How to advertise on social media
Sponsored posts and paid boosts sold by the platform itself, almost always through a self-serve or agency ad account.
258 sellers tracked, across 46 markets.
What this is
Social advertising is bought inside the platform's own ad manager — Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest and the rest each run a self-serve auction, usually priced per thousand impressions or per click, with a minimum daily budget rather than a fixed insertion order. A smaller number of sellers here sell a sponsorship placement or an influencer-style post directly, priced flat per post rather than by auction.
Biggest sellers tracked
Ranked by Tranco — the site's own global traffic rank, not a payment.
Markets
How the buy usually happens
Read off the 358 ad spots on this channel with a recorded buying method — not every seller here has one yet.
What it's usually priced by
Read off every rate card recorded for this channel, whether or not the number itself was published.
Published rates
No published rate has been read for this channel yet — that is a gap in what has been checked, not evidence that nobody sells it.
Questions
Do I need an agency to buy social ads?
No — every major platform offers a self-serve ad account; an agency account exists for scale and shared billing across clients, not as a requirement to run a campaign at all.
Why is almost everything here priced by auction?
Social platforms overwhelmingly sell inventory by real-time auction rather than a published rate card, which is why a fixed figure rarely sits next to a listing here — the rate is whatever the auction clears for that audience and moment.
Is a 'sponsored post' the same as a paid ad?
Not always. Some platforms run a boosted post through the same ad auction as a banner; others sell a hand-placed sponsorship read or feature separately, priced flat rather than per impression.