When building out a media plan, one of the first questions marketers face is: should we invest more in display ads or social ads?
Both have their place, but they serve different roles in the customer journey - and the way they perform in 2025 has evolved with shifts in user behavior, privacy regulation, and creative expectations.This article compares display and social ads from a performance perspective to help agencies and internal marketing teams make smarter choices for their campaigns.
They offer precise placement control and often work well for branding, performance, or retargeting — especially when powered by HTML5 or dynamic product feeds.
Social ads appear on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and are integrated into users' feeds or stories.Unlike display, social ads are part of the scroll experience.They're often more native, engaging, and visual, relying heavily on creative storytelling to stand out.Social ads are ideal for:
They're also well-suited for mobile-first campaigns and direct-to-consumer brands that want to build emotional resonance through video or lifestyle imagery.
In 2025, the biggest difference between these two channels is how users interact with the content. Social ads tend to blend into organic content and encourage active participation. Display ads are more passive and rely on effective placement, repetition, and format variety to perform well.Display ads give you more flexibility in where your ads appear - you can run ads across news sites, blogs, or niche publishers. They also tend to work better with dynamic creative formats like HTML5 banners or animated product carousels.Social ads, on the other hand, give you better visibility into engagement metrics and tend to perform better for short-term action (clicks, video views, reactions). But they also burn out faster - meaning you’ll need to refresh your creative more often to maintain performance.
There’s no universal winner - the best approach depends on your audience, budget, goals, and creative capabilities.If your goal is performance at scale, many brands find that social ads convert better in the short term, especially for mobile-first products, flash sales, or impulse buying.If you want longevity, retargeting reach, or cost-efficient brand awareness, display ads often provide better value over time - particularly when combined with creative automation and dynamic product feeds.In Campaign Builder, we see that campaigns combining both formats often deliver the best results. Social ads drive engagement and traffic, while display ads bring users back to convert.
Agency clients using Campaign Builder to manage both social and display campaigns report:
This shows that the real question isn’t which one converts better - but how to make them work together strategically.
Whether you're creating animated HTML5 banners for Google Display or feed-based product ads for Facebook and Instagram, Campaign Builder gives you the tools to scale creative output without compromising on design.You can:
If you’re running omnichannel campaigns, the ability to manage all your display and social ad creatives from one place can save you hours per week - and help you maintain higher performance consistency across the board.
Display ads and social ads aren’t competing channels - they’re complementary. The key is understanding how each one fits into your funnel and using the right creative for the right context.Campaign Builder is built for this kind of multi-channel workflow. It helps agencies and internal teams create high-performing, format-optimized ads for both display and social from a single interface.Start your free trial at campaignbuilder.io or book a demo to see how you can simplify your creative production - without limiting your strategy.