The stats are staggering: 3 million businesses advertise using Facebook while 1.5 million on Google AdWords.

That said, just because millions of companies have leveraged these juggernaut ad channels, it doesn’t mean it’s right for your business or healthy to be reliant on any one channel.

Healthy digital marketing practice is to always be experimenting not only with audiences and creative, but ad network channels as well. Why?

Because of 3 reasons:

1. Audience Saturation

Albeit each channel having access to billions of people, there are only a finite amount of people who find value in your product and are likely to convert

2. General competition.

Either more companies are trying out Facebook as a channel or the current pool of businesses is spending more, but in the US alone, Facebook’s revenue from advertising grew $3+ billion each year from 2014 to 2018

3. Industry competition.

Competitors are inevitable in hot markets (think of the food delivery industry), thus causing greater competition for the same customers and driving up costs (cost per thousand impressions) in the process

So what’s a startup to do?

Never become too reliant on one channel but instead always testing new channels with a small portion of your paid acquisition budget.

Whether that’s 5% or 10%, even spending a few thousand dollars per month could be invaluable in uncovering uncrowded channels where your customers reside.

Need some ideas? This article provides 10 self-serve channels worth considering. The short list is:

• LinkedIn
• Snapchat
• Twitter
• Grindr
• Plenty Of Fish
• Reddit
• Quora
• Spotify
• Outbrain
• Taboola

What is your highest spending ad channel? Share in the comments below! From my personal poll, 60% crown Google AdWords as king.

~JK