Which platform fits your brand?

1. In short: which social media platform fits your business? The one where your buyers already are.

The social media platform that fits your business is the one your buyers already use every day, and in Sweden that is mostly about age. You need one channel that reaches them and one route to the purchase, not six accounts. Pick a channel that reaches many of your buyers, and make sure they find you when they search. Reach is the first filter, not the whole answer: price and attention differ (6).

According to Internetstiftelsen in 2026, 22% of internet users used TikTok in the past year, but 69% of those born in the 2000s [1]. According to Nordicom’s Mediebarometer 2025, 24% of 15–24-year-olds watch scheduled TV on an average day, against 85% of 65–85-year-olds [2].

The internet took 77.7% of Swedish media ad investment in 2025, according to IRM [3]. But social media rarely sells directly: 84% of online shoppers had not bought anything via social media in the past month, according to PostNord’s E-barometer 2025 [4].

TV pays mainly over time and for buyers over 55, in UK data (7). A startup puts most into sales, in one channel (9). Ads work within weeks, brands are built over months (8). Young buyers on TikTok can also be reached through creators, which Collabify does (5).

2. Where does Swedish ad money go? Online, and mostly to search.

Swedish companies spent SEK 40.5 billion of 52.2 billion on online advertising in 2025, 77.7% of media ad investment, according to IRM [3]. Linear TV got 7.1%. The internet’s share has risen every year in our data since 2017, and TV’s has fallen since 2018 (Figure 1) [3, 5].

TV is shrinking in kronor, not just share. TV advertising investment fell from SEK 5.6 billion in 2021 to 3.7 billion in 2025 [3, 5].

Search is the largest single category: about 42% of media ad investment in 2023, SEK 20.5 billion [5]. Display, which includes social media and video, got 27%. IRM does not report social media separately.

3. Which social media do Swedes use most? Above all, it depends on age.

YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are the social media most Swedes use. According to Internetstiftelsen in 2026, 77% of internet users used YouTube in the past year, 69% Facebook and 66% Instagram [1]. Daily, Instagram (46%) and Facebook (45%) lead, ahead of YouTube (32%), Snapchat (24%) and TikTok (15%) [1].

The average hides what matters most: age (Figure 2). Among 15–24-year-olds, Snapchat reaches 85% on an average day and TikTok 70%, says Nordicom’s Mediebarometer [2]. Among 45–64-year-olds, Facebook reaches 71%, TikTok 7%.

The surveys measure differently and can’t be mixed: Instagram reaches 59% on an average day in Mediebarometer but 46% daily in Internetstiftelsen’s [1, 2].

Gender matters on a few platforms. Pinterest is used by 29% of women and 6% of men, and X by 6% of women and 20% of men, according to Internetstiftelsen [1].

4. Platform by platform: who is there, what it is good at and where it falls short.

TikTok or Instagram for business?

TikTok or Instagram depends on your buyers’ age. TikTok reaches 70% of 15–24-year-olds on an average day but 16% of 25–44-year-olds, while Instagram reaches 71% of 25–44-year-olds and 61% of 45–64-year-olds, according to Mediebarometer 2025 [2]. Under 25, both work. Over 25, Instagram reaches far more.

Is LinkedIn only for B2B, and is it enough?

LinkedIn mainly reaches working professionals, but few use it daily: 43% of employed Swedes used it in the past year and 9% daily, according to Internetstiftelsen in 2025 [6]. For B2B it is rarely enough alone. In the analyst firm Forrester’s 2026 survey of 17,000+ business buyers, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube came ahead of LinkedIn [7].

The cards below draw on Internetstiftelsen, Mediebarometer and PostNord [1, 2, 4].

5. What is creator content? A way into the audience through people it already follows.

Creator content is videos that creators make about your brand and publish to their own audience. You reach buyers through people they already follow, with many faces instead of one brand account. User-generated content (UGC) often means material a business orders for its own channels, used as the agreement allows. With Collabify a brand can also buy out the licence to a creator’s video for full usage rights, so the same video works on the creator’s account and in your own channels and ads.

In two experiments, people trusted influencers more than celebrities and felt more like them, according to the International Journal of Advertising in 2020 [8]. In one European online retailer’s field data, the smallest creators returned about 18 times their cost in revenue, against about 5 for the largest, according to the Journal of Marketing in 2024 [9]. Revenue can’t be compared with the profit in section 7.

