Most advertisers still pour the majority of their pay-per-click budgets into Google and Meta. It makes sense. Those platforms built the modern PPC playbook, and they still command massive audiences. But here’s the thing: the advertising landscape has shifted significantly, and new PPC platforms are now delivering reach, targeting capabilities, and cost efficiencies that the duopoly simply can’t match in certain contexts. If you’re still running ads in only two places, you’re leaving money on the table and audiences untouched.
This isn’t a speculative take. Amazon’s advertising revenue surpassed $50 billion in 2024, according to the company’s earnings reports. TikTok pulled in roughly $23 billion in global ad revenue. Retail media networks are projected to capture over $60 billion in ad spend by 2025. The dollars are moving, and smart advertisers are moving with them.
Let’s walk through the full landscape of platforms worth your attention, what makes each one unique, and how to think strategically about spreading your PPC budget beyond the obvious choices.
What Are the Best New PPC Platforms to Consider in 2025?
The phrase “new” is relative. Some of these platforms have existed for years but are only now maturing their ad products to the point where they deserve serious budget allocation. Others are genuinely new entrants. What they share is momentum: growing user bases, improving targeting, and in many cases, lower competition than Google or Meta.
Here’s the landscape worth mapping:
- TikTok Ads for short-form video and younger demographics
- Amazon Advertising for purchase-intent targeting at massive scale
- Microsoft Advertising (Bing) for reaching audiences Google can’t
- LinkedIn Ads for B2B precision targeting
- Reddit Ads for community-level engagement
- Apple Search Ads for high-intent app discovery
- Pinterest Ads for visual discovery and planning-stage consumers
- Connected TV (CTV) advertising for streaming audiences
- Retail media networks for point-of-purchase influence
- Programmatic platforms for cross-channel reach at scale
Let’s break each one down.
Why Should Advertisers Pay Attention to TikTok Ads?
TikTok isn’t just a place where teenagers dance. It’s a full-blown advertising platform with roughly $23 billion in global ad revenue and a user base that increasingly spans all age groups. The platform’s algorithm is exceptionally good at surfacing content to interested users, which means your ads benefit from the same discovery engine that makes organic TikTok content so viral.
What makes TikTok unique for PPC is the format itself. Ads that feel native to the platform, meaning short, authentic, and entertaining, dramatically outperform polished corporate creative. That’s a shift in mindset for many brands, but it also means production costs can be lower. You don’t need a commercial. You need a good idea and a smartphone.
TikTok offers Spark Ads, which let you boost organic posts (yours or a creator’s) as paid ads. There are also in-feed ads, search ads (yes, TikTok is becoming a search engine for Gen Z), and shopping ads for e-commerce. If your audience skews under 45, this platform deserves a real test budget. You can explore their ad options at TikTok for Business.
How Does Amazon Advertising Work for PPC?
Amazon’s ad business is a juggernaut, and calling it a “new” platform almost feels wrong. But most advertisers outside of e-commerce still underestimate it. With over $50 billion in advertising revenue in 2024 alone, Amazon has quietly become the third largest digital advertising platform in the United States.
The magic of Amazon Advertising is intent. When someone searches on Amazon, they’re usually ready to buy. That’s fundamentally different from Google, where searches span everything from research to navigation to entertainment. Amazon’s Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads put you directly in the purchase path.
Even if you don’t sell physical products on Amazon, the platform’s demand-side platform (Amazon DSP) lets you use Amazon’s incredibly rich purchase data to target audiences across the web. That’s a capability most advertisers haven’t explored. Learn more at Amazon Advertising.
What Makes Microsoft Advertising Worth the Budget?
Microsoft Advertising, which runs ads across Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and other partner sites, is the most straightforward diversification play in PPC. The platform reaches over 100 million users who aren’t reachable through Google. Read that again. That’s a massive pool of potential customers you’re ignoring if you’re Google-only.
The audience tends to skew slightly older and higher-income, which is valuable for many B2B and high-consideration B2C verticals. Cost-per-click on Microsoft Advertising is often 20% to 50% lower than Google Ads for competitive keywords, simply because fewer advertisers are bidding there.
Microsoft has also integrated AI features through its Copilot partnership and offers audience targeting options that rival Google’s, including LinkedIn profile targeting (since Microsoft owns LinkedIn). If you’re running Google Ads and not importing your campaigns to Microsoft, you’re doing the easiest optimization in digital marketing wrong. Get started at Microsoft Advertising.
How Effective Are LinkedIn Ads for B2B PPC?
For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is in a category of one. No other platform lets you target by job title, company size, industry, seniority level, and skills with the precision LinkedIn offers. With over one billion members globally, the professional network has the scale to match its targeting depth.
The honest caveat: LinkedIn Ads are expensive. Cost-per-click can run $5 to $15 or more, depending on the audience. But for B2B companies where a single lead can be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, the math works. The key is matching ad format to funnel stage. Sponsored Content works well for awareness, Message Ads (formerly InMail) for direct outreach, and Lead Gen Forms for capturing information without sending users off-platform.
LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences feature also lets you retarget website visitors and upload contact lists, which makes it a powerful complement to broader PPC campaigns running elsewhere.
Is Reddit a Serious PPC Platform Now?
