When planning out your ad buying strategy, you first need to answer these two important questions:
1. WHO is your audience?
2. WHERE are they?
Answering these questions is key not just to getting your ads seen, but seen by the right people. Having your ads seen is great, but will ultimately only lead to conversions/sales if they are seen by your target audience. So knowing who your audience is and where to reach them is just as important as any creative element. Google Ads and Meta Ads (formerly known as Facebook Ads) are two of the most prominent online advertising platforms.
When comparing these platforms, it’s not so much about targeting different audiences but rather meeting them in different places. While they are both great platforms that serve the same primary purpose of helping businesses reach their desired audiences, each one does so in different ways and with different strengths, so it’s important to know their differences to determine which will work best for you and your campaign(s). So let’s break down the 8 big differences:
Knowing who your audience is and where they spend their time will be a huge factor in selecting the appropriate platform and/or network so your ads reach their target market. Google Ads primarily operates on the Google Search engine and the Google Display Network, which means that your ads will be pushed out to their millions of websites, apps, and Google-owned properties such as YouTube and Gmail. On the other hand, Meta Ads operates within the Meta/Facebook ecosystem to push ads out to Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and the Audience Network which pushes out ads to third-party apps and websites.
Different types of ads will appeal to different demographics. Google Ads focuses on text, display, shopping, video and app promotion type ads, while Meta Ads emphasizes visual visual and interactive content including photo, video, carousel, slideshow and collection type ads.
Since each platform specializes in different types of ads, they will also have different creative requirements. Knowing which platform you will be using ahead of time can be beneficial for your designers so they can produce creative according to the specific requirements. Google Ads often requires concise text and relevant keywords for search ads, with a little more flexibility for display ads, while Meta Ads requires visually appealing creatives and engaging ad formats (as listed in the section above) suitable for social media consumption.
Each platform will target audiences in different ways. Google Ads primarily uses keyword targeting for search ads, as well as contextual and demographic targeting for display ads. Alternatively, Meta Ads offers a highly detailed audience targeting algorithm based on user insights like demographics, interests, behaviours, and connections. Knowing your targeting options can help you design an ad that caters to its strengths.
Once you know how you want to target your audience, you have to decide whether you want to target them based on intent (meaning people that are actively searching for specific products or services) or interest (meaning people who might fit in with your target demographic, but might not have immediate plans for purchasing). Google Ads captures active user intent, while Meta Ads targets users based on their interests and behaviours.
Depending on the performance metrics you plan to track to measure the success of your campaign will also have a major influence over the platform you decide to use. Google Ads’ metrics focus on clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and cost-per-click (CPC), while Meta Ad’s metrics focus mainly on engagement including views, likes, shares, comments, clicks, impressions, and conversion rates.
Analytics are an important extension of metrics that provide not just numbers, but important additional insights into your audience. Through Google Analytics, Google Ads provides detailed tracking of user behaviour including path analysis to understand the customer journey, as well as conversion tracking. It can also segment users by criteria such as age and gender. Meanwhile, Meta Ads manager offers comprehensive, detailed breakdowns of conversions by device, ad placement, and audience attributes such as age and gender.
Cost is always a huge factor in decision-making, so it’s important to have a clear understanding of each platform's cost structure before committing to one. Google Ads operates mainly on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, but also supports cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Meta Ads, however, uses a variety of bidding strategies, including CPC (cost-per-click), CPM, CPA, and cost-per-video-view (CPV).
