Social Media Advertising in Sweden: Platforms, Targeting and Creator Content Heading Into 2027

Written by Jacob Boe with the help of AI

Cover: Social Media Advertising in Sweden

Advertising on social media in Sweden means buying placements in feeds, stories and videos through each platform’s own ad tool, where ads compete in an auction and are shown to the audience you choose based on your goal. The right platform depends on who you want to reach: Facebook, Instagram and YouTube reach the broadest audiences, while TikTok and Snapchat are strongest among young Swedes and LinkedIn among professionals. Heading into 2027, the brands that get the most out of their budgets combine the right platforms with content made by real people – creators and well-known personalities.

How does advertising on social media work?

Almost all social media ads are bought self-service in the platforms’ ad tools – Meta Ads Manager for Facebook and Instagram, TikTok Ads Manager, Google Ads for YouTube, and the equivalent tools at Snapchat and LinkedIn. You set a goal, a budget, an audience and the creative, and the platform decides who sees the ad and when.

The key mechanism is the auction. According to Meta, the winning ad is the one with the highest total value, which combines three factors: the bid, the estimated action rate – how likely a particular person is to engage with or convert from the ad – and ad quality, measured partly through feedback from people who view or hide the ad. TikTok also describes its delivery as an ad auction, where bid strategies tell the system how to bid for you. A better ad is not just more convincing – it is also cheaper to deliver.

Which goal should a social media campaign have?

Start with the goal, because it controls what the platform optimises for. In Meta Ads Manager there are six objectives: awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion and sales. Google’s video campaigns for YouTube can be built around sales, leads, website traffic or reach, views and engagement. If you choose awareness, the system looks for many people who are likely to remember the ad; if you choose sales, it looks for people likely to buy.

Which platform should brands choose in Sweden?

Choose by audience first. Internetstiftelsen’s Svenskarna och internet 2025 shows clear differences between platforms among Swedish internet users aged 8 and up:

YouTube: 78 percent have used it in the past year and 31 percent use it daily – 89 and 49 percent among those born in the 2000s.
Facebook: 71 percent in the past year and 49 percent daily, with even higher daily use among those born in the 1900s (59 percent). The broadest channel for adults.
Instagram: 65 percent in the past year and 47 percent daily, with similar levels across generations. The core channel for creator collaborations.
Snapchat: 37 percent in the past year, but 73 percent of those born in the 2000s – and 62 percent of them use it every day.
TikTok: 22 percent in the past year and 14 percent daily overall, but 55 and 42 percent among those born in the 2000s.
LinkedIn: 29 percent in the past year and 6 percent daily, but 43 percent of people in employment use it. The channel for B2B, where LinkedIn lets you target by traits such as job title, company name or industry.

How do you target the right people?

All the platforms let you target by location, age and interests, and reach people who have already interacted with you, such as website visitors or customer lists. LinkedIn also offers professional data. But the trend is clear: the platforms’ algorithms do more and more of the targeting themselves based on the goal and the creative. That makes the content – the ad itself – the strongest targeting tool you have.

Why does creator content work as advertising?

Because it looks like the content people chose to follow. Every major platform now has a format for running ads with a creator’s content and name: on Facebook and Instagram, partnership ads let brands run ads from a creator’s or partner’s handle, according to Meta; on TikTok the equivalent is Spark Ads. This is what is usually called whitelisting.

Organic and paid work best together. With big names, an organic post can travel far on its own, since the audience already knows and trusts the person. But organic reach is unpredictable and stops at the edge of the follower base. Paid media takes the best content further and deeper into the target group – the right age, region and interests, several times – and makes it possible to measure what happens next. The strongest model is to publish organically, see what works and then put the media budget behind the winners.

How should the budget be split?