The effect is not a given. Influencer posts affect the purchases of 6% of online shoppers, 13% of 18–29-year-olds and 0% of 65–79-year-olds, according to PostNord’s E-barometer 2025 [4]. On purchase intention, small and large creators were roughly level, according to a 2025 meta-analysis [10].

Nor is it cheap reach. Creators often cost USD 10–50 per thousand views, says the vendor IQFluence [11], against about USD 2–8 for auction ads [12]. As paid Meta ads, creator videos run from the creator’s account cost 5% less per purchase than from the brand’s, says the vendor Agentio [13].

None of these studies is about Collabify. Collabify is built for creator content on TikTok in Sweden: many creators publish videos about your brand on their own accounts, with a prize pool or commission, and more platforms are coming. Every video is marked as advertising [14].

6. Engagement, price and attention: the ranking depends on what you count per.

Engagement is the share who like, comment or share. Per follower, TikTok leads with 2.01% against 0.30% for Instagram, according to the analytics firm Rival IQ in 2026 [15]. With other denominators the gap is small: TikTok 4.2% per view (Socialinsider 2025) and Instagram 3–3.5% per person reached (Hootsuite) [16, 17].

A Facebook page reaches 1.8% of its followers per post on average, an Instagram account 4.9%, says the analytics firm Socialinsider [18].

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is the price of showing an ad a thousand times. In vendor data YouTube costs USD 2.16, TikTok 2.97 and Meta 8.15 [12], and LinkedIn USD 50–63 in UK and US B2B samples [19]. Neither the platforms nor TV4 publish Swedish prices in kronor.

Cheapest per impression is not cheapest per second watched. Attention-data vendors suggest a TV ad that is seen gets 13.8 seconds of attention, a YouTube ad about 5 and a feed ad about 1.5 (Figure 3) [20]. Only 43% of TV ads are seen at all.

7. Does TV advertising pay compared with social media? Over time and for older buyers, according to UK data.

In UK data, TV advertising pays best over the long run, and in Sweden TV mainly reaches buyers over 55. In Thinkbox’s Profit Ability 2 (2024), 141 brands, commissioned by the TV industry, linear TV returned £5.94 in profit per pound over 24 months, against £3.52 for search and £3.20 for paid social [21, 22]. Print returned more per pound, £6.36, but TV the most profit in total.

TV with broadcasters’ streaming delivered 54.7% of advertising profit from only 43.6% of the money [21]. Within 13 weeks, TV returned £1.82, less than search but more than paid social (Figure 4) [22].

In Sweden, TV reaches few young people. Live TV reaches 36.0% of Swedes on an average day by MMS’s meter, down from 40.7% in 2023 [23]. People aged 15–29 watch 10 minutes of live TV a day, those over 60 watch 212 [23].

TV4’s Media Manager has sold self-service ads in 26 regions since 2024, but publishes no price in kronor [24].

8. How long does social media marketing take to pay off? Weeks for ads, longer for the brand.

Paid social ads deliver most of their short-term effect within weeks. Carryover is the share of a week’s effect left the next week: 0.25 for paid social, 0.24 for search and 0.66 for TV [22]. At 0.25, about three quarters of the short-term effect lands in week one (our calculation).

By our calculation TV keeps 19% of its effect after four weeks, paid social and search under 1% (Figure 5). In the long run it is the reverse: on average 58% of advertising’s profit came after the first 13 weeks [25].

A first-week report therefore captures about half of the two-year profit from search, about 40% from paid social and about 10% of TV’s (our calculation). No study measures how long a new account takes to grow without ads.

9. How do startups and established brands choose channels differently? The startup starts narrow, the established brand broad.

A startup should put most money into sales, while an established brand wins by keeping broad reach going. Binet and Field suggest about a third brand building at launch, roughly 35:65, moving toward the average of 60:40, according to a review of IPA data [26]. Our rule is to start in one channel.

Brands that stopped advertising lost 10% of market share after one year, 20% after two and 28% after three, and small brands lost it fastest, according to the Journal of Advertising Research in 2023 [27].

A thin budget is also punished. A Meta ad set needs about 50 purchases or other goals in seven days to leave the learning phase [28], and TikTok requires at least USD 50 a day per campaign [29]. Spread over many platforms, a small budget gives no campaign enough data (our conclusion). With commission on Collabify you instead pay creators a share of each sale made with their code.

Big brands grow more per percentage point they advertise above their market share [26]. But campaigns with above-average advertising pressure returned less per krona, 312 against 386% [30]. TV saturates only at about £330,000 a week, against £31,000 for paid social [22]. No source says when to start with TV.

