Adwords vs Facebook Ads in 2024 — What Is Better

Nowadays marketers have many options and choices for advertising strategy development, including SEO, email marketing, PPC campaigns, social media, etc. Today we’ll scrutinize two leading platforms: Facebook Ads and Google Ads (former AdWords). What platform is better? The question is tricky because both platforms operate in a PPC advertising category, but their functionality differs significantly. Below we’ll describe key features of both platforms to help you decide between Facebook Ads and Google Ads.

Facebook Ads

First of all, no need to be a marketing guru to advertise on Facebook. The social media platform allows creating and running campaigns using advanced and easy-to-use tools; moreover, you can track the performance and efficiency of your campaigns with detailed reports. Yep, Facebook Ads is the best alternative to Google Adwords. To avoid misunderstanding: AdWords is pretty cool and we’ll discuss the details below.

Why Advertise on Facebook?

Facebook’s monthly audience is over two billion people (2.7+ billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020, according to Statista) from all over the world.  It is the biggest social network worldwide. It means that billions of people see ads every month. When we talk about the entire Facebook family (including Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger) there are 3.14 billion active users.

Almost 75% of high-income earners use Facebook (stats from Pew Research Center). More than 1.4 billion people use Facebook Groups every month. Groups are capable of providing real value in comparison with ordinary promotional content. There are over 10 million groups on Facebook.

According to Statista, Facebook generates the vast majority of its revenues through advertising… Most of Facebook’s ad sales are generated via mobile… Global Facebook ad revenues are set to amount to almost 95 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.  As eMarketer study states, 96% of social media marketers consider Facebook advertising the most effective paid option out of all social networks.

How to Advertise on Facebook

Facebook receives a huge amount of data from users who enter it willingly on their profiles (age, location, interests); additionally, the platform collects information related to users’ activity online, so Facebook can send them targeted ads based on the previous activity and specific interests and demographic characteristics.

Facebook Ads can be identified by the following things: ‘sponsored’ tag under the name of the page, an option to ‘Like’ the page, and a Call-to-Action button (i.e. sign up, download, apply now, shop now, etc.)

One of the advantages of Facebook ads is that they aren’t aggressive and do not interrupt the user’s experience with the platform. If you’re disturbed by YouTube ads, you may agree that Facebook ads are integrated smoothly into the news feed. Users can look at the ad and continue scrolling. Sidebar ads (for desktop) look like banners and they just cover the empty white space, so no interruption here too.  

Audience Network Facebook Ads are ads that are placed on websites, apps, and games. Let’s say, advertisers can promote their ads not only on the Facebook platform but across all ‘Facebook’s property'.

As of July 2020, it was discovered that “9.8% of global Facebook users are females at the age of 18-24, and male users at the age of 25-34 constituted the biggest demographic group of Facebook users.

Creating a Facebook Ad: Step-by-Step Guide

Every advertiser has his own goals, called "advertising objectives", which can be reached via various instruments provided by the platform.  

Advertising Objective

This is the primary step in creating a Facebook ad.  Most advertisers have their specific goals to achieve, for example, promotion of the Page and getting more like, redirecting people to a specific website, increasing the recognition of the brand/shop.

The platform offers a selection of ad objectives:

• Brand awareness
• Reach
• Traffic
• Engagement
• App installations
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Conversions
• Store traffic
• Messages
• Catalog sales

Naturally, you can choose several options based on your campaign’s goals. Note that in the case of conversion-based objectives (including sales) you can be charged as cost-per-action, while for exposure objectives (views and traffic) you are charged for impressions.  

Ad Format

Facebook ads contain an image/video and text. This combo is called "ad creative". The size of the image and the number of characters in the description depend on the ad objective. Obviously, experienced marketers have their attested combinations, while new marketers might find the Facebook Ads Guide with tips on selecting images and examples of text descriptions.

Audience

Depending on the ad objectives, you can choose the audience you need to reach with your ad campaign. This is the crucial step to make an advertising campaign successful. The selective approach to the audience is called “targeting”. Facebook allows targeting based on demographics (age, gender, and languages), GEO (location), activity and interests, etc. Additionally, you have a chance to include or exclude people connected to some pages, events, or apps. It is possible to create your own custom audience.

Ad Placement

You select the ad placement: the ad can appear in the News Feed and/or in the right sidebar (for desktop). Optionally, you can choose your ads to appear on Instagram too.

Ad placement depends on your campaign objectives; yet still, Facebook recommends using Facebook + Instagram for the following campaign goals: increase brand awareness, boost your posts, get video views, and get app installs.

Ad Budget

It’s again up to you. You determine how much you want to spend on the campaign by setting a budget. Note, setting a budget for your campaign, you determine the maximum amount you’re ready to spend. You may choose Daily (the average per day) or Lifetime (the maximum amount for your campaign period) budget. You may read more about the Facebook Ads cost to get a clearer idea.

Creating Your Facebook Ad

This is the best part: you select images (video is optional), titles, and descriptions. You may use one of the existing posts or create a brand new advertisement. If you go with the ‘Use Existing Post’ variant, the process is very simple: just pick a post you want to use as an advertisement.

If you create an ad from scratch, you have several options at your disposal. As of now, Facebook provides 5 advertising formats:

• Single image. It’s possible to make up to 6 versions of the ad based on a single image.
• Single video. You make the ad with one video.
• Carousel. It can include 2+ images or videos.
• Slideshow. A video ad with up to 10 images.
• Canvas. The ad combines images and video materials for a deeper presence effect.

Once you’ve selected the ad format, you add the content. To let your ad stand out from the myriad of other ads, images and video materials should be appealing to make potential clients click on your ad.  

When your ad is ready and placement was selected, you click 'Place Order' to submit your ad. It will be reviewed by Facebook admins/moderators before it gets live. You’ll gеt a confirmation email from Facebook.

Despite the text limits for ads, you can make your ads efficient with the famous copywriting formula, aka AIDA:

• A (ttention) — use attention-grabbing titles to draw people into your advertising.
• I (nterest) — make people interested in a product or service by revealing the key benefits of the product.
• D (esire) — arouse a desire for a product using limited edition, limited time, free trial, or discounts.
• A (ction) — Call to action is a must-be part of any ad.

Yes, you have only 115 characters (25 in a headline and 90 in a text description), but with some practice, AIDA will do well for your business.

Now, you can manage Facebook ads in two ways: Ads Manager and Power Editor. Ads Manager represents a standard dashboard you see while creating your advertising account. Beginners might consider it a go-to option. Power Editor is suitable for more advanced marketers. It is organized in a slightly different way and provides additional options for customizing your ads. Seasoned webmasters directly notice the similarity with Google Adwords in the structure of the ad creation process.

Facebook Advertising Policy

Every now and again we hear stories about Facebook’s strict advertising policy: ads were blocked, business accounts were suspended, ads weren’t allowed, etc. Yep, there are restrictions. However, Facebook provides clear guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable ads. Every time you place the ad, it is reviewed for compliance with all platform’s regulations.    

The Facebook authorities state that aim at showing relevant and useful ads and giving priority to the positive experience of Facebook users.

Now it’s high time to get some practical views and successful examples of using Facebook Ads.

Case study 1: How to Collect a Database of 17k+ Emails in 6 Weeks

A Facebook ad campaign helped Marina De Giovanni build an impressive email list (17 800 e-mails). Some bloggers spend years getting the database of 15k+ e-mails; Marina hit it off in 6 weeks. You wonder how she did that.

To pull it off, Marina gave away a $300 gift every month (top-notch makeup items, jewelry, watches, etc.) She designed "a landing page, which she published as a tab of her Facebook page so that people could sign up to enter the giveaway in exchange for the e-mail." Naturally, she used Facebook ads to generate traffic to the landing page with the sign-up form.

Obviously, she spent some money on giveaways and Facebook ads; however, she monetizes her email list and blog via affiliate marketing and private coaching ($225 per session, and fