A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media Advertising Tools

Searching for social media advertising tools to spruce up your ad strategy?

If you're a busy social media or marketing manager and you need to upgrade your tech stack, put these on your 2025 wishlist.

Social media advertising tools are platforms, apps, and software that help your business create, manage, and refine advertising campaigns across social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and TikTok).

There are many advantages of using these tools but the main ones include:

• Campaign management - Streamline how you plan and action your ad campaigns by scheduling posts, calculating a budget, tracking ad performance, and more. You should be able to save time and develop more efficient social media ad workflows normally from one, consolidated dashboard.
• Targeted advertising - Specify who sees your ads, when, and from what location. Ideally, when aligned with your overall strategy, an effective social media advertising tool with help you create more impactful ads and achieve more conversions
• Analytics and reporting - Measure the effectiveness of your ads with broad and granular metrics. Identify trends and make data-driven changes that boost ad performance. After all, you can only improve what you measure!
• Testing - Run A/B tests to optimize your ads and get deeper insights into your audiences. Maximize ROI by using these insights to spend less on advertising for greater returns.

• User experience - Social media advertising tools should be intuitive and easy to navigate, so you can apply their full potential to your ad campaign quickly and easily. While every tool and platform will have a learning curve, it's important to find those that save you time and make things easier, rather than adding to your pile of things to do.
• Integration capabilities - On a related note, tools should fit seamlessly with your existing software and practices, in order to maximize the data you have and to not disrupt your workflows.
• Scalable - Tools need to complement and accelerate your wider social media and business growth. They should be able to expand as your strategy advances or as you add new campaigns.
• Pricing - Social media advertising tools have to work within your budget. Whether subscription-based, pay-per-use or a tiered plan, the value of the tool should be equal to or greater than the amount you have to pay for it.

Let's dive into a range of top tools you can use to enhance your workflow, tracking and management of your content marketing on social media. We'll go into how they work, who they're for and pricing options.

1. AdClarity

AdClarity - Advertising Intelligence is an app from Semrush where you can view your competitors' estimated ad spend across social, digital, and video ads.

This information allows you to benchmark your own social media ad budget and get a feel for how much competitors are investing in their ad strategies.

With the app, you can also assess key performance stats from your competitors' social media ads, such as impressions, costs, views, clicks, and more. Plus, you can view their top ads, top campaigns, and top publishers and apps.

That means you can determine the most successful ad platforms and traffic sources for your competitors' social media ads.

Armed with this key data, you can choose whether to follow in similar steps or branch out into social media advertising gaps that your competitors are missing. And, because you can see your competitors' ad creative in AdClarity, you can gauge what copy, design, and style best resonates with your shared audiences.

What We Like:

Not only does AdClarity tell you how, and on what, your competitors are spending their social media ad dollars, it reveals how successful those dollars have been. As a result, you can make smarter decisions to fine-tune your own spending and ad performance.

Who It's For

Adclarity is ideal for busy marketing managers who need to scale up their social media advertising, understand the competition, and improve their results.

Pricing:

• Available as a free 7-day trial with a Semrush account
• Paid plan starts from $180 per month as the 'Social and Video' plan
  • $349 per month for the 'Display, Social, and Video' plan

2. Bïrch

Bïrch (previously Revealbot) specializes in automated ad management for Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, and Snapchat.

The tool's automation engine enables you to adjust ad bids, pause ads, rotate and test ad creatives, and scale the best performing ads. You can also build your own custom automations using predefined metrics, actions or custom variables.

On top of this, you can also design automations around external data like a spreadsheet, specifying parameters based on your unique data.

Bïrch can also be integrated with comms channels like Slack, so you get alerts around your ad activity.

What We Like:

The flexibility and personalization of automation rules through Bïrch sets it apart from others as a social media ad tool. You can save time, make more data-driven decisions, and create advanced responsive ad strategies.

Who It's For

Bïrch is aimed at marketing managers you need to up their digital marketing automations - and who need to keep on top of campaign optimization.

Pricing:

• Free trial available
• Paid plans start from $99 per month

3. Adcreative.ai

Adcreative.ai is an app from Semrush where you can generate conversion-focused static and video social media ads in minutes - no design skills needed.