Yes. Reddit’s ad revenue grew over 50% year-over-year following its IPO, and the platform has made significant improvements to its ad products. What makes Reddit interesting is the community structure. Subreddits are essentially self-organized interest groups, and advertising within relevant subreddits puts your message in front of highly engaged, topic-specific audiences.
Reddit users are notoriously skeptical of advertising, which is both a challenge and an opportunity. Ads that provide genuine value, answer questions, or share useful information perform well. Hard-sell creative gets destroyed in the comments. If you can match Reddit’s culture of authenticity, the platform offers CPCs well below Google and Meta averages.
The platform also benefits from a unique SEO advantage: Reddit threads increasingly appear in Google search results, which means your brand presence on Reddit can extend beyond the platform itself. Explore ad options at Reddit Ads.
What About Apple Search Ads for App Marketing?
If you have a mobile app, Apple Search Ads should be a non-negotiable part of your PPC strategy. The App Store sees over 650 million visitors per week, and Apple Search Ads let you appear at the top of search results when users are actively looking for apps like yours.
The intent signal here is incredibly strong. Someone searching the App Store is looking to download something right now. Conversion rates on Apple Search Ads tend to be significantly higher than other app-install channels, and the platform offers both a basic (Apple Search Ads Basic) and advanced option depending on your budget and targeting needs.
For app developers and companies where mobile is central to the business model, this is one of the highest-ROI PPC channels available.
How Do Pinterest Ads Fit Into a PPC Strategy?
Pinterest occupies a unique position in the advertising landscape: it’s a planning platform. Users come to Pinterest to plan purchases, projects, events, and life changes. That planning mindset makes Pinterest users significantly more open to discovering new brands and products than users on social platforms where they’re primarily there to be entertained.
For industries like home decor, fashion, food, beauty, weddings, and DIY, Pinterest Ads can deliver strong returns. The platform offers Promoted Pins, shopping ads, and video ads, all designed to blend naturally into the visual discovery experience. The shelf life of Pinterest content is also much longer than other social platforms. A pin can drive traffic for months, not hours.
Why Is Connected TV Advertising Growing So Fast?
Connected TV (CTV) ad spend is expected to exceed $30 billion in 2025, and for good reason. Streaming has fundamentally changed how people watch content, and ad-supported tiers on platforms like Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, Tubi, and even Netflix and Disney+ have opened up TV-level reach with digital-level targeting.
CTV advertising combines the impact of television (big screen, sight-sound-motion, brand-building) with the precision of digital (household-level targeting, frequency capping, attribution). You can target by demographics, interests, purchase behavior, and geography, then actually measure whether someone visited your website or made a purchase after seeing your ad.
For brands that have traditionally been limited to digital display and search, CTV offers a way to move up the funnel without the waste of traditional TV buying. Platforms like The Trade Desk and Google’s DV360 make CTV inventory accessible through programmatic buying.
What Are Retail Media Networks and Why Do They Matter?
Retail media networks are advertising platforms operated by retailers, including Walmart Connect, Target’s Roundel, Kroger Precision Marketing, Instacart Ads, and others. They’re projected to capture over $60 billion in ad spend by 2025, making this one of the fastest-growing segments in all of digital advertising.
The appeal is simple: first-party purchase data. These retailers know exactly what their customers buy, how often, and when. That data powers ad targeting that’s grounded in actual buying behavior, not inferred interests. If you sell consumer products, retail media networks put your ads directly alongside the digital shelf where purchases happen.
Even non-endemic brands (those that don’t sell directly on the retailer’s platform) are finding value in retail media targeting for awareness campaigns, using that rich purchase data to reach specific consumer segments.
How Should You Diversify Your PPC Budget Across These Platforms?
Diversification doesn’t mean spreading your budget thin across every platform listed here. It means making strategic choices based on where your audience actually spends time and where the competitive dynamics favor you.
Start with these principles:
- Follow your audience: If your customers are on TikTok, test TikTok. If they’re B2B decision-makers, prioritize LinkedIn and Microsoft Advertising.
- Allocate 10% to 20% of your PPC budget to testing: Run structured tests on two or three new PPC platforms for 60 to 90 days before making long-term commitments.
- Match the platform to the funnel stage: CTV and Pinterest work well for awareness. Amazon and Apple Search Ads excel at the bottom of the funnel. Reddit and TikTok can serve the consideration stage.
- Watch your cost metrics closely: Many of these platforms offer lower CPCs and CPMs than Google and Meta. Let the data guide your reallocation.
- Don’t copy and paste creative: Each platform has its own culture and format expectations. What works on LinkedIn will not work on TikTok. Invest in platform-native creative.
The advertisers seeing the best results in 2025 aren’t the ones spending the most. They’re the ones spending in the most places their competitors aren’t.
What’s the Bottom Line on Expanding Beyond Google and Meta?
There are more PPC options other than Google or Meta, and diversifying across new PPC platforms can reduce costs, reach untapped audiences, and future-proof your advertising strategy. The data makes this clear. Billions of dollars in ad spend are flowing to Amazon, TikTok, CTV, retail media networks, and other platforms because that’s where the results are.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire strategy overnight. Pick one or two platforms from this guide that align with your audience and business goals. Set up a test. Measure it honestly. Then scale what works.
The brands that will thrive in the next five years of digital advertising are the ones building multi-platform PPC strategies today. Start exploring, start testing, and stop assuming that two platforms are enough.
