When Should You Use Paid Ads Instead of a Giveaway?

Use paid when you need to capture people who are already searching to buy, when you need a predictable volume of leads by a fixed deadline, when you need direct sales immediately, or when you're targeting a small set of high-value B2B accounts.

Giveaways are built to generate and own demand over time; paid is built to capture existing demand on schedule. If your goal is the second one, reach for paid.

When the answer is a giveaway, the good news is that launching one is easy — you can go from signup to live in an afternoon, with no ad-account approval or creative production to wait on. Here's the whole path:

1. Sign up for a free Gleam account.
2. Create a Competition and add your prize.
3. Add entry actions — follow, share, refer a friend, answer a question — to set how people enter and earn extra entries.
4. Capture the data you want with custom fields and questions, so entries arrive already segmented.
5. Connect your email platform or CRM so new entrants sync automatically.
6. Set your terms (Gleam generates a compliant template) and style the widget to match your brand.
7. Publish and share — embed it on your site or use the hosted landing page, then promote it.

  Launch a Giveaway Now