Paid acquisition
Paid advertising as a material source of demand.
Counts as evidence: The company describes paid marketing as a meaningful acquisition channel.
Who ran it
Zoom · Sales routed by deal size, land and expand · 2016 to 2020
Paid acquisition SupportingTargeted online and out-of-home advertising complemented the viral model. Yuan describes doubling down only where organic growth already showed up, rather than buying leads first.
Salesforce · The End of Software, sold by phone · 1999 to 2004
Paid acquisition SupportingAdvertising dominated early spend: 62% of fiscal 2001 and 47% of fiscal 2002 marketing and sales expense. From fiscal 2003, sales costs took a larger share as advertising fell.
Salesforce · AppExchange and the move to larger customers · 2004 to 2008
Paid acquisition SupportingSearch engine marketing and online and print advertising drove traffic to the website, where free trials, case studies and white papers captured leads for the sales organization.
Salesforce · Agentforce, digital labor and consumption pricing · 2024 to now
Paid acquisition SupportingBenioff shot three ads for the launch and put them on Twitter for feedback, and the 10-K lists multichannel campaigns spanning email, social media, the web and television.
Atlassian · Starter licenses, Marketplace and Experts · 2009 to 2019
Paid acquisition SupportingMarketing included advertising, direct marketing, and online lead generation from the IPO onward.
Atlassian · Enterprise sales on a cloud-only platform · 2022 to now
Paid acquisition SupportingMarketing now targets enterprise customers in particular, with advertising, in-person customer events, and industry analyst relations.
Slack · Direct sales layered on self-serve, then Enterprise Grid · 2016 to 2019
Paid acquisition SupportingAdvertising cost $39.3M, $35.5M, and $61.7M in fiscal 2017 to 2019, and fiscal 2019 marketing rose $34.9M on advertising, brand marketing, and promotion.
Slack · Shared channels, the pandemic, and the sale to Salesforce · 2019 to 2021
Paid acquisition SupportingSelf-service marketing listed brand advertising, PR, digital campaigns, and free trials of paid plans. Advertising was $38.1M in fiscal 2020 and $45.7M in fiscal 2021.
Dropbox · Free sync, shared folders, two-sided referral · 2008 to 2010
Paid acquisition Tried, then droppedEarly AdWords spend cost $500 to $1,000 to acquire a user who would pay about $100, so Houston says it was clear it would not work.
Dropbox · Focus on work, self-serve at scale, IPO · 2015 to 2019
Paid acquisition SupportingBrand campaigns, lead generation, and third-party sales representative fees drove most of a $63.4M rise in sales and marketing spend in 2017.
Dropbox · Multi-product, restructuring, and AI · 2020 to now
Paid acquisition Tried, then droppedFormSwift, acquired in late 2022, carried heavy advertising spend. Dropbox cut that investment at the start of 2025, advertising spend fell $52.3M, and FormSwift is planned to wind down by the end of 2026.
Notion · Community, templates and a free personal plan · 2019 to 2021
Paid acquisition SupportingPaid creator sponsorships, started in 2019 and measured by traffic to the Notion website, grew into a multi-channel influencer programme. This is sponsored creator content, not search or display ads.
Shopify · Self-serve store builder and the first ecosystem · 2006 to 2012
Paid acquisition SupportingAfter years of product-first growth, Lütke split a $25,000 test across five marketing ideas at once, including radio and adverts. All five worked, and he used the result to decide Shopify was a growth company that should raise venture capital.
Shopify · Payments, paid search and the IPO · 2013 to 2015
Paid acquisition PrimaryThe F-1 says marketing ran primarily on search, social and banner ads, and most of the 2014 rise in sales and marketing was an $18.0 million increase in programs such as Google AdWords.
Shopify · Shopify Plus, Unite and merchant solutions take over · 2016 to 2019
Paid acquisition SupportingOrganic search, paid search and social media stayed the core of acquisition. In 2019 Shopify added offline brand media to widen the top of the funnel and make direct marketing more efficient.
Shopify · Pandemic surge and a better developer deal · 2020 to 2022
Paid acquisition SupportingSales and marketing rose 49.7% to $901.6 million in 2021, mainly marketing programs on search, display and social plus payments to partners, even as it fell to 19.5% of revenue.
Shopify · Enterprise push, merchant solutions and AI channels · 2023 to now
Paid acquisition SupportingPaid search, social, radio, television and direct mail, judged on return on marketing spend. In 2025 marketing program spend rose $242 million while affiliate payouts fell $15 million.
Gong · Naming revenue intelligence, selling to the CRO · 2019 to 2022
Paid acquisition SupportingGong bought local Super Bowl airtime in 2021 (Bay Area, New York, Seattle) and 2022 (Bay Area, Chicago, Boston) aimed at sales leaders. Gong says the ad helped create its biggest-ever sales pipeline; it gives no figure.
Canva · Teams, classrooms and the workplace · 2020 to 2023
Paid acquisition SupportingThe 2022 brand campaign ran national TV ads, billboards, YouTube, social and audio in the US, with Canada, the UK and Australia to follow. The co-founder says only a minority of traffic comes through marketing or paid channels; no source says how much demand paid media drives.
Canva · Enterprise rebuilt, pro tools and AI distribution · 2024 to now
Paid acquisition SupportingThe 2024 campaign ran TV commercials, an email program and airport out-of-home aimed at business commuters, with each ad clicking through to a landing page of curated templates. Canva also ran its first locally made campaigns in the US, UK, India and Japan.
Asana · Self-serve first, sales to expand · 2017 to 2023
Paid acquisition SupportingPaid acquisition sat alongside owned properties, media coverage, and word of mouth. Advertising expenses for marketing programs rose $13.7 million in FY2020.
Cloudflare · Enterprise sales layered on self-serve · 2016 to 2019
Paid acquisition SupportingDigital performance marketing began in 2017, alongside brand awareness advertising and third-party industry events.
monday.com · Self-serve trial and payback-gated ads · 2014 to 2018
Paid acquisition PrimaryOnline ads were the main demand source, run with no fixed budget: spend scaled as long as each dollar paid back inside a set window, 8 to 9 months in 2019. The company says it began with DIY social media ads on a $50 budget.
monday.com · Sales, partners and the Work OS · 2018 to 2021
Paid acquisition PrimaryAdvertising costs of $98.4M in 2019 were larger than that year's $78.1M revenue, and sales and marketing was 152% of revenue. Mann put YouTube at 15 to 20% of the online effort. Marketing mixed performance ads, brand ads and organic channels.
monday.com · More products and the move upmarket · 2021 to 2024
Paid acquisition SupportingAdvertising kept rising in dollars while revenue grew faster: $143.5M against revenue of $308.2M in 2021, then $218.4M against revenue of $972.0M in 2024. Marketing targeted both teams and managers, bottom-up and top-down.
monday.com · Hybrid sales-led GTM and the AI Work Platform · 2025 to now
Paid acquisition SupportingPerformance marketing stays in the mix, but the 20-F reports declines in web traffic from Google searches, primarily due to AI-generated search updates and algorithm updates.
Lovable · Credits, giveaways, and a community at scale · 2025 to 2026
Paid acquisition SupportingPaid influencer marketing has worked from the beginning and is ten times bigger than paid social. The Head of Growth puts paid at low double digits of growth and says it is not the majority.