. The dynamics are different from open-web advertising — you're competing for placement within a closed ecosystem where the platform is also your retailer.

Sponsored Products are the foundation. They appear in search results and on product detail pages, driving clicks to your listings. ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is the key metric — the percentage of ad-attributed sales spent on advertising.

Typical ACoS target: 15-30% depending on your margins and growth strategy.

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Budget allocation strategy

The most common question: how should I split my budget across channels? There's no universal answer, but here's a framework.

Start with your funnel

Bottom of funnel (high intent): Google Shopping, Google Search (branded), Amazon Ads, retargeting. These channels capture existing demand. Fund them first because they convert most efficiently.

Middle of funnel (consideration): Google Search (category), Meta retargeting, programmatic retargeting. These channels re-engage people who've shown interest. Fund them second.

Top of funnel (awareness): Meta prospecting, TikTok, programmatic prospecting, influencer. These channels create new demand. Fund them after your bottom-of-funnel channels are capturing available demand efficiently.

A starting allocation

For a typical ecommerce brand spending $20,000-100,000/month on paid media:

Channel	% of Budget	Role
Google Shopping/Search	35-45%	Demand capture
Meta (Facebook/Instagram)	25-35%	Demand generation + retargeting
Amazon Ads (if applicable)	10-20%	Marketplace visibility
TikTok	5-15%	Awareness + younger demographics
Programmatic/Other	5-10%	Retargeting + incremental reach

Adjust based on where you see the best results. If Meta is outperforming Google for your product category, shift budget accordingly. The allocation should be dynamic, not fixed.

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Measuring what matters

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Revenue attributed to ads divided by ad spend. A 4x ROAS means $4 in revenue for every $1 spent. This is the primary efficiency metric, but it doesn't tell the whole story — a 4x ROAS on $100 gross margin products is very different from 4x on $20 gross margin products.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Total marketing spend divided by new customers acquired. CAC should be compared against customer lifetime value (LTV) to determine sustainability. A $50 CAC is great if your LTV is $300; it's a problem if your LTV is $60.

Blended vs channel ROAS

Individual channel ROAS can be misleading because attribution is imperfect. A customer might see a Meta ad, Google it later, and buy through a Google Shopping ad. Google gets the credit, but Meta deserved the assist. Blended ROAS (total revenue / total ad spend across all channels) gives a truer picture of overall paid media efficiency.

Incrementality

The hardest question in paid media: would this sale have happened without the ad? Branded search captures people already looking for you — high ROAS but low incrementality. Prospecting campaigns reach new audiences — lower ROAS but higher incrementality. The best paid media strategies balance efficiency and incrementality.

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Common mistakes

Over-optimizing for ROAS. Squeezing every channel for maximum ROAS eventually shrinks your audience to people who were going to buy anyway. Growth requires investing in prospecting that won't hit your retargeting ROAS targets.

Ignoring creative. On social platforms, creative is the #1 performance lever. Spending hours on audience targeting while running mediocre creative is backwards. Test new creative weekly, not monthly.

Not tracking properly. Without correct conversion tracking, pixel setup, and attribution modeling, you're making budget decisions on bad data. Invest in measurement infrastructure before scaling spend.

Setting and forgetting. Paid media requires active management. Auction dynamics change, creative fatigues, competitors enter and exit. A campaign that was profitable last month might not be this month.

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The bottom line

Paid media for ecommerce is a discipline, not a tactic. It requires understanding the role each channel plays in your acquisition funnel, allocating budget based on data rather than habit, and continuously testing creative and audiences to maintain efficiency as you scale.

The brands that win at paid media are the ones that treat it as a system — channels working together, creative constantly refreshed, measurement rigorously maintained — rather than a collection of independent campaigns on different platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions

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