Facebook Ads Or Google Ads

Last Updated: 31/08/2026

If you only read one line of this article, read this. Google Ads wins when people are already searching for what you sell, and Facebook Ads wins when you need to put your business in front of people who have not started looking yet.

Google captures existing demand. Facebook creates it. Most businesses that spend seriously on both eventually run them side by side rather than picking a winner, but if you have to start with one, the answer usually comes down to whether your customers type what they want into a search bar or scroll past it on their phone.

That is the short version. The longer version, which matters far more once you are actually setting a budget, depends on your industry, your average order value, how much competition you are facing, and how patient you can afford to be while a campaign learns. We have managed PPC campaigns for UK businesses across both platforms for years, and the honest answer is almost never “just use this one.” It is closer to “here is what each one is actually good at, so you stop wasting money finding out the hard way.”

Google Ads Captures Demand, Facebook Ads Creates It

This is the one distinction that explains almost everything else in this article, so it is worth sitting with for a moment.

When someone types “emergency plumber Leeds” into Google, they have a problem right now and they want it solved. Google Ads puts your business in front of that person at the exact moment they are ready to act. That is what paid search advertising is built for. You are not persuading anyone to want something. You are making sure you are the answer they find when they go looking.

Facebook works differently. Nobody opens Facebook or Instagram because they are hunting for a new sofa or a project management tool. They are looking at photos from a wedding or watching a video their cousin shared. A Facebook ad has to interrupt that scroll and make a case for itself using demographic data, interests, and behaviour rather than an explicit search query. This is what makes paid social advertising genuinely different from paid search, and it is one reason social media matters so much for modern businesses, even the ones that would never have considered it a sales channel a few years ago.

According to IAB UK’s Digital Adspend study, search maintained its market dominance in 2025, accounting for 44 per cent of total digital ad spend, with investment growing 6 per cent year-on-year to reach £17.9 billion, while social media spend rose 21 per cent to £11.5 billion. Both channels are growing. Neither is going away. They are simply solving different problems, which is really the whole story behind why the digital marketing industry keeps expanding year after year.

Quick Comparison Table

Figures are UK averages and will move around depending on your sector, so treat them as a starting point rather than a promise.

How Much Do Facebook Ads And Google Ads Actually Cost In The UK

This is usually the question that gets asked first, and it is also the one most likely to mislead you if you stop at the headline number.

Across UK industries, average Google Search CPC sits at around £1.95, though that figure hides a huge amount of variation. Legal and finance keywords can run to £8 or more per click, while ecommerce and retail keywords often sit under £2. There are also plenty of simple ways to reduce your cost per click if your account is running hotter than it should. Facebook, by contrast, typically runs cheaper on a pure cost per click basis, often somewhere between £0.30 and £1.50 depending on your audience and creative quality. We covered this in more depth in our piece on how much pay per click advertising costs, which is worth a read if you are building a budget from scratch.

Here is the part that trips people up. A cheaper click is not the same as a cheaper customer. Google’s traffic tends to convert at a noticeably higher rate because the person clicking already wants what you sell. Facebook’s traffic is colder, so even though the click costs less, you often need more of them, plus stronger creative and a proper retargeting and remarketing sequence, before that click turns into a sale. If you only ever look at cost per click, you are comparing the wrong number. Cost per acquisition, or cost per lead if you are B2B, tells you far more about which platform is actually working, and it is exactly what we track when setting up and managing PPC campaigns for clients.

One thing worth knowing if you are new to Facebook advertising specifically. Meta’s algorithm needs roughly 50 conversion events per ad set each week to exit what is called the learning phase and start optimising properly. Below that threshold, performance tends to be erratic, which is one reason small budgets on Facebook can feel underwhelming compared to the same spend on Google Search. For a sense of how a similarly auction driven platform prices out, our breakdown of why LinkedIn Ads are so expensive is a useful side comparison if you are weighing up a third channel too.

Targeting: Search Intent Versus Audience Data

Google Ads works from what people type. You choose the keywords you want to be found for, set a bid, and your ad enters an auction every time someone searches a matching term. The Display Network extends this further, letting your ads follow people around other websites, and video ads on YouTube add another layer on top of that.

Facebook works from who people are. You can target by age, location, interests, job title, and behaviour, and then narrow further using lookalike audiences, which find new people who resemble your best existing customers. You can also build custom audiences from your own customer lists or website visitors, which is one of the more underused features on the platform. If your business already runs LinkedIn campaigns, our comparison of LinkedIn lead gen forms versus landing pages is a useful companion read, since a lot of the audience-building logic carries across platforms, and our LinkedIn ad campaign case studies show how similar remarketing principles play out on a third network entirely.

The honest trade-off is this. Google’s targeting is narrower but more accurate because it is based on an expressed need. Facebook’s targeting is broader and requires more testing, but it lets you reach people long before they would ever type a search query, which matters enormously for new or unfamiliar brands. If you want a wider view of how targeting compares across yet another social platform, our piece on Reddit Ads versus Facebook Ads covers similar ground from a different angle.

Which Platform Suits Your Business

Rather than telling you one platform is better, it is more useful to work through where each one genuinely wins.