The tool has hundreds of ad creatives to tailor to your brand, and you can achieve up to 14 times better conversion and click-through rates for your ads. All the creatives are pre-optimized for social media platforms and ad sizes.

You can also make AI-generated content by entering specifications and receiving a selection of engaging ad copy, photos, and more to integrate into your social media ads.

The AI can enhance your product photos into professional-grade visuals. Meanwhile, Adcreative.ai has the world's first large language model for advertising to power sales-driven ad texts and headlines for your brand products/services.

What We Like:

Make attractive ads for social media better and faster, whatever your design capabilities. Adcreative.ai helps businesses develop ads that are true to their brand essence, whilst leveraging sophisticated AI.

As an added advantage, every ad made with the app has a conversion score, highlighting the options that could perform best - making it easier to improve your social media ad ROI.

Who It's For

Adcreative.ai is for any marketing manager who needs to improve conversions across their social media channels, focusing specifically on video and static ads.

Pricing:

• Available as free 3-day trial with a Semrush account
• Paid plan costs $109 per month (includes 100 credits to download your assets)

4. Hootsuite Ads

Hootsuite Ads combines social media ads and organic social media management in one platform.

With the tool you can manage your ad campaigns across multiple channels, promote and automate ads, optimize your ad budget, and monitor ad performance (including engagement, conversions, and ROI).

There's equally the option to link to your content calendar, so you can coordinate organic content with your social media ad strategy.

Not to mention, Hootsuite Ads has a distinct AI copywriter feature built into the ads creation section, supporting you with instant ad copy variations to test your messaging.

What We Like:

Hootsuite Ads is ideal for a more synchronized marketing strategy. It connects all the moving parts of your ad and content efforts, which leads to a better understanding of what works and what can be maximized throughout the whole flow. And that translates to higher conversions and revenue.

Who It's For

Hootsuite is for social media managers and marketing managers who want to improve their workflows, reporting, and scheduling.

Pricing:

• Available for free with a 30-day trial
• Paid plans start from $99 per month

5. AI Social Content Generator

With Semrush's AI Social Content Generator you can design image and video ads for social media using more than 10,000 customizable templates and more than 5 million assets.

All the ads are created to match your brand colors, logos, and fonts, and are generated using AI to produce unique, captivating content.

You can create multiple variations of your ads too, for example in different languages (19 are available), and by resizing content for different platforms in one click.

They can then be easily scheduled and published from AI Social Content Generator to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X.

What We Like:

The AI Social Content Generator puts fresh, brand-friendly social ads at your fingertips. Save time making ads, while still maintaining brand consistency and speaking to the audiences that matter most.

Who It's For

AI Social Content Generator is social media marketers and creators who need to design eye

-catching and effective social media ad content, across multiple channels and markets.

Pricing:

• Available as a free 7-day trial
• Paid plan costs $35 per month

6. Facebook Ads Manager

For Facebook and Instagram ads, Facebook Ads Manager (part of Meta Business Suite) is your hub.

The platform can automatically generate ads for your brand based on your product catalogs, and enables you to create and experiment with multiple ad variations through its A/B testing feature. You can additionally segment your ads according to precise audience demographics, interests, and behaviors.

Facebook Ads Manager has an integrated messaging system too, so you can manage communication with users who engage with your ads across Facebook and Instagram.

What We Like:

This tool is as comprehensive as they come. It's particularly great for marketers stepping into the ad space for the first time, as it has guides about ad design specifications and technical requirements for format and placement.

It also suggests CTAs for your ads based on your preferred ad placement, objective, and conversion location.

Who It's For

Facebook Ads Manager is for any marketer working on Meta channels, offering a powerful suite of analytics and targeting tools.

Pricing:

• Free to use with any Facebook or Instagram account

7. Semrush Social

Semrush Social is a suite of tools to build and maintain your social media strategy. The tools are:

While Semrush Social focuses on organic social content, it fuels your ad strategy because you can craft, track, and analyze content that performs well, and then repurpose it into paid ads.

For instance, with the Social Tracker and Social Analytics Tool, you can research and understand the types of organic posts that convert your audiences on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can then format these posts into paid ads, which will be more likely to perform well too.

With Semrush Social, you can integrate tried-and-tested content into your ad, saving you time and ad budget, and producing stronger results from your social ads.

