Google Ads and Face­book Ads are the two most pop­u­lar pay-per-click adver­tis­ing plat­forms. They both func­tion with­in the auc­tion-based mod­el, where a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding struc­ture is used to deter­mine which ads are shown.

The key dif­fer­ence between these two plat­forms is that Google Ads are tar­get­ed by key­words (search terms), whilst Face­book Ads are tar­get­ed by audi­ences. This cru­cial dis­tinc­tion has sig­nif­i­cant ram­i­fi­ca­tions that we’ll exam­ine fur­ther in this article.

While Google Ads are only dis­played on Google Search results, Face­book Ads can reach audi­ences via Insta­gram, Mes­sen­ger, Audi­ence Net­work, and of course, Face­book itself.

But which one is better?

Glob­al­ly, more than 80% of busi­ness­es trust Google Ads for pay-per-click cam­paigns, and 92% of social media mar­keters still use Face­book for adver­tis­ing. Face­book accounts for more than 9% of dig­i­tal spend­ing on ads and 18.4% of mobile dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing glob­al­ly. Mean­while, 73% of the paid search mar­ket belongs to Google.

Evi­dent­ly, these two plat­forms are sit­ting right at the top of the world of dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing – and it’s no wonder:

Did you know that web­site users are four times more like­ly to click on Google Ads than any oth­er adver­tise­ment network?

Face­book sits just behind Google in the bid for the most pop­u­lar paid adver­tis­ing chan­nel, with almost 20% of the dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing mar­ket share. Nev­er­the­less, Face­book’s audi­ence tar­get­ing is sec­ond to none – with adver­tis­ers’ cus­tomer acqui­si­tion costs declin­ing by 73% when using its Cus­tom Audi­ences feature.

When think­ing about which adver­tis­ing plat­form you’ll use, you’ve got to under­stand the dif­fer­ences between Google and Face­book. While one may be best for one kind of busi­ness, the oth­er could be much more effec­tive for others.

So, let’s exam­ine these two plat­forms and how they can serve dif­fer­ent busi­ness needs.

How they work

As men­tioned above, both Google Ads and Face­book Ads are pay-per-click adver­tis­ing plat­forms, func­tion­ing with­in a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding sys­tem. But what does this mean?

Pay-per-click adver­tis­ing works by charg­ing the adver­tis­er a fee every time one of their adverts is clicked. The exact fee Face­book or Google will charge you can vary – but we’ll get into that later.

Com­pet­i­tive bid­ding sys­tems start with adver­tis­ers nam­ing their prices for a sin­gle click. What hap­pens next depends on the adver­tis­ing platform:

On Google Ads, you won’t be able to out-bid your com­pe­ti­tion for the key­word “cheese” if your ad links to a page about choco­late. This means that Google (as with organ­ic search) eval­u­ates the rel­e­vance and help­ful­ness of your page accord­ing to search intent.

If your ad meets Google’s require­ments (help­ful­ness and rel­e­van­cy), they’ll eval­u­ate your ad in com­par­i­son with com­pet­ing ads and bids to deter­mine your ad’s posi­tion on the SERPs.

On Face­book Ads, adver­tis­ers can choose between bid­ding for costs per click or costs per 1000 impres­sions. Face­book will take in the rel­e­vance and qual­i­ty of your ad, as well as the prob­a­bil­i­ty of con­ver­sions, when eval­u­at­ing com­pet­ing bids.

Even with the high­est bid, your ad may not appear in the top posi­tion if there are more rel­e­vant ads – this applies to both Google and Face­book. Both plat­forms allow users to input dai­ly bud­gets, so they don’t spend more than they want to.

Google Ads: the advantages

The attrac­tive aspect of plac­ing ads with Google is that they are locat­ed right at the top of the SERPs, so they can be seen by every searcher. Their design is also in the same for­mat as organ­ic results, so adverts appear less like adverts.

The oth­er main attrac­tion is that Google users are in a “ready to buy” state – par­tic­u­lar­ly if their searched-for term includes the words: “best” or “sale.” These users are active­ly search­ing for a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, mak­ing it much more like­ly that they’ll inter­act with these ads com­pared with those on Facebook.

