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As a business owner, you may be wondering which platform to use for your online advertising campaign: Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Both platforms offer unique features and benefits, so it’s important to understand the differences between the two in order to make an informed decision.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads – what are they?
Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform that allows companies to display ads on Google search results pages and other sites that are part of the Google Display Network. With Google Ads, companies can target ads to specific keywords, demographics and locations to reach desired audiences.
Facebook Ads, on the other hand, is a paid social advertising platform that allows companies to display ads on Facebook and other services that are part of the Meta platform, such as Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network.
So, which platform will be most suitable for your business? Below you’ll read about a few factors to consider when making your choice.
The following are some of the factors you should consider when making your choice.
Audience groups and their intentions
The differences in ad targeting between Facebook Ads and Google Ads can significantly affect the effectiveness of your ad campaign. In the case of both platforms, we can designate factors such as gender, age, or location for the audience groups of our ads, but beyond these aspects, the possibilities are relatively different.
Google Ads audience targeting is largely based on search intent, meaning that ads are displayed to users who are actively searching for a product or service. In the case of search network campaigns – your ads will display under the keyword phrases you designate, and for display ads you can designate audiences that have recently searched for certain keywords, or browsed specific sites or applications.
One of the weaknesses of Facebook Ads is the lack of this very active intention of the audience to purchase a product or service. The platforms targeted by ads broadcast via Facebook Ads (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger) are mainly used for communication with friends and entertainment, making it difficult to attract the attention of users who are not yet even aware of your company’s existence.
The lack of active intent to purchase your product or service is one of the weaknesses of Facebook Ads.
What, then, are the strengths of Facebook Ads when we talk about targeting? The important thing is that it is based primarily on user behavior and interests, which allows companies to target ads to groups of audiences based on their personalities, making it significantly easier to personalize ads. Sure, targeting people who are interested in particular issues is possible for Google Ads, but for Facebook Ads this capability is far more advanced and gives us a greater number of audience interests to choose from. This is great news for companies looking to increase brand awareness! Maybe not always the person who comes across your ad will be immediately ready to buy, but social media is a great place to introduce yourself to the right people. And they are the ones we can easily reach thanks to the wide selection of audience interests offered by the platform.
It is also worth noting the size of the audiences these two giants offer us. We know that Google Ads and Facebook Ads are two of the largest online advertising platforms available today, but what does this translate into numbers? Well, Google handles more than 8.5 billion searches each day, while Meta’s services have an estimated 3.59 billion daily active users.
What does this mean for you as an advertiser? Should you just choose Google Ads out of the blue because the number of searches on Google’s network is so high that you’re sure to get featured? Unfortunately, making a choice based on these statistics is a bit more complicated than that. To make it easier, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- Whether your target audience is active in a particular network?
Interesting fact: In January 2023, it was revealed that men between the ages of 25 and 34 make up the largest portion of Facebook’s active users, making up as much as 17.6% of global users. It’s worth monitoring these types of statistics to know if our target audience is active in channels where you can advertise with Facebook Ads.
- Have people already heard about what your company offers?
If you want to present an innovative new product that no one has heard of before, it’s rather hard to hope that someone will do a search for its name or features. Of course, it’s worth testing reach campaigns with formats such as display, or video with Google Ads, but remember what I mentioned earlier – for Facebook Ads, you can definitely define the audience groups for your ads in more detail. So if you know that your innovative product may be of interest specifically to lovers of cooking, gaming, or technology news – Facebook Ads will definitely work great.
Cost and ROAS
Of course, the money you have to prepare to spend on advertising is a very important factor when choosing between advertising platforms.
How much will we pay per conversion by advertising through Google Ads? According to statistics published on WordStream, the average cost per conversion for all industries advertising through Google Ads is $56.11 (£235.81) on the search network and $90.80 (£381.79) on the display network. The lowest average CPA boasts the automotive and fashion industries, and the highest – technology and legal industries.
After taking information from the same source, we will learn that the average CPA for Facebook Ads is significantly lower. The average cost per conversion (CPA) for Facebook Ads, considering all industries, is $18.68 (78.54 PLN). The situation here looks most colorful for the education industry, for which the average CPA is $7.85 (33.01) and least optimistic – for the technology industry, with an average CPA of $55.21 (232.14 PLN).
How, on the other hand, is the issue of ROAS, or reimbursement for advertising? Here the difference is no longer as large as in the case of cost per conversions, but still Facebook Ads remains ahead. After all, the average ROAS score for Google Ads is 200% (this means that for every £10 spent on advertising, you will earn an average of £20), while for Facebook Ads it is between 200% and 400%.
So if we focus only on costs, the situation will not cause joy among Google Ads followers (after all, the highest average CPA for Facebook Ads is still lower than the lowest one for the Google Ads platform!). However, this doesn’t mean that we can’t break out of the pattern. There are plenty of proven ways to lower cost-per-conversion, which you’ll read about in both our case studies and online marketing blog articles Let’s also remember that cheaper doesn’t always mean better. It is easy to guess that in many cases traffic from Facebook will be of much lower quality than traffic from Google Ads, which is full of purchase intent.
Not sure which channel to go for?
Or maybe you want to advertise in both, but don’t have the head for it? Relax, that’s what we are for! Contact us and we’ll help you develop a strategy and run campaigns that will take your brand to the top.
Campaign goal
Whether it’s better to opt to use Facebook Ads or Google Ads depends largely on the campaign goal you adopt.
Facebook Ads is the optimal solution for top of the sales funnel goals, which are, for example:
- visits to a website or blog;
- interactions and outreach on social media;
- community engagement;
- newsletter subscriptions;
This is because social media is where people browse and share things that are relevant to them. These things are rarely material for a campaign with a target that is part of the MoFu (middle funnel), or BoFu (bottom funnel).
If your business is focused on goals such as session extensions, email clicks, landing page’u visits, webinar sign-ups, or ultimately, at the bottom of the funnel making a purchase and increasing revenue – it’s worth considering using a Google Ads campaign.
Industry
The issue that some industries can get better results with Facebook Ads than with Google Ads and vice versa has already been initially addressed when we discussed conversion costs for the platforms in question. However, there are still a few elements about the industries in question that are worth discussing in this context.
Different industries can expect different results depending on the advertising platform used. To determine the best platform for your industry, you can refer to benchmarks or case studies Benchmarks will provide a preview of how your industry is performing on a particular platform, while case studies will show how other companies in your industry have achieved success with the help of Google Ads or Facebook Ads.
When choosing a platform, it’s also worth considering whether your company offers B2B or B2C services. Saunder Shroader, a Growth Marketing specialist, speaks plainly: “For B2B companies, AdWords (Google Ads) is the clear winner. B2C, however, is the domain of Facebook.” This is a position that does not come out of nowhere. The caliber of B2B traffic and leads obtained through Facebook usually tends to be worse than that obtained through Google Ads. Even if your cost is lower there, driving inappropriate traffic to your site may not necessarily save you money.
Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads – summary of the clash of giants.
This is how we compared the two major online advertising platforms, Google Ads and Facebook Ads. With all the aspects discussed (targeting capabilities, audience intent, campaign objective, cost and industry) in mind, it is worth remembering that the best choice for your business may not be to limit yourself to one of these advertising platforms, but to use them both with varying intensity. If you still need help choosing the right platform to advertise your products or services, we encourage you to schedule a consultation with one of our SchoolUp coaches, who will be happy to share their expertise with you and help you choose the option best suited to your company’s needs.