Choose Google Ads first if:

• People already search for what you sell by name or close to it
• You run a service business with an urgent or time sensitive need, such as a locksmith or emergency repair firm
• Your average order value is high enough to justify a higher cost per click
• You want measurable, trackable leads from day one rather than a slower brand building process

Choose Facebook Ads first if:

• Your product is visual and benefits from being seen rather than searched for
• You are launching something new that people do not yet know they need
• You want to build a retargeting audience cheaply before scaling other channels
• Your budget is tight and you can accept a slower path to conversion in exchange for lower upfront costs

Use both together if:

• You want Facebook to build awareness and warm an audience, while Google catches that same audience once they start searching
• You are running an ecommerce store and want visual discovery plus intent-based conversion working in tandem
• You have the budget to support proper PPC budgeting and bidding across more than one channel

In our experience running accounts for clients across law, ecommerce, and B2B services, the businesses that get frustrated with one platform have often just put the wrong product in front of it. A conveyancing solicitor spending heavily on Facebook Ads is usually fighting an uphill battle, because nobody scrolls Instagram looking for a solicitor. Flip that same budget into Google Search and the phone starts ringing within days. Meanwhile, a homeware brand launching a new product line with strong photography will often do better starting on Facebook, because there is no search demand yet for a product nobody has heard of. It is a similar logic to why SEO cannot really be done without a website, a channel only works when it matches how your customers actually behave.

Ad Formats And Creative

Google Ads leans heavily on text and structured data. Search ads are headlines and descriptions built around your keywords. Shopping ads pull directly from your product feed. Responsive display ads automatically adjust to fit whatever space is available across the Display Network. None of it requires much design work, but it does require sharp, relevant ad copy and a landing page that genuinely matches what the ad promised.

Facebook is a visual platform first. Image ads, video, carousels, Stories, and Reels all rely on creative doing most of the persuading, since there is no keyword to signal intent. This is where a lot of businesses underinvest. You can have perfect targeting and still get poor results if the image or video does not stop someone mid-scroll. Our guide to creative strategies for increasing click-through rates was written with LinkedIn in mind but most of the principles, strong headlines, clear value propositions, and honest visuals, hold up just as well on Facebook. If you have not tested your creative properly, our guide on optimising landing pages for better PPC conversion rates covers the other half of that equation, since a strong ad sending traffic to a weak landing page will always underperform regardless of platform.

Measuring What Actually Matters

Both platforms will happily report clicks and impressions all day, but those numbers do not pay your bills. Google Ads gives you conversion tracking, Quality Score, and Google Analytics integration, letting you see the full path from click to sale. We wrote a detailed breakdown of how to measure Google Ads performance if you want to go deeper into the specific metrics worth watching, and our separate guide to understanding Quality Score explains why it quietly controls both your ranking and your costs.

Facebook has its own measurement quirks, most notably that its attribution can make results look considerably more efficient than they actually are, largely because of how the Pixel and Conversions API attribute credit for a sale. This is not Facebook being dishonest, it is simply how the platform’s own reporting window is built. If you run both platforms, it is worth using a third party analytics tool or your own CRM data as a sense check rather than trusting either platform’s dashboard in isolation. AI-driven tools are increasingly helping here too. We have written about how AI is enhancing ad quality scores and reducing costs on both search and social, which is worth a look if you want your reporting to do more of the heavy lifting for you.

Common Mistakes We See

A few patterns come up again and again with businesses new to either platform.

• Judging Facebook Ads on cost per click alone, then abandoning the platform before it has had enough conversions to leave the learning phase
• Running Google Search ads with broad match keywords and no negative keyword list, which quietly burns budget on irrelevant clicks
• Sending paid traffic to a homepage instead of a dedicated landing page built around the ad itself
• Ignoring remarketing entirely, even though it is often the cheapest and highest converting activity on either platform
• Setting a budget too small to generate meaningful data, then making decisions based on a handful of clicks

None of these are complicated fixes. Most of them just require someone to check the account regularly rather than setting it up once and walking away, which is one of the more common reasons businesses eventually bring in outside help through a proper PPC marketing agency rather than trying to run both platforms alone alongside everything else the business needs. It is also why so many businesses running paid ads eventually invest in SEO services too, so that organic search picks up some of the load once a keyword starts converting reliably.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Facebook Ads cheaper than Google Ads? 

On a pure cost per click basis, yes, Facebook is usually cheaper in the UK. But cost per click is a poor way to judge overall value. Google traffic converts at a higher rate because it carries more intent, so the true comparison should always be cost per lead or cost per sale rather than cost per click alone.

Can I use Facebook Ads and Google Ads together? 

Yes, and for many businesses this works better than choosing one. A common approach is using Facebook to build awareness and warm an audience, then using Google Search to capture that same audience once they start actively searching. Running both also gives you more data to compare performance honestly.

Which platform is better for small businesses? 

It depends more on what you sell than on your size. A small business with a visual, discovery led product often does well starting on Facebook because of the lower entry cost. A small business offering a service people actively search for, such as a tradesperson or local solicitor, usually gets faster results from Google Search.

How much budget do I need to test Google Ads or Facebook Ads properly? 

As a rough UK guide, £30 a day, or around £900 a month, is generally the minimum needed to generate enough data to make informed decisions on Google Search. Facebook needs enough spend to hit roughly 50 conversions per ad set weekly to exit its learning phase, so very small daily budgets can struggle to get a fair test.

Do I need different skills to manage each platform? 

To some degree, yes. Google Ads rewards strong keyword research, Quality Score management, and structured account building. Facebook rewards strong creative, audience testing, and patience while the algorithm learns. Many agencies specialise more heavily in one, so it is worth asking directly about experience on both before handing over a budget.

Where To Go From Here

There is no universal winner between Facebook Ads and Google Ads, and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. The right starting point depends on whether your customers are searching for you or need to be introduced to you, what you can afford to spend while a campaign learns, and how quickly you need results. Most established businesses eventually run both, using each platform for what it is actually good at rather than forcing one to do the other’s job.

If you would rather have someone else manage the testing, the budget allocation, and the reporting, get in touch with Flow20. We run Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, and LinkedIn advertising for businesses across London and the UK, and we are always happy to give you an honest view of where your budget will work hardest.