10. Must a business be on every platform? No, but it needs reach and a route to the purchase.

No, a business does not need to be on every platform. No study shows that a fifth or sixth platform pays off. Instead, the IPA’s databank of award-entered campaigns suggests combining brand building with sales advertising: such campaigns were twice as efficient as pure brand building, 0.6 against 0.3 in market share per unit of extra advertising pressure [31]. That means two kinds of advertising, not more platforms.

Audiences also overlap. According to Internetstiftelsen, 94% of internet users use some social medium, 69% Facebook and 66% Instagram [1], so at least 41% use both (our calculation: 69 + 66 − 94 = 41). One exception is young business buyers: over half in Gen Z find five or more social sites meaningful, according to Forrester [7].

Lush left Instagram and Facebook, among others, in 2021, and according to the trade magazine Cosmetics Business its growth has not suffered [32].

Our rule is therefore: one channel where you advertise that reaches your buyers, plus one route to the purchase, often search or your own shop. A page reaches few followers without ads (6), and creators’ posts are a third route (5). Add the next platform once the first works. The rule is our conclusion.

11. Does social media sell in Sweden? It inspires, but the purchase usually happens elsewhere.

Social media inspires Swedes more than it sells to them. According to PostNord’s E-barometer 2025, 84% of online shoppers had bought nothing via social media in the past month [4].

The route usually runs through your own shop. After seeing a product on social media, 32% had clicked a link and 17% had bought it, over an unstated period [4]. 45% say social media does not affect their purchases: 60% of 65–79-year-olds, 33% of 18–29-year-olds.

A code per creator makes the route traceable. With commission on Collabify a purchase counts only once the return period has passed. TikTok Shop runs in ten other European countries but had not launched in Sweden when we checked in October 2026 [33].

12. Which rules apply to social media advertising in Sweden? The same everywhere, and some sectors are closed.

The same rules apply on every platform in Sweden. Under Article 28 of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), platforms may not show profiling-based ads to users known to be under 18 [34]. Direct calls to buy aimed at under-18s are banned, says the Swedish Consumer Agency [35]. Alcohol may only be marketed where at least 70% of the audience is over 25, never on TV [36, 37]. Paid alcohol ads around user videos are also limited, we read on every video platform, though the reach abroad is uncertain [37].

Tobacco, nicotine pouches, credit and political ads have rules of their own, shown in the table [38, 39, 40, 41, 42].

The Radio and Television Act bans ads aimed at under-12s on Swedish TV, on-demand TV and Swedish-registered video platforms [43]. The Marketing Act applies everywhere, and the Swedish Consumer Agency judges ads to children by their design [35].

Your own website is a risk too. In 2024 the data protection authority IMY fined Apoteket SEK 37 million, Avanza 15 million and Apohem 8 million over Meta pixels that sent customer data to Meta [44, 45, 46].

Platforms can change the terms overnight. Facebook cut page reach in 2018 [47]. X got the EU’s first DSA fine, €120 million, in December 2025 [48]. TikTok’s €530 million GDPR fine is still before the Irish courts and the EU Court of Justice [49, 50]. Only 2% of Swedes trust TikTok as a company, according to Medieakademin’s Förtroendebarometer 2025 [51].

So build channels of your own too, such as a newsletter and your shop. The advice rests on cases, not studies. This is not legal advice.

13. The platform picker shows which channel reaches your buyers and which rules close others.

The platform picker (Figure 6) shows daily reach in your buyers’ age group from Mediebarometer 2025, which platforms the rules close, and a suggestion [2].

The picker shows reach, not price or effect. By our rule, the channel is the open platform with the highest daily reach. Within 5 points platforms count as level, within 15 as alternatives. The route to the purchase is search and your shop. Gender only adds a note. Collabify shows when TikTok is suggested, never for credit, alcohol or tobacco.

For buyers aged 25–44 it suggests Instagram or Facebook, reaching 71 and 70% on an average day, with YouTube (62%) close behind [2].

14. About the evidence: strong on audiences, weaker on effect and price.

Every source is tagged by what it is. Audience figures are Swedish and independent, effect figures British and TV-industry-commissioned, and prices are vendors’, in dollars. Internetstiftelsen and Mediebarometer never share a figure.

No Swedish source shows which product categories work on which platform, how much audiences overlap, or how long a new account takes. Collabify is behind this guide, but no figure about Collabify is used as evidence.