Busi­ness­es that will ben­e­fit most from Google Ads are those with straight­for­ward prod­ucts because it’s eas­i­er for these brands to cap­ture the most rel­e­vant keywords.

Google Ads offers three types of adverts: text only, call only, and shop­ping. While shop­ping ads appear as images in Google Shop­ping, call-only ads allow users to instant­ly phone the adver­tis­er when clicked (i.e., call to click). These kinds of adverts are ide­al for those util­is­ing appoint­ments and reser­va­tions such as beau­ty salons, plumbers, and restaurants.

Although Google’s Ad Man­ag­er isn’t known for being easy to use, the plat­form does offer up its Key­word Plan­ner Tool, which brands can use to see how much traf­fic exists for spe­cif­ic key­words and how much their aver­age cost per click would be.

With 5.8 bil­lion search­es a day, Google has more than dou­ble the reach of Face­book, which has 1.73 bil­lion dai­ly users.

Facebook Ads: the advantages

Face­book’s audi­ence tar­get­ing abil­i­ties are sec­ond to none, and that’s the main rea­son why some users pre­fer it to Google Ads. Though Face­book users lack the degree of buy­ing intent that Google users have, Face­book has exten­sive tar­get­ing options such as income, age, gen­der, and interests.

Cre­at­ing Face­book adverts is fair­ly straight­for­ward because Face­book Ads Man­ag­er is so user-friend­ly. On the con­trary, Google’s Ad Man­ag­er can be dif­fi­cult to use. Fur­ther­more, Face­book Ads has an aver­age con­ver­sion rate of 9.21%, while Google Ads’ is 4.4%.

While users search­ing Google may be more “ready to buy”, the high­ly tar­get­ed ads on Face­book mean that brands can gen­er­ate high lev­els of brand aware­ness amongst groups that are most like­ly to be inter­est­ed in their prod­ucts or services.

Face­book can best serve those brands with com­pli­cat­ed or nuanced prod­ucts or cam­paigns because they don’t have to go through key­word tar­get­ing with Google.

Face­book offers six dif­fer­ent styles of adverts:

• Video
• Image
• Col­lec­tion
• Instant expe­ri­ence
• Carousel
• Slideshow

This range of ad for­mats means brands can have even more per­son­al­i­sa­tion in their adver­tis­ing – so that all kinds of require­ments can be catered for. Regard­less of which for­mat you choose, all of them appear sim­i­lar to reg­u­lar social media con­tent, which can increase user engage­ment lev­els and come across as less “salesy”.

Differences between Google Ads and Facebook Ads

The most glar­ing dif­fer­ence between Google Ads and Face­book Ads is that Google users are in a “ready to buy” state of mind as they’re often look­ing to scout out a poten­tial sell­er there and then. On the oth­er hand, peo­ple use Face­book for social and enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es – so they’re def­i­nite­ly not “ready to buy.”

Giv­en this, lead gen­er­a­tion on Face­book takes longer than on Google.

Tar­get­ing is dif­fer­ent for these plat­forms, with Face­book Ads util­is­ing Meta’s detailed audi­ence insights and Google Ads reach­ing users via key­words (search terms). Key­word tar­get­ing can prove eas­i­er for brands with a straight­for­ward prod­uct – as rel­e­vant search terms won’t be unknown to tar­get audiences.

Equal­ly, niche or com­plex busi­ness types (per­haps sell­ing inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts) can find key­word tar­get­ing dif­fi­cult as its own tar­get demo­graph­ic does­n’t know what to search for to find it.

Whilst Google Search ads are text-only, brands can include images, videos, and graph­ics in their Face­book ads. This means that brands can con­vey their ethos, val­ues, and per­son­al­i­ty much more effec­tive­ly on Face­book. Plus, they can be made more mem­o­rable than a black-and-white text-only Google ad.

As a result of these dif­fer­ences, Face­book is bet­ter for build­ing brand aware­ness and is there­fore used more for this pur­pose, whilst Google is the go-to for adver­tis­ers that want to gen­er­ate leads quick­ly and find key­word tar­get­ing more straightforward.

Which is cheaper Google or Facebook Ads?

