Facebook Ads or Google Ads: Where and How Much to Invest?
Learn best practices for splitting your budget between Google Ads and Meta Ads (formerly Facebook Ads) and find out which channel to start with.
The biggest ad channels available are Google Ads and Meta Ads (formerly Facebook Ads, renamed after Facebook became Meta). With them, advertisers can reach potential customers and drive leads, sales, app downloads, or other marketing goals.
However, the advertiser needs to decide which channel(s) to invest in and how much to spend on them.
Before we go on, let me say upfront that there is no rule that applies to every company. What we will show you are best practices for deciding which channel to focus on.
- What advantages does Google Ads have over Meta Ads?
- Search Network and Google Shopping ads
- Display Network and Video
- What advantages does Meta Ads have over Google Ads?
- When to choose Google Ads?
- When to choose Meta Ads?
- Final Tips
- Tip 1: Test and find out which channel works best for you
- Tip 2: Start with Google Ads
- Tip 3: To scale your investment, use Meta Ads
- Tip 4: Be careful with the Google Display Network
What advantages does Google Ads have over Meta Ads?
The campaign types available in Google Ads are: Search Network, Google Shopping, Display Network, Video (YouTube), Apps and, more recently, Performance Max and Demand Gen, which combine several of these channels into a single campaign.
Search Network and Google Shopping ads
With Search Network and Google Shopping ads, users see the ad when they run a search on Google. That is why these ad formats tend to be very efficient: the audience receiving them is already searching for the product or service.
Although these formats are great for getting started with ads, there are a few things to watch out for:
- Traffic is variable: since your ad is shown only to people searching for it, ad impression volume is inconsistent. For some business segments, it can be genuinely hard to decide which keywords to invest in, since traffic for certain terms is very low.
- High competition: Google Ads works as an auction. That means the amount an advertiser pays per ad click depends on competitors' bids for the same keyword. For some highly competitive business segments, the cost per click can be far too high.
- Proper account setup: in Google Ads, a beginner will probably struggle to configure their ad account correctly. There are many best practices to follow, and advertisers who overlook them will likely waste money advertising inefficiently.
Display Network and Video
For the Display Network and Video, the dynamics are completely different. These formats are generally better suited to brand awareness. In this type of channel, the advertiser works with visual media that can reach users at scale.
Although the cost per impression (or view) of this ad type is relatively low, conversion results tend to be lower than on the Search Network.
One advantage of this format is that the reachable audience is larger. While on the Search Network someone needs to run a search for the ad to be seen, on the Display Network and YouTube, Google has a much easier time delivering your ads.
In short, these formats closely resemble Meta Ads, since users receive the ad passively, based on predefined targeting. So the recommendations for Meta Ads fit these formats almost perfectly.
What advantages does Meta Ads have over Google Ads?
Meta Ads covers Meta's social networks and messaging apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
On this ad platform, through Ads Manager, the advertiser defines the audiences the ads should reach and the creative assets that will be directed at each of those segments.
Meta Ads' advantage over Google's Search Network is that the reachable audiences are broader, since the platform consolidates social networks used by billions of people every month. That makes it a channel with plenty of room for advertisers to expand their investment.
However, audiences must be selected very carefully. Many users may ignore your ads if they are not relevant to them or if ad frequency goes past the sweet spot.
That is why the choice of audiences, messaging and, above all, the marketing creatives matter so much for success when advertising on this platform.
When to choose Google Ads?
Since the Google Ads Search Network is a highly profitable channel compared to other alternatives, we recommend exploring it to the fullest before investing in other channels.
For the cases below, however, Google Ads may not be very useful:
- Advertisers whose product / service has a very low average order value;
- Products / services largely unknown to the public, so there is no meaningful search volume on Google.
As for the Display Network and YouTube, we recommend investing when the company has a larger marketing budget. That way, it can allocate budget to reach lower-performing audiences in pursuit of long-term returns.
When to choose Meta Ads?
We recommend favoring Meta Ads for companies selling products / services that people rarely search for on Google.
B2C companies are another type of business that can benefit from Meta Ads, because it is easier to find profitable audiences for them on social networks.
Final Tips
Tip 1: Test and find out which channel works best for you
No rule applies to every advertiser: the ideal is to test several channels. Then invest predominantly in the ones that deliver sales or qualified leads most efficiently.
Tip 2: Start with Google Ads
In general, the Google Ads Search Network delivers good results. But make sure to configure the ad platform correctly. That means following best practices for conversion tracking, ad assets (formerly ad extensions), bidding algorithms, and so on.
Tip 3: To scale your investment, use Meta Ads
Meta Ads is a good channel for reaching people more broadly. Test it with various ad formats and find the audiences most relevant to your business there. Advantage+ campaigns, in which Meta automates targeting and delivery, are now a common path to scale.
With Meta Ads, you can also reach people who have already visited your site through remarketing.
Tip 4: Be careful with the Google Display Network
The Google Display Network can suffer from problems such as fraudulent clicks and impressions on irrelevant sites.
Use this channel primarily for remarketing and take precautions, such as limiting the sites where your ads will show.
Want to improve your results on Google Ads or Meta Ads? Try the tools from Marktech.
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