What We Like:

Semrush Social is quite literally the total package. It connects your organic social media strategy with your paid strategy, and can give you the confidence to run ads that have already been proven to get traction with people. It can also encourage you to have more consistent marketing efforts, which can lead to better brand awareness and customer longevity.

Who It's For

Semrush Social is for both seasoned and new marketers looking to make a robust marketing strategy.

Pricing:

• Available as a 7-day free trial
• Paid plan costs $29.99 per month

8. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform that includes a paid social ads reporting and performance report.

In this report, you can get cross-network takeaways to pinpoint your best performing channel. You can also access the ROI of individual campaigns on separate social media platforms, or the aggregated ROI of your overall ads strategy.

All the data is presented in a sortable table, where you can view ad impressions, engagement, conversions, views, and more.

With this transparent information, you can stay atop of your social media ads' performance, easily identifying the platforms where you have the most traction, and the ones where you need to rework your approach.

What We Like:

Sprout has an easy-to-use interface, making it straightforward to tap into important social media ad info. It allows you to zoom into your ad performance for singular platforms, or take stock of things from a distance - looking at all of your campaigns.

Who It's For

Sprout Social is a great tool for marketers who need to manage multiple campaigns across different social media platforms.

Pricing:

• Available as part of a free 30-day trial
• Paid plans start from $199 per month

9. AdEspresso

AdEspresso is a selection of automated tools to develop and scale your advertising campaigns. You can create and analyze campaigns across Google, Instagram, and Facebook, and leverage split-test functionalities to make combinations of ads, edit variations of ads, and test single elements of your targeting or run ads for completely different audiences.

The platforms' optimization algorithm also reviews performance data in real time and can make automatic adjustments to improve your ads. For example, by pausing underperforming ads and allocating budget to the best-performing ads in the campaign.

Alternatively, you can use the Optimization Rule to set your own ad parameters and apply them.

What We Like:

AdEspresso is a savvy tool that goes beyond merely setting-up ads. It has the AdEspresso University to help marketers grow their skills through expert-led webinars, videos, and discussions. Network with fellow ad enthusiasts and then apply learnings directly to your strategy.

Who It's For

A great tool for optimizing ads, AdEspresso is for digital marketers who need powerful optimization tools and are looking to up their game through training.

Pricing:

• Available as part of a free 14-day trial
• Paid plans start from $49 per month

10. WordStream

WordStream is another social media advertising tool that has a range of solutions. Perhaps its most valuable one is its grading tool that can evaluate the effectiveness of your Facebook ads.

The tool reveals where your ads miss opportunities to reach more people, drive more leads, and capture more conversions.

Elsewhere, WordStream has a landing page optimization feature to boost your visitor conversions, a budget management system that recommends how to allocate finances based on ad performance data, and a lead-tracking system to monitor your entire ad customer journey.

What We Like:

WordStream is packed with actionable tips and tricks to maximize your social media campaigns. Read The 20-Minute Work Week guide to discover how to improve your strategy and execution quickly and definitively.

Who It's For

Wordstream is a lovely little addition to your social ad tech stack, if you are keen to audit your ads and get the most out of your campaigns.

Pricing:

11. Madgicx

Madgicx has a host of solutions to track, automate, and optimize your ad campaigns. In particular, it has an AI tool to predict the audiences you should target to maximize your profitability.

It also has automation capabilities, so you can increase your budget for high-performing Facebook ads, pause low-performing ads, and reactivate ads when there are signs of positive interactions. That translates to deeper engagement, more efficient ad spend, and more time to focus on other ad areas.

And, if you have a team of people working on your ads, Madgicx tools have collaboration functionalities where you can see any changes people make. In turn, you can track the impact of even minor ad edits.

What We Like:

Magdicx suits growing businesses as it both optimizes and automates your ad strategy. And, because it helps put your ad in front of the right people, it can support awareness of your brand sooner in your business journey.

Who It's For

Perfect for small marketing teams, Magdicx helps you get to grips with complex digital marketing campaign optimisation strategy.

Pricing:

• Available for free with a 7-day trial
• Paid plan costs $31 per month

These are just a handful of the social media advertising tools out there. Be sure to browse around and test the tools that make sense for your brand and business goals. Remember that every tool you add to your social media belt should drive your ad strategy toward success and make actioning it smoother.

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