Ads and Pixels / Online advertising platforms

Online advertising platforms, compared honestly

Twelve places an ad can run, what each one is actually good for, and how to pick without fifteen browser tabs open.

Every screen, one signal

One place. Every screen.Explore below

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How to read this list

This guide covers twelve online advertising platforms, and every one of them will tell you it's the right place to advertise. Some are, for your business — most aren't, or aren't yet. We stick to three questions per platform: who's actually there, what kind of ad works, and what it takes to start. Ads and Pixels runs campaigns across most of these online advertising platforms from one place — we say plainly, below, which we connect to today and which we don't. Nothing here is a ranking: a billboard and a Google Search ad solve different problems, so do a TikTok video and a LinkedIn post. Read what matches your goal and what you're willing to make, and skip the rest.

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Google Ads — Search, Shopping, YouTube and Performance Max

Google Ads covers more ground than any other of the online advertising platforms here, because it's really four ad systems under one account: Search (text ads on results pages), Shopping (product listings), Display (banner ads across millions of sites) and YouTube. Performance Max blends all of them into one automated campaign type that Google's own algorithm allocates across placements. Best for: businesses selling something people already search for by name or need ("plumber near me," "running shoes size 10") and anyone with a product feed. What it costs to start: no platform minimum; cost per click ranges from under $1 in low-competition categories to well over $50 in categories like legal and insurance. Getting started: an ad account, a way to pay, and — for Shopping or Performance Max — a product feed through Google Merchant Center. Watch for: Search and Shopping need real budget to leave the platform's "learning phase" with useful data; a $5/day budget in a competitive category won't tell you much in a month.

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Meta — Facebook and Instagram

Meta ads run across Facebook and Instagram feeds, Stories and Reels, plus Messenger and, for some advertisers, WhatsApp. It's a visual, interruption-based format — people aren't searching for you, so the creative has to earn the stop. Best for: businesses with a strong photo or video, a local service area, or a product that benefits from social proof (reviews, before/after, unboxing). Meta's targeting and lookalike audiences are still among the most refined available to small advertisers. What it costs to start: no minimum; realistic test budgets start around $10–20/day per ad set. Getting started: a Business Manager, a Page, and a pixel or Conversions API connection if you want to measure what happens after the click. Watch for: regulated categories — housing, employment, credit and a few others — fall under Meta's Special Ad Category rules, which turn off ZIP-code targeting and narrow age/gender options automatically; a campaign built without knowing that can get flagged or underperform for reasons that look like a targeting mistake but are actually a policy one.

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TikTok

Among native advertising platforms, TikTok ads live closest to organic video: they run inside the same For You feed and perform best when they don't look like ads — native-feeling, vertical, sound-on video wins over a polished 16:9 spot reused from TV. Best for: brands targeting a younger or trend-driven audience, and anyone who can produce (or partner with a creator to produce) short-form video regularly, not just once. What it costs to start: no platform minimum, though ad account approval and a developer app connection take a bit more setup than Meta or Google. Getting started: a TikTok Business Center account, a Spark Ads or standard video upload, and ideally a creator relationship — organic-style creative consistently outperforms brand-made ads on this platform. Watch for: TikTok's location targeting has no radius option and cannot exclude locations, so hyper-local campaigns (a single-city service business) have less precision here than on Meta or Microsoft.

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Microsoft Advertising

Among online advertising platforms, Microsoft Advertising runs search ads on Bing, plus its partner network (which includes Yahoo and AOL search results) and a Meta-style Audience Ads product for display and native placements. Search volume is a fraction of Google's, but so is the competition and, usually, the cost per click. Best for: B2B, older or higher-income audiences (Bing's user base over-indexes here), and any advertiser already running Google Search who wants a second search channel at a lower cost per click with minimal extra setup — campaigns can be imported directly from a Google Ads account. What it costs to start: no minimum; typically 20–50% lower cost per click than the equivalent Google Search term. Getting started: a free self-serve developer token and a Microsoft Advertising account. Watch for: Microsoft's radius targeting goes up to 800 km, far wider than Meta's, so a "local" radius copied over with Meta's limits in mind can end up covering several states here.

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LinkedIn ads reach people by job title, seniority, company size and industry — data no consumer platform has. It's also, routinely, the most expensive click among online advertising platforms. Best for: B2B software, professional services, recruiting and anything selling to a specific job function rather than a general consumer. What it costs to start: no platform minimum, but realistic cost per click runs $5–15+ depending on targeting, well above Meta or Google Search in most categories. Getting started: a Campaign Manager account and, for retargeting with your own audience lists, a separate audience-segment permission on top of standard API access. Watch for: LinkedIn has no radius or ZIP-code targeting at all — the smallest geography available is a metro region — so it's a poor fit for a single-location local business no matter how well the job-title targeting matches.