There is no fixed price per view or click: the cost is set in the auction and depends on the audience, the competition and how good the ad is. That is why the budget should be split by function rather than by platform:

Production: content made for each format – vertical video, sound on, a hook in the first seconds and several versions to test.
Creators and rights: fees, plus the right to use the content in ads, for which platforms and for how long.
Media: the money that buys reach. Without it, even the best creator content stays within the follower base.
Testing and scaling: a part of the media budget kept for testing variants, so that money can be moved to what works.

What rules apply to social media advertising in Sweden?

Advertising must be recognisable as advertising. Konsumentverket stresses that hidden advertising is prohibited, that especially high demands for clarity apply on social media, and that the recipient must understand that a post is paid even at a fleeting glance. The company that hires an influencer has the main responsibility for the marketing, and cannot contract that responsibility away. Serious breaches can lead to a sanction fee of up to four percent of annual turnover, according to Konsumentverket.

Use the platforms’ labels for paid partnerships and keep the labelling when a post is boosted as an ad. Under the Swedish law on names and images in advertising (1978:800), a person’s name or image may not be used in marketing without their consent – so agree in writing exactly how a creator’s content may be used in ads. ICC’s Advertising and Marketing Communications Code adds that influencer communication must be immediately identifiable as such.

How does Collabri work with social media advertising?

We plan creators and paid media together from the start. In the Swedish launch of Fazer Domino, creators on TikTok and Instagram were combined with a paid strategy from day one, and the campaign reached more than 3.5 million views and 14,000 interactions. For Protein.com, content is optimised for both organic and paid distribution, and the best collaborations become long-term ambassadorships. We handle the whole chain – strategy, talents, contracts and rights, production, whitelisting and paid distribution, and reporting – in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

Key takeaways

Social media ads are bought in auctions where bid, expected response and ad quality decide who wins.
Choose one main goal per campaign – awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion or sales.
Choose platforms by audience: Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for breadth, TikTok and Snapchat for the young, LinkedIn for B2B.
Creator content run as partnership ads or Spark Ads combines the trust of organic content with the reach of paid media.
Split the budget into production, creators and rights, media and testing – and label all paid content clearly.

Frequently asked questions

Which social media platform is best for advertising in Sweden?

It depends on the audience. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube reach the most Swedes; TikTok and Snapchat are strongest among those born in the 2000s; LinkedIn is the choice for professionals.

What does social media advertising cost?

There is no fixed price. You set the budget yourself, and the cost per result depends on the auction – the audience, the competition and how well the ad performs.

Can we use an influencer’s content in our ads?

Yes, if the creator agrees. Formats such as partnership ads on Meta and Spark Ads on TikTok are built for it, but the rights, platforms and period must be agreed in writing.

Want help advertising on social media with the right creators and paid media? Contact Collabri at info@collabri.se. You can also browse our talents and client projects.

Sources

Internetstiftelsen – Svenskarna och internet 2025: Sociala medier (2025): https://svenskarnaochinternet.se/rapporter/svenskarna-och-internet-2025/sociala-medier/
Meta Business Help Center – About ad auctions: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/430291176997542
Meta Business Help Center – How to choose the right ad objective in Meta Ads Manager: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1438417719786914
Meta for Developers – Partnership Ads: https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/ads-commerce/marketing-api/ad-creative/partnership-ads
TikTok for Business – Spark Ads (Help Center): https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article/spark-ads
TikTok for Business – Bidding strategies (Help Center): https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article/bidding-strategies?lang=en
Google Ads Help – About video campaigns: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375464?hl=en
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions – Ad targeting: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/ad-targeting
Konsumentverket – Influencers reklaminlägg – regler för företag: https://www.konsumentverket.se/marknadsratt-foretag/influencers-reklaminlagg-regler-for-foretag/
Sveriges riksdag – Lag (1978:800) om namn och bild i reklam: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/lag-1978800-om-namn-och-bild-i-reklam_sfs-1978-800/
ICC Sverige – ICC:s regler för reklam och marknadskommunikation (2024): https://iccwbo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/11/ICC_2024_MarketingCode_Swedish.pdf

This article was written with the help of AI and reviewed by Collabri.