Key takeaways
- Google captures existing demand; Meta creates it. Start where the demand already is.
- If nobody searches for your category, Google Ads has nothing to capture.
- Fix conversion tracking before increasing budget — platforms optimise toward what you report.
- Meta needs the Conversions API; browser-only pixel tracking lost a lot of attribution after ATT.
- Judge both on cost per qualified lead, not cost per click or per lead.
The difference in one sentence
Google Ads shows your advert to someone who has just typed what you sell into a search box. Meta Ads shows it to someone who matches a profile while they are doing something else entirely. That difference determines almost everything about how the two behave.
Demand capture converts faster and at higher intent, which is why search generally produces a lower cost per acquisition when the demand exists. Demand creation reaches people who would never have searched, which is why social generally produces more volume once it is working.
Start with Google when…
People already search for what you sell using recognisable terms. If your category has established search volume — "web development company", "CRM software", "emergency plumber" — that demand is there every day and someone is capturing it.
Your offer solves an urgent or scheduled problem. Urgency drives search behaviour, and search adverts meet people at the moment of intent rather than trying to manufacture it.
You have a limited budget and need to prove the channel works. Search gets to a readable signal on fewer impressions than social does, because intent is doing much of the work.
Start with Meta when…
Nobody knows to search for your product. New categories, novel propositions and impulse products have no search volume to capture, and a search campaign will spend on adjacent terms with poor intent.
Your product is visual and benefits from being seen rather than described. Consumer goods, fashion, food, interiors and property all demonstrate better than they search.
You have a well-defined audience that is easier to describe than to catch mid-search — a job title, a life stage, an interest cluster.
Your average order value is low enough that search click costs would not return. Some categories have search click prices that simply cannot work at a small basket size.
Fix this before you increase spend on either
Both platforms optimise toward the conversions you report to them. If your conversion event fires on a form view rather than a qualified submission, more budget buys more of the wrong outcome faster, and the reporting will look better while the business gets worse.
On Meta specifically, install the Conversions API rather than relying on the browser pixel alone. Attribution accuracy dropped substantially after Apple's tracking changes, and server-side event reporting closes much of that gap — which matters both for measurement and because the platform optimises on what it can see.
Feed back lead quality where you can. Importing offline conversions — which leads actually became customers — lets the platform optimise toward revenue rather than form fills, and it is the single largest improvement available to most accounts.
The honest answer for most businesses
Start with whichever channel has demand you can measure, prove the unit economics there, then layer the other one. Running both from day one on a small budget usually produces two campaigns with insufficient data rather than one that works.
Once both are live, they are complementary rather than competing: Meta creates awareness, and a share of the resulting Google searches are branded, which are the cheapest and highest-converting clicks you will buy. Judging Meta on last-click alone will systematically understate it for exactly this reason.
When you should not be running ads at all
If your landing page does not convert the traffic you already have, paid traffic will not fix it — it will just cost more per failure. Fix the page first.
If you cannot follow up on leads quickly, do not buy more of them. Speed of response is one of the strongest predictors of conversion, and leads that sit for two days are close to worthless. Sort the follow-up process before increasing the volume feeding it.
Frequently asked questions
- What budget do I need to start with Google Ads?
- It depends entirely on cost per click in your category, which varies by an order of magnitude between industries. The right approach is to model it from your actual keyword set and target cost per lead rather than starting from a generic figure, which is what we do on the first call.
- Why does Meta report more conversions than my CRM?
- Attribution windows and modelling. Meta credits conversions within its attribution window including view-through, while your CRM counts what arrived. Installing the Conversions API narrows the gap; expecting the two numbers to match exactly does not.
- Should I run both channels at once?
- Not on a small budget. Split budget across two channels usually gives you two campaigns with too little data to optimise. Prove one, then layer the second.
- How long before paid ads work?
- Campaigns can be live in days, but meaningful cost-per-acquisition improvement usually takes four to eight weeks as the platforms gather conversion data and you eliminate what does not work. Judging performance in week one is judging noise.
- Is SEO better than paid ads?
- They do different jobs. Paid buys immediate, controllable traffic that stops when the budget stops. SEO compounds and persists but takes months. Most businesses that can afford both should run paid for immediate pipeline and build organic alongside it.
Work with us on this
We start every engagement with a written scope after a free discovery call.