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Among online advertising platforms, Pinterest ads (Promoted Pins) sit inside a platform people use to plan — home projects, weddings, meals, purchases months out. The intent is closer to search than social. Best for: home goods, fashion, food, weddings, DIY and anything visually driven with a longer purchase cycle. What it costs to start: no minimum; cost per click is generally lower than Meta or TikTok in comparable categories. Getting started: a Pinterest Business account; new ad accounts typically start in a trial tier before graduating to standard API access as spend and account history build. Watch for: Pinterest content has an unusually long shelf life — a pin can keep driving traffic months after it's posted — so short-burst, urgency-driven campaigns underperform its actual strength.

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Snapchat

Snap is one of the smaller online advertising platforms by budget, but its ads run between Stories and in Discover content to a mobile, younger-skewing audience, with vertical full-screen video as the native format. Best for: brands targeting Gen Z and younger millennials, local businesses using Snap's geofilters and map-based ads, and app-install campaigns. What it costs to start: no minimum; self-serve setup is close to Meta's in simplicity. Getting started: a self-serve OAuth-based ad account, no special approval beyond standard review. Watch for: Snap's radius targeting has a genuinely small floor — as tight as about 60 meters — which makes it one of the few platforms that can target a single block or building, useful for retail but easy to over-narrow by accident.

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Among online advertising platforms, Reddit is the one built around communities: it places promoted posts inside specific subreddits, so targeting is topical rather than demographic. Reddit's audience is unusually skeptical of anything that reads as an ad. Best for: niche or hobbyist products, software and tools with a genuine community following, and brands willing to write copy that sounds like a real post rather than a tagline. What it costs to start: no minimum; competition and cost per click vary enormously by community. Getting started: a Reddit Ads account through OAuth; full self-serve control is generally reliable once an account has some real spend history. Watch for: Reddit's retargeting window looks back only 1–90 days, shorter than most other platforms, so a slow sales cycle needs a plan for re-engaging beyond it.

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Amazon Ads

Of all the online advertising platforms here, Amazon Ads is the one tied most directly to a purchase: it covers Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands inside Amazon's own search results, plus Amazon DSP for programmatic display and video beyond Amazon's properties, including some CTV inventory (Fire TV, Prime Video). Best for: anyone actually selling on Amazon — Sponsored Products is close to mandatory for a product with real competition in its category — and, through DSP, brands wanting to reach Amazon's shopping-intent audience off-platform. What it costs to start: Sponsored Products has no minimum; Amazon DSP is typically reached through a managed-service or partner arrangement with a meaningfully higher entry point than self-serve search ads. Getting started: an Amazon Seller or Vendor account for Sponsored Products; a partner or agency relationship for DSP. Watch for: Sponsored Products only helps a listing that already converts, same as most online advertising platforms — ad spend on a weak listing mostly buys expensive data about a weak listing.

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YouTube and connected TV

YouTube and connected TV are two of the biggest online advertising platforms here. YouTube ads run inside Google Ads as a video campaign type or through Demand Gen and Performance Max. Beyond YouTube, connected-TV (CTV) inventory — ads inside streaming apps on a television — is bought through several separate platforms: Samsung Ads' own self-serve tools, Amazon DSP (Fire TV, Prime Video), and DSPs like StackAdapt, Simpli.fi and Vibe.co, each with its own account setup. Best for: brand awareness at a scale local platforms can't match, and — increasingly — direct response as CTV ad formats add clickable and QR-code elements. What it costs to start: YouTube in-stream ads have no platform minimum; dedicated CTV DSPs often carry higher minimum spends or require a sales conversation before self-serve access opens up. Getting started: YouTube runs through a standard Google Ads account; other CTV inventory needs a separate account per DSP. Watch for: "CTV" isn't one inventory pool — a campaign bought only through YouTube won't appear on Hulu or a Roku channel, and each added CTV source is a separate relationship, not a checkbox in an existing one.

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Billboards and digital out-of-home (DOOH)

Billboards and DOOH are the online advertising platforms' physical-world cousin: static and digital billboards, transit ads and venue screens reach people who aren't looking at a screen to be advertised to — the opposite of every platform above. Digital billboards (also called DOOH, digital out-of-home) can now be bought through programmatic advertising platforms that connect to an advertising network like Lamar, OUTFRONT and Clear Channel, though buy-and-report API access for full self-serve control is still limited to a small number of DOOH platforms; most billboard buys still involve a sales conversation, a media plan and a fixed-length booking. See the full billboard advertising cost guide for real price ranges by market and format. Best for: local and regional brand awareness, high-traffic locations (highways, downtown cores), and campaigns that benefit from being seen repeatedly by the same commuting audience. What it costs to start: static billboards typically run in the thousands of dollars per month per board depending on market; digital billboard slots can be bought in shorter rotations at a lower per-slot cost. Getting started: a media buy through the billboard company or network directly, or a DOOH platform once programmatic access is available. Watch for: a billboard has no click to measure — honest reporting on this channel means tracked phone numbers, promo codes or a dedicated landing-page URL, not a claim of "attributed conversions" the medium can't actually produce.

