Many types of advertising platforms are there but the two major advertising platforms out there are- Facebook and then Google. Which one should you use?
Today in this blog, we will break down the difference between Facebook advertising and Google advertising and show you which one you should use for your Business?
Marketing goes for any business owner if you’re doing drop shipping in e-commerce or you have your own business or even a brick-and-mortar business or if you own a digital marketing agency.
Let us break it down on a very basic level why are Facebook and Google different?
What are Facebook Ads?
Facebook is a social media platform. People go onto Facebook to connect with their friends, look at pictures of their grandchildren, funny videos of cats and memes, and everything like that. So that’s why people are on Facebook, and it’s important to understand that dynamic when you’re trying to advertise on one of these platforms. But is paying for Facebook Ads worth it? Let’s find out.
Facebook is one of the best places to advertise with access to an extremely vast audience. Facebook ads refer to paid advertisements created and published on Facebook for the targeted audience. You can target the Audience after studying their specific online behaviors and interests using the targeting options on Facebook. Facebook ads thus provide incredible advertising opportunities if you want to get extremely granular with your Audience.
In addition, you can choose exactly how much to spend per day or for the lifetime of the ad by choosing from a wide variety of ad formats to avoid over expenditure on ads.
What are Google Ads?
Google, on the other hand, is for information and is intent-based. People go on Google intending to find out something and answer a piece of question. Information on the topic that they’re interested in, learning more about anything, etc. Understanding why these platforms exist and what they’re primarily used for is important when figuring out which one to advertise. Are Google Ads worth in 2021?
Developed and managed by Google, Google Ads is an online advertising platform, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, or product listings. Formerly known as Google AdWords, Google Ads are paid advertisements that show up in search results on google.com.
The Pay-per-click (PPC) ads appear above organic results or sometimes to the right of search results, and you pay when someone clicks on your ad. Google Ads also allows advertisers to run ads based on specific goals like driving website visits. In addition, advertisers can customize their budgets and start or stop ads at any time.
You can run three types of Google Ads:
- Search Network campaigns – text form
- Display Network campaigns – image form
- Video campaigns – 6 or 15-second videos
Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads: Comparison Chart
Get a better comparison to know which platform if actually good. Here we have gathered the best data with a comparison chart to understand easily.
Google Ads VS Facebook Ads Difference: What’s Best for your Business?
Let us deeply understand the difference between the two platforms and then determine which platform will be best suitable for placing advertisements for your Business.
Cost
Cost and budget is the primary thing to consider when deciding between Facebook Ads and Google Ads. Are you paying when someone sees your ad or clicks on it? How much are you paying for each click?
The platform you choose may depend on your advertisements budget.
Which is cheaper, Google Ads or Facebook ads?
The average CPC for Google Ads is $2.69 billion, but it varies based on different industries. Another aspect to consider is CPA (Cost Per Action), which also affects the ROI. For example, for Facebook Ads, the average cost per action (CPA) across all industries is $18.68, whereas, average CPA in AdWords is $48.96 for search and $75.51 for display.
Facebook is impression-based, which means you pay a CPM rate. You pay a certain amount of money for how many people see your ad. Facebook charges you for how many people that ad reached, and you might get zero clicks, but that’s unlikely and an extreme scenario.
So, on Facebook, you pay based on how many people see the ad, not how many people take action.
Now, Google, on the other hand, is CPC (Cost per click) based. So when somebody clicks on your Google ad, that’s when you get charged. You can show your ad inversely to Facebook. You can show your ad thousands of people, but if nobody clicks on it, you’re not going to pay a single cent.
Audience Size and Engagement
Facebook and Google both enjoy a tremendous audience base. As of March 2020, Facebook holds 1.73 billion daily active users and 2.60 billion monthly active users, while Google processes over 5.8 billion searches every day. Google enjoys over 90% of the US search market share.
Size
Facebook and Google both enjoy a tremendous audience base. As of March 2020, Facebook holds 1.73 billion daily active users and 2.60 billion monthly active users, while Google processes over 5.8 billion searches every day. Google enjoys over 90% of the US search market share.
Engagement
Both platforms have similar audience engagements with a slight difference. 52% of marketers voted Facebook to engage more Audience with their ads than Google. While 45% of marketers said, Google engages their target audience with their ads on Google than Facebook.
So, according to numbers, both platforms are safe to incur your money.
Target Audience
Facebook is a lot better in terms of the targeting options. Look-alike audiences are super powerful, and all of the little micro-targeting, geo-targeting that you can do with Facebook ads is overall better.
Now on the other side, Google has a much bigger reach. There are many more users on Google, but it does not offer specific audience targeting opportunities.
Advertisement Platforms
Facebook is a conglomerate and owns Instagram messenger and WhatsApp, and many other companies on which they can run their ads.
Google owns YouTube and also Google Shopping which is becoming one of the biggest ad platforms for e-commerce. So if you run an e-commerce advertisement, you can use people ads just for shopping and YouTube ads just for video ads. You can run your advertisements on these platforms in different placements and on different platforms.
Buyer Intent
Is it better to advertise on Facebook than Google Ads? Which should I use and put my budget into?
It depends on your type of Business. If you are an intent-based Business, for example, I work with some collision repair shops. When you get in a car accident, I can assure you will not look for collision centers on Instagram and Facebook, and you will go on Google and search for collision centers near you.
Another thing is more of a want than a need, and that is not as intense based. Purchases and products that are impulsive-driven are great products to advertise on Facebook. For example, an e-commerce product like a hair straightener would be a great product to advertise on Facebook and Instagram.
Conclusion
So my conclusion for which one you should use can be both. For instance, you can put 90% of your budget and 10% on the other. The collision shop could be 90% Google and 10% Facebook, and vice-versa for the hair straightener. Because if you are omnipresent, your customers are always going to see your retargeting and remarketing ads.
If you are running a Google ad and get somebody to your website, that person finds your ads everywhere, like on Facebook and Instagram because you’re running ads on all platforms. If somebody lands on your website from your Facebook ad or your Instagram ad, then your Google display remarketing or your YouTube remarketing ads will hit them with the Google ads. So, this way, you can be omnipresent and use both of these massive platforms, all of their targeting options, and all of their different display networks. Therefore, you can fully maximize your digital marketing budget for your business.
