Buying traffic · also called social ads, paid social media advertising
Paid social
Paid social is advertising bought on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest, shown inside people's feeds and stories.
Paid social means paying a social network to place your image or video among the posts people scroll through. The platform's algorithm decides who sees it, guided by the goal the advertiser sets and the results it reports back.
Paid social is now a main source of paid traffic for search arbitrage, in the model called Social-to-search. The buyer runs an ad on Meta or TikTok, the click lands on a content page carrying related search terms from an RSOC feed, and revenue arrives when the visitor clicks a search ad.
Two things make social different from native. First, the platforms optimise themselves: feed the algorithm accurate revenue signals through a Conversions API and it finds more people like the ones who earned money. Second, enforcement is strict and automated. Ad review can reject creatives, and an account ban can stop a business overnight, so compliance on both the social platform and the feed is part of the cost of doing business.
Think of it like this
It is like paying to have your flyer handed out inside a busy club, where the doorman decides which guests receive it based on who reacted well last time.
An example
For example, a buyer spends $500 on Meta and receives 2,500 clicks (CPC $0.20). If the feed pays $650 for those visits, ROAS is 130% and ROI is 30%.
Related terms
Social-to-search
Social-to-search is buying visitors from ads on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or TikTok and sending them to a page that earns from search ads.
Meta Advantage+
Advantage+ is Meta's family of AI automation features that choose audience, placements, budget split and creative variations for Facebook and Instagram ads.
Conversions API (CAPI)
The Conversions API is Meta's server-to-server interface for sending conversion events and their values to Meta directly, without relying on the visitor's browser.
Ad review (ad approval)
Ad review is the check an advertising platform runs on each ad and its landing page before, and sometimes after, allowing it to be shown.
Account ban
An account ban is an ad platform's decision to disable an advertiser's account, stopping all its ads, usually for breaking or appearing to break advertising policies.
Learning phase
The learning phase is the early period after launching or significantly editing a campaign, when the platform's algorithm is still testing who to show the ad to.