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Local screens — menu boards, waiting rooms and gyms

The newest of the online advertising platforms and screens covered here: a normal TV in a restaurant, gym, church lobby or waiting room, running a mix of the business's own content (menus, promos, service times) and, if the owner allows it, paid ads from other local businesses. Unlike a billboard, a local screen can update in real time — a menu board that changes prices the moment they change at the register, a lobby screen that swaps to a happy-hour promo at 4pm automatically. Best for: restaurants, gyms, churches and any business with foot traffic and a TV already on the wall, wanting either free digital signage or a small revenue share from selling unsold screen time. What it costs to start: free to run your own content on one screen; a low-cost streaming-box player is the only hardware most locations need. Getting started: plug in a player, drop content into a template editor, decide how much (if any) screen time to open to outside advertisers. Watch for: a brand-new screen has no advertiser demand on day one — national ad fill through a screen-ad network takes time to switch on, so a new host's honest first-month expectation is "free digital signage," with any ad revenue arriving later, not guaranteed from the start.

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How to choose

There's no single ranking of online advertising platforms — it depends on the goal, not the platform. A phone call from a local customer, a form fill from a B2B buyer, an online purchase and a brand impression are different jobs, and most online advertising platforms are honestly better at one or two of them than at all four. If people already search for what you sell, start with Google Search. If your product photographs or films well and needs to earn attention rather than answer a search, start with Meta, TikTok or Pinterest depending on the audience's age and intent. If you're selling to a job title, LinkedIn's targeting is worth its higher cost per click. If you already sell on Amazon, Sponsored Products is close to a required cost of doing business there, not optional. And if the goal is simply "be seen" in a specific city or neighborhood repeatedly, a billboard, a local screen or CTV will do more for that than most other click-driven online advertising platforms. Most real campaigns span two or three online advertising platforms, not one — which is the case for running them from a single place with one honest report of what worked, rather than trusting five dashboards that each grade their own homework.

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What we don't do — and what "we built Ads and Pixels" means here

This guide to online advertising platforms is genuinely meant to be useful whether or not you ever use our product — but it's fair to say plainly who wrote it. Ads and Pixels is a platform Houston IT Developers is building to run its own agency clients' campaigns first, then sell to other agencies and businesses too. At launch, we connect directly — meaning you can build, launch and manage campaigns from inside Ads and Pixels — to Meta, Google, Microsoft, TikTok and Snap. We report on results from Rumble and Google Local Services Ads without controlling campaigns there yet. Channels without a usable API — several DOOH and CTV networks, plus manual channels like print or radio — are tracked through UTM links, tracked phone numbers and promo codes, the same honest method described above, not pretended into a dashboard they don't feed. Every other network among these online advertising platforms is either "coming," clearly labelled as such inside the product, or reporting-only. We don't inflate a channel list to look bigger than it is, and we don't claim a platform is "live" in our product before it actually is.

Explore the platform Explore all channels Explore Local Screens Read the Facebook pixel setup guide Read the billboard advertising cost guide See pricing

A little more clarity

Frequently asked questions

Real answers before you make a decision.

Do I need to be on every one of these online advertising platforms?

No. Most businesses do well on two or three platforms chosen around a clear goal, not all twelve. Spreading a small budget across every channel usually means none of them gets enough budget to leave the early learning phase and actually perform.

Which online advertising platform is cheapest to start on?

None of the major online advertising platforms in this guide charge a minimum to open an account. Cost per click varies enormously by category — Microsoft Advertising and Pinterest are generally cheaper per click than Google Search or LinkedIn in comparable categories, but "cheapest" only matters relative to what a click is worth to your business.

What's the difference between an ad network and one of these online advertising platforms?

An advertising platform (Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager) is where you build and manage campaigns directly on that company's own inventory. An ad network aggregates inventory across other websites or apps and sells access to it, usually through a separate buying tool.

Can a local business really use a billboard or DOOH?

Yes — digital billboards and local screens are increasingly bought in shorter, lower-cost rotations than the traditional "one board for a year" model, and some local-screen networks are free to join as a host. It's a different economics conversation, not an inaccessible one.

How do connected TV (CTV) ads differ from a regular TV commercial?

CTV ads run inside streaming apps on a television (Hulu, a Roku channel, Prime Video) and are bought and targeted more like a digital ad — by audience, not just network and time slot — even though they play on a TV screen.

Do I have to pick one platform and stick with it?

No, and most established advertisers don't. The harder problem across several online advertising platforms is usually less "which platform" and more "which platform, campaign and ad actually produced a result" — which is what Ads and Pixels' Results Map is built to answer.

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