Over­all, Face­book is the cheap­er option. While the aver­age com­pa­ny will spend between $300 and $1000 on Face­book Ads every month, small to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es can spend between $1000 and $10,000 on aver­age each month on their paid Google cam­paigns.

When zoom­ing in on costs per click, Face­book comes out cheap­er again. If we look at all the dif­fer­ent types of busi­ness­es and key­words in the US, the aver­age CPC for Google Ads falls between $1 and $2. Mean­while, Face­book’s costs come in low­er at an aver­age of $0.97 per click.

Though Face­book Ads comes out cheap­er than Google Ads over­all, what you’ll pay does depend on sev­er­al factors.

Due to shop­ping habits near­er Christ­mas, Face­book ads tend to be cheap­er dur­ing the first quar­ter of the year, peak­ing towards the last quar­ter. Here are some oth­er fac­tors that can influ­ence the cost of PPC advertising:

• The cam­paign’s objectives
• Bud­get
• The tar­get keywords
• Advert loca­tion
• Audi­ence
• Sea­son­al­i­ty
• Ad bid
• Your indus­try

Though some reports indi­cate the aver­age Google CPC com­ing in between $1 to $3, law com­pa­nies may have to pay an aver­age of $6.75 per click on the plat­form – and that’s not even the most expen­sive industry.

The key­word “insur­ance” is the most expen­sive Google Ads search term, reach­ing $54.91 per click – show­ing that insur­ance is one of the most expen­sive things to adver­tise on Google. Sur­pris­ing­ly, this high cost isn’t the same on Face­book, with adver­tis­ers in insur­ance and finance only hav­ing to pay an aver­age of $3.77 per click.

Although Face­book is cheap­er, it isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the best option for your busi­ness. Google Ads has many advan­tages, as we’ve list­ed above, that may be per­fect for your com­pa­ny. Plus, as we’ll explore below, the rewards you gain may have more to do with how you use the adver­tis­ing platform.

Is Google AdWords a waste of money?

This is a very com­mon ques­tion, so it might sur­prise some to know that Google AdWords no longer exists. In 2018, it changed to what we now call Google Ads – but some mar­keters and busi­ness own­ers, new to paid adver­tis­ing, don’t realise it due to out­dat­ed infor­ma­tion online.

Though Google AdWords had 2.5 mil­lion users in 2016, a lot of busi­ness­es wast­ed mon­ey on it. Forbes advised the only way you can reach unlim­it­ed poten­tial (with­out wast­ing mon­ey) on the paid ad plat­form is to avoid these nine com­mon mistakes:

1. Not track­ing data and KPIs
2. For­get­ting about neg­a­tive keywords
3. Not using ad groups
4. Not tar­get­ing long­tail keywords
5. Only using AdWords to research terms
6. Only adver­tis­ing your own brand
7. For­get­ting to test ad positions
8. Not fol­low­ing up
9. Not keep­ing an eye on the competition

So, although it’s com­mon for users to waste mon­ey on Google Ads, it’s like­ly because they’re not using it to its max­i­mum capacity.

If you don’t have the time to ded­i­cate to Google Ads, it’s not advis­able to use it as it’s like­ly you’ll lose mon­ey on it. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you avoid the above nine mis­takes, your busi­ness is much more like­ly to have a cost-effec­tive experience.

So, which one should you be using?

The short answer to this ques­tion is that it entire­ly depends on your busi­ness, its size, its goals, its prod­ucts, and its industry.

If you want to tar­get leads at the point of buy­ing intent, then there’s noth­ing bet­ter than Google Ads. How­ev­er, busi­ness­es want­i­ng to increase brand aware­ness will fit in well on Face­book. The key here is work­ing out whether your prod­ucts are search or social-oriented.

The oth­er decid­ing fac­tor is where your tar­get demo­graph­ic spends their time.

Whichev­er adver­tis­ing plat­form you choose, make sure you’re using it prop­er­ly and avoid­ing the nine com­mon mis­takes list­ed above.

If you need some help with your PPC adver­tis­ing cam­paign, pur­ple­plan­et can help. Our ser­vice, pur­ple­tar­get, can help your busi­ness attract more qual­i­fied leads and increase the prof­itabil­i­ty of your dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing campaigns.