Facebook Ads or Google Ads? Have you ever wondered which one is better for your business? Should you pick up one or both as a part of your advertising campaigns? While both of these are essentially platforms to run paid ad campaigns, they differ in many ways and the only similarity is that both of them are aimed at providing you the opportunity to reach your customers.
In this post, we will examine what sets Facebook ads and Google ads apart. Let’s get started!
Difference between Facebook Ads and Google Ads
Before we throw light on the various features and strengths, it is important to understand the basic difference between the platforms:
Facebook Ads
These ads are also called ‘Paid Social’, the practice of advertising on social media platforms. With the highest Monthly Active Users (MAUs), this is a lucrative and highly competitive platform for many businesses to implement digital advertising strategies. In paid social, businesses start ad campaigns so that they can reach customers on Facebook who are interested in products/services offered by them.
Google Ads
Previously known as Google AdWords, Google Ads is the largest and most popular platform for advertising online. It mainly focuses on targeting or specific sets of keywords that users may enter in the hope of finding services/products they are interested in and showing results based on advertising bids of the businesses competing for the keywords. Every time a user clicks on an ad, a specified amount of money is deducted from the Google Ads account; hence, it is known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. It is completely different from Facebook ads in terms of user searches.
Definitive Features and Benefits of Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are a pioneer in paid social search as well a central part of digital marketing strategies for many businesses. The following are the main features and benefits of running Facebook ads:
- Visual Platform for Ads: Facebook, being the most popular social networking site, offers a visual platform for ads. This means that you simply cannot use boring text ads here. The ads are displayed on the newsfeed of the audience, it is important to have visually appealing ads to grab the attention. The visual appeal and large user base on Facebook are two of the biggest reasons why more and more marketers and businesses prefer these ads. With Facebook Ads, it is easy for businesses to deliver a message with an interesting video or image.
- Target Potential Customers: With Facebook Ads, it is easier for businesses to target a specific group audience. With billions of active users, the site boasts its own user data with details such as age, gender, interest, education, family, location, etc. For instance, you can easily target females living in a small town in California who speak English, German, and Spanish, are married, working and own a vehicle. By sorting, your ad will only be visible to those targeted group.
- Best for Small Businesses: These are the best for those with limited marketing and advertising. budgets. For larger businesses, this might not be a big deal but for small and new market players with a tight marketing budget, Facebook ads can be the most effective mode to achieve brand recognition and access new business opportunities.
Exciting Features and Benefits of Google Ads
Some of the most unique and exciting features of Google Ads are explained here:
- Biggest Network: Google Ads is a hugely popular platform. With such an extensive and massive reach, there is no reason why should not advertise on this network. By running an ad campaign, businesses can easily reach out to every corner of the world.
- Multiple Formats for Ads: Google has already launched a number of ad extensions to make dull-looking text ads bright and interesting. These ad extensions can make simple ads compelling in addition to increasing Click-Through Rate (CTR) and conversions. The best thing about these extensions is that many of them are free.
- Video Ads: Video ads are the next big thing in the near future. It is said that videos are more effective when it comes to engagement and conversions. However, Google Ads is taking video ads to a whole new level by providing businesses with a very interesting platform to play with.
Which Ad Platform is Better?
A business with a low budget and specific target audience can go with Facebook Ads. On the other hand, Google ads are ideal when you need to reach customers based on the keywords they use to search the web.
The simple answer to this is – it depends!
Everything depends on your industry, marketing budget, geographical area, goals, targeted audience and several other key factors. If you cannot decide how to take advantage of these platforms, consider contacting a digital marketing expert to understand which network will work best for your business and target audience.
This post originally appeared on our earlier website: ihusresearch.com
