Best Online Advertising Platforms in 2025: Where Marketers Actually Get ROAS

The Best online advertising platforms in 2025 where marketers actually get ROAS, are not always the biggest names. 87% of marketers still rely on big tech brands like Google, yet newer platforms like Blockchain-Ads capture 46% of the regulated advertiser landscape despite their 13% market share. In other words, many advertisers are missing out on the real underdogs here, and this article will correct that.

Apart from providing the list of the best online advertising platforms, this will also be an experiment-backed guide on how to use these platforms. This guide is suitable for both small businesses and enterprise-level companies in regulated and mainstream markets. With this, advertisers can understand how these platforms work and how to test them without blowing through their budget.

To craft this article, Blockchain-Ads ran a case study where it surveyed 3041 marketers, some of whom are actively running ads on the ad network. So, you can rest assured that all insights here are based on real data.

Which Online Advertising Platforms Deliver the Highest Return on Ad Spend in 2025?

Every advertiser desires the best value-for-money platform for their ad campaign. In 2025, some of the best digital advertising platforms for a strong ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) include:

• Blockchain-Ads: 3x
• Google: 44%
• Facebook: 25%
• Instagram: 9%

These paid advertising platforms represent the current ROAS hierarchy as they offer dependable contextual advertising with multiple targeting options. This allows brands to place ads that align with the current activity or environment of their target audience, boosting the effectiveness of the advertisement. So, things like the type of website a user is browsing or content they’re streaming will affect what ad types—such as banner ads, video ads, or native ads—will be displayed.

High-intent moments are also leveraged by these digital advertising platforms as they display the ads when the users are searching for similar products. That way, the brands and businesses can capitalize on the timely opportunity to make sales and increase the possibility of conversion. These high-intent moments also allow advertisers to save on ad costs due to their effectiveness, especially when using the CPC model common in PPC ads.

With these top-notch ROAS platforms, it’s easier to track conversions, allowing brands to optimize their campaigns and ad spend. Vanity metrics are also filtered out, allowing businesses to focus on statistics that matter, like ROI (Return On Investment), and conversion rate.

Blockchain‑Ads

Blockchain-Ads is a full-stack (DSP) Demand-Side Platform and DMP (Demand Management Platform) advertising network that empowers brands that desire growth. This ad network is best for businesses in emerging, established, and heavily regulated sectors like the finance, blockchain, iGaming, adult entertainment, and tech industries.

Blockchain-Ads is a firm believer in the concept “WHO sees your ads, not WHERE.” So, its services include a precise wallet targeting technology that allows Web3-focused brands to discover their right audiences from portfolio balances, wallet types, etc. The data management technology on this platform unifies the DMP, DSP, and SSP stack, making it easier to simplify workflows.

With its mainstream and hybrid on-chain data layer, Blockchain‑Ads is unmatched in audience granularity. The industry-agnostic compliance toolkit on this platform makes it perfect for brands that want to advertise in the regulated sectors. Brands that use the services of Blockchain‑Ads also applaud its API-first architecture that makes it easy to integrate into websites and design custom automations.

A quick tip for any business that wants to use Blockchain‑Ads is to upload at least 10,000 wallet IDs for a start. This can be used to start a pilot ad to see the effectiveness of any advertising strategy. The lookalike modelling feature on the site can also be leveraged to boost the effectiveness of any campaign.

Blockchain-Ads also supports CPC bidding, which is budget-friendly and makes it easy to track campaign goals. With these features, businesses can look forward to earning at least a 3x ROAS.

Google Ads

Released in 2000, Google Ads is the online advertising platform of the search engine Google. This is one of the paid advertising platforms known for its PPC (Pay Per Click) business model. Google Ads boasts an 83% search share, making them one of the most popular online advertising platforms with a great ROAS.

The biggest perk of marketing with Google Ads is that the ads will appear on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This means that when users enter search terms related to that business, the ad will be displayed alongside the search results.

Ads on this PPC advertising platform can appear as YouTube ads (since Google owns YouTube). They can also appear on the Google shopping tab as shopping ads and playable ads, as well as display and search ads. The search ads are the text ads that appear alongside the search results, while the display ads appear on the Google Display Network. This display network is made up of third-party sites that serve Google Ads, functioning as an ad exchange by connecting advertisers and publishers.

It’s important to note that highly searched keywords command competitive CPC (Cost Per Click) on the Google Ads network. This is as a result of the high bidding rate surrounding the keywords. So, you can be prepared for this or start research for less competitive, yet still useful keywords.

To create an effective ad on this platform, advertisers should consider more single-keyword ad groups. One keyword is highly specific and commands better conversion rates when it's aligned well with a business. The landing pages attached to an ad should match the message on the ad for the best efficacy.

Unlike other networks, Quality Score is one more thing to note for a good Google Ad. This metric is affected by how relevant an ad is to search queries, keyword ad groups, landing pages, and CTRs (Click Through Rates). Ensure all these factors are aligned with the ad, and you’ll enjoy a higher Quality Score.

Facebook/Meta Ads

Meta Ads (or Facebook Ads) are advertisement solutions offered by one of the most popular digital advertising platforms, Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook). Ads on this platform enjoy a great ROAS as Facebook boasts widespread usage in 2025, with over 4 billion monthly active users. This represents over 59.38% of the world’s population, according to Demandsage, making it easier for most businesses to discover their target audience through precise audience targeting.

Advertisements on Meta Ads benefit from extensive ad space as they appear on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. This ads platform also offers Advantage and Advantage+, which allow brands to streamline their marketing efforts with the power of AI automation. Third-party integration is also possible with this Facebook ads platform, enabling businesses to synchronize their data seamlessly.

While Meta Ads offer an overwhelming advantage, it's important to consider creative testing when creating native advertising campaigns. Testing advertising assets using different layouts, videos, copy, content, and other media makes it easy to see what works. This way, brands would only invest in advantageous campaigns.

Unlike other platforms, you need to watch out for rising CPMs (Cost Per Mille) here. An increase in CPM signifies increasing competition and is a sign to explore other effective ad placement options. Like the niche Reddit advice “Be active; content matched,” success on Meta Ads requires a consistent online presence and alignment with the interests of your audience.

Instagram Ads

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms of 2025, with over 1.3 billion users. As such, it also doubles as a great social network for marketing efforts. Instagram ads are basically posts that you pay to reach specific people on the platform. The posts appear like regular ones, with the only difference being the links attached to them and the “Sponsored” label they carry. These sponsored ads can appear in Explore pages, Stories, Reels, and user feeds.

When creating an Instagram ad, it's important to remember that this platform is designed for mobile devices. So, go for a mobile-focused vertical design with minimal text and authentic visuals. Keep in mind that 61% of the users on this site are aged 18-34, so tailor your marketing efforts for that age range. The advertisements on Instagram usually appear as videos, collections, and carousels.

Brands that wish to market their products on this network can also take advantage of Instagram’s shopping features. This allows users to make purchases directly on the app. As most users favor convenience, integrating the shopping features on this platform will make sales much more straightforward.

Microsoft Advertising

Although Bing Ads has been revamped as Microsoft Advertising, its core features are still unchanged. This platform allows advertisers to display their ads on Bing search results and the Microsoft network. It also offers this feature for its partner networks like MSN, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, AOL, and Outlook.

This PPC platform is also known for its lower-than-average CPC, which is an advantage for any brand with a limited budget. Microsoft Ads offers video extensions for ads and allows advertisers to pull LinkedIn data for more precise targeting.

A good strategy when using this ads platform is to test the Google keywords here first. Microsoft Ads has a lower CPC, which provides an advantage for pilot ads.

LinkedIn Ads

As the foremost online hub for professionals, LinkedIn is a superb marketing tool for good ROAS. LinkedIn ads are promotions that are made on this network to increase sales, hire professionals, boost a company’s online presence, and more. Ads with a B2B focus perform better on LinkedIn, since its target audience (businesses) is abundant.

LinkedIn ads appear in various formats, such as:

• Carousel ads
• Conversation
• Spotlight
• Lead generation forms
• Text ads

Beginners on this advertising platform can also take advantage of the Accelerate campaign. Accelerate campaigns are a new feature that uses AI models to adjust bids and shift budgets for ads to the best performing creatives. This allows advertisers to create optimized campaigns within a few minutes.

YouTube Ads

YouTube is one of the biggest online streaming platforms, with over 2.7 billion users, a number that advertisers can take advantage of. Ads on this platform are video promotions that appear on this site along with partner sites in the Google Display Network. There are also audio ads that feature static images, allowing users to focus on the audio content.

Being a part of Google also allows advertisers on this platform to benefit from the depth of the search engine’s user data. This can make for very precise ad campaigns.

YouTube ads usually appear in the following formats:

• Skippable ads: These are in-stream ads that appear before, during, or after a YouTube video. They can generally be skipped after a few seconds.
• Non-skippable ads: Running for as long as 20 seconds or more (in rare cases), these are ads that cannot be skipped.
• Bumper ads: Running for only 6 seconds, these are the shortest YouTube video ads, and they’re unskippable.

When budgeting for YouTube ads, there are two main pricing models to take note of:

• CPC (Cost Per Click): This is where advertisers pay every time someone clicks their ad. It's a great choice when the goal of the ad campaign is to drive traffic to a website or product page.
• CPV (Cost Per View): Here, advertisers pay when people watch a certain duration of their video ads (usually up to 30 seconds). This is the pricing model for brands that want to build awareness among internet users.

A valuable tip when creating YouTube advertising campaigns is to go for 15-second hooks with great captions. The short length makes the video bearable to most users, and the captions make the ad interesting.

TikTok Ads

TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms of 2025, with over 1.7 billion users. This social media network is known for its short-form videos and viral trends that have captured the hearts of the Gen Z audience. So, ads that cater to those aged 18-34 are sure to perform well on this site.

This is one of the best paid advertising platforms, as it uses machine learning feeds to track users. Users are tracked based on what they watch, skip, comment on and how long they watch content. It also allows advertisers to upload their user list and track similar users through that and display the ads before them. With its context-aware matching capability, TikTok can match ads to similar organic videos, blending them in seamlessly.

TikTok ads are best for DTC (Direct To Customer) advertising and trend-driven brands, allowing businesses to build a direct relationship with their customers. This platform is also hospitable to beginners, as there are a wide variety of video templates available, which can speed up ad production.

The main formats in which TikTok ads appear are:

• In-feed ads: Native sponsored ads that show up alongside a user’s regular video feed.
• Brand Takeover ads: Full-screen video ads with interactive features that appear when a user opens their TikTok app.
• TopView ads: Non-skippable full-screen video ads that appear immediately when a user opens their TikTok app.
• Hashtag Challenges: A unique ad format where brands create and share user-generated content based on a challenge or theme.
• Branded Effects: This is where brands create customized filters or effects that users can apply to their TikTok videos.

Snapchat Ads

Snapchat still remains one of the popular platforms among the Gen Z and Millennial audience in 2025 with over 750 million users. It is another social media platform that allows advertisers to use short-form vertical videos of 6-10 seconds to deliver ads to their audience. So, brands that are targeting the younger demographic can use this network to boost their website traffic, drive sales, and drive engagement.

Snapchat ads usually appear as:

• Story Ads: Branded advertisements that appear in the Discover section.
• AR Lenses: Allows advertisers to create augmented reality Snapchat filters for app users.
• Collection Ads: This is a video ad with a thumbnail-sized showcase of various products from a brand at the bottom.

Unlike other platforms, Snapchat is a good spot for early organic testing, as it offers free business profiles. So, businesses can use it to evaluate how effective their ads are.

How Do You Match Platform to Audience, Budget, and Creative Bandwidth?

After listing quite a number of the top advertising platforms for superb ROAS in 2025, there’s still the question of which one to use. For this, we’ve designed a 3-step framework for choosing which platform to select based on audience, budget, and creativity:

1. Research where buyers “hang out”: Before choosing an advertising platform, you need to know where your buyers are located. If they’re part of the Gen Z audience, then you’ll probably see them on TikTok and Snapchat. Family-oriented people visit Facebook, while most business professionals hang out on LinkedIn, where you can also target by job title. The location of your buyers will tell you where to set up your ads, so don’t try to be everywhere at once.
2. Launch pilots on multiple channels: It’s always better to test an ad campaign with a few pilot ads on the various platforms where your buyers hang out. This will allow you to determine what ads are most effective and where they’re most effective. With this you can channel your creative energy into the locations where they’re most needed.
3. Scale winners using ROAS and CPA benchmarks: You can determine the effective budget for ads using ROAS and CPA as a benchmark. Profitable ads receive more funding, allowing you to maximize their effect.

Apart from this simple checklist, there are other formats to match platforms to your wide audience, creative matrix, and budget as detailed below.

Audience Fit Checklist

This is where you create personas for the advertising platforms and use them to guide the ad types you create, such as:

• Blockchain-Ads→ Wallet-verified crypto investors
• TikTok→ Gen Z impulse buyers
• LinkedIn→ B2B decision makers
• YouTube→ Tutorial seekers
• Instagram→ Trendy millennial shoppers
• Facebook→ Family-oriented middle-aged shoppers

Creative Resource Reality Check

The choice of platform should also dictate what type of media you create for advertisement. Sites like TikTok and YouTube are video-heavy channels, while LinkedIn and Facebook support static content and image ads.

You can also take advantage of the features of each platform to reduce your workload. TikTok and Snapchat have dedicated templates that can reduce the stress of creating video and picture content, including in app and app install ads.

Repurposing media can save you time and maximize your reach. You can cut long-form videos uploaded on YouTube into reels for TikTok and Facebook. Images can be turned into carousel ads for collections. Some content can also be made evergreen so it can be reused sometime in the future.

Budget & Bidding Matrix

Make a benchmark for your CPC and CPV metrics while designing your digital advertising campaigns. Then you can test out minimum spends on them to see how they compare to your desired benchmarks.

For example, you could decide to use flexible daily spending on Blockchain-Ads and $50 or more per day on Google Ads. After this, you can compare the ROAS with the cost of creating the ads. If it's a favorable result, you can increase the budget for the ad.

Take note that you shouldn’t spend too much on underperforming ads. It's okay to pause them for up to 7-14 days before retrying them again to see if there will be a positive change. Also, be mindful of ad blockers that might affect your ad placement and performance.

What Tools Turn Ad Clicks into Conversions?

There are a few tools you can engage to ensure that your target audience converts. One is to create landing pages that are related to the ads. Sending traffic to generic landing pages is a waste of resources and clicks.

Building message-themed landing pages is another way to guarantee the conversion of your traffic. This will make the customer feel at home since it carries the same message as the ad that brought them there.

Instead of struggling with a variety of dashboards for traffic, sales, CRMs, and others, you can invest in a unified analytics dashboard. This brings all your data into one spot and allows you to monitor your metrics and spot trends with ease. Other methods for converting ad clicks to conversions are denoted below.

Landing‑Page Alignment & CRO

The landing page is the first impression that potential customers get when they appear on a brand’s platform. As such, the brands must do their best to ensure that it aligns with the interests of the buyers. This is one of the most important concepts of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) along with utilizing data from user analytics platforms.

There are three ways to go about landing page alignment:

Dedicate a Page per Ad Group

This is where each group of ads with a specific message leads to a specific landing page.

Match Headline to Keyword or Ad Hook

Here, you match the headline of your landing page to the keyword of your ad or the ad hook.

A/B One Element at a Time

Here, you create two versions of a landing page and compare them to see which one performs better.

You can use the services of generic landing page builders like Unbounce or Leadpages to easily create landing pages for each ad group. These landing page builders can also aid you in A/B testing. Of course, if you’ve got an in-house team, they can also take over this.

Cross‑Channel Tracking & Social Listening

Brands can follow their customers and analyze their interactions across multiple channels. This will help the brand to understand how their customers think and create ads that drive conversions. Cross-channel tracking also shows the impact of ads across various platforms, making it easier to identify high-performing advertisements.

Some of the tools that offer cross-channel tracking are:

• Google Ads Grader
• Hubspot
• Sprout Social

With cross-channel tracking software, advertisers get to access real-time dashboards. This software monitors ad performance, making it easier to make adjustments to these ads and improve their performance. Simply put, the software collects data, analyzes it, and allows brands to take action. This feedback loop allows businesses to optimize their campaigns and achieve better outcomes.

Conclusion

It’s important to start small when chasing a higher ROAS. Start with test ads and measure relentlessly to ensure you miss nothing, and optimize based on the results of the metrics. When you’ve gotten a winner, you can then scale appropriately. If you’re eager to try things out, run a 30-day pilot on two channels, benchmark your results, and iterate quarterly.

Among the best online advertising platforms in 2025, Google and Facebook still rule, while TikTok is surging up among the Gen Z audience. Blockchain-Ads is your go-to platform when you need niche precision and disciplined CRO to turn traffic into profit.

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