Most Australian businesses are on Meta because everyone else is and it’s easy to start, but choosing by default isn’t a channel strategy. The right paid media channel depends on where your buyer is mentally when they see your ad, whether the platform can reach your audience at all, and what your brand can consistently produce. When you get all three right and the channel works, but miss one and the spend goes to waste.
Content Overview
The channel decision comes down to three things
Which platform has the most users is not the question. Three variables determine channel fit: intent, targeting, and creative.
- Intent is where the buyer’s head is when the ad appears.
- Targeting is whether the platform can reach the right people.
- Creative is whether your brand can consistently produce the content the platform rewards.
Where is your buyer mentally at when they see your ad
| Channel | Buyer intent at ad exposure |
|---|---|
| Google Search | Actively searching for what you sell. The buyer has a problem and is looking for a solution right now. |
| Browsing with a purchase in mind, brand not yet decided. According to Pinterest Business, 96% of searches on the platform are unbranded. Users are looking for categories and ideas, not specific companies. | |
| Meta (Facebook / Instagram) | Passive scroll. Not looking to buy, but receptive to brand exposure and retargeting based on prior behaviour. |
| TikTok (For You Page) | Being entertained. Not looking at all. Discovers products through content they enjoy. |
| TikTok (Search) | A growing search intent layer inside an entertainment platform. TikTok’s Search Hubs now place brand-owned pages at the top of results, capturing users at the moment they’re looking. |
| Professional context. Reachable by job title, company size, industry and seniority. The B2B channel. |
If your sale requires a buyer who’s actively looking right now, paid search comes before any social channel. Paid social creates and captures demand earlier in the journey. Both have a role, but don’t compare them thinking it’s the same job.
Audience targeting: what each platform can and can’t do
TikTok
TikTok targets by age, gender, location, language, interests, custom audiences and lookalikes.
What TikTok can’t do: job title targeting, company industry, professional seniority, B2B intent signals.
The audience skews 18–34. If your customer is primarily 45+, the reachable audience is a fraction of the platform’s audience.
The vast majority of Pinterest searches are unbranded. People aren’t research a specific product, it’s always a broad category and they’re hoping to see something that catches their eye. Keyword targeting puts your brand in front of them at that exact point, which doesn’t exist on Meta or TikTok. Pinterest also targets by interest, shopping intent, gender, age and lookalikes.
What Pinterest can’t do: B2B targeting, professional or company targeting, time-sensitive demand.
Meta
Meta has the most flexible targeting of any social platform: interest, behaviour, demographic layering, lookalikes, retargeting across the full funnel. But Advantage+ is progressively removing manual controls in favour of creative-led distribution.
As we’ve covered recently, your creative is now doing more of the targeting work than your audience setup is. Demographic inputs set the boundaries, but creative determines who within those boundaries sees the ad.
The platform is becoming more automated so if you have a clear audience in mind, it’s worth considering if other platforms better serve your business.
LinkedIn targets by job title, company size, industry, function and seniority. No other social platform offers this level of B2B precision. Cost per click is higher than every other channel here. For B2B and professional services, the audience precision justifies the higher cost.
The creative each channel rewards
Choosing a channel also means committing to a creative format, this is where businesses can underestimate the commitment.
TikTok
Native vertical video (9:16) performs best. The content has to feel like something a creator would post, not something a brand produced for TV. Ads that look polished in the traditional advertising sense run on TikTok but don’t convert the way native content does.
Creative fatigue sets in faster here than on any other channel. If your brand can’t commit to consistent native video production, the channel will burn media spend on underperforming creative before the algorithm finds its feet.
Our piece on TikTok marketing for Australian businesses covers the content approach in more detail.
Portrait static images (1000—1500px) dominate the feed and consistently outperform video for saves, clicks and conversions across most categories. The aesthetic bar is very high: quality product photography, strong composition and aspirational styling are non-negotiable. A pin has to look good next to hundreds of other well-designed images.
If product photography is average or brand identity is underdeveloped, Pinterest will underperform regardless of targeting. Creative refresh is less demanding than TikTok. A strong set of pins can keep performing for months.
Meta
4:5 portrait for feed, 9:16 for Reels. The most tolerant of format variety: polished brand creative, UGC-style content, or a mix. Less aesthetically demanding than Pinterest, less volume-hungry than TikTok. The catch is that Advantage+ has shifted the targeting options so creative quality now determines reach in a way that audience targeting used to compensate for.
Industry and brand fit
TikTok works well for consumer-facing brands where the product is visual and demonstrable in short video (fashion, food, beauty, fitness, home, lifestyle, consumer tech) and where the audience skews under 40. It doesn’t work well for B2B, professional services, long-cycle purchases, or customers who are primarily 45+.
Pinterest works well for categories where people plan purchases (home décor, fashion, weddings, food and beverage, gardening, travel, seasonal lifestyle) and for e-commerce brands with strong product photography. It doesn’t work for B2B, service businesses without a visual product, time-sensitive offers, or predominantly male audiences.
Meta works across almost every consumer category when the creative is right. It’s the channel most brands should be running before adding anything else.
The decision framework
E-commerce brands with strong product photography and a customer base that skews women 25–44 should have Pinterest in their paid mix. Start with Shopping Ads against your product catalogue and give it 90 days before judging performance.
If your audience is under 35 and you can produce native-style video consistently (not occasionally), TikTok is worth a proper test. Budget for creative before you budget for media.
B2B businesses and professional services brands should look to Google Ads or LinkedIn before TikTok or Pinterest. Neither platform offers the targeting precision or intent context these businesses need.
Plateauing results on Meta usually point to a creative problem. Adding a new platform before the creative is solved rarely fixes anything.
A visual lifestyle brand targeting women across multiple categories suits a TikTok and Pinterest combination. Use TikTok for discovery at the top of the funnel and Pinterest for capturing intent from buyers in planning mode.
Choosing the wrong paid media will waste budget and produces data that tells you the wrong things about what’s working. If you’re not sure which channel fits your business, we’re happy to work through it with you.
Ryan Wilson
Marketing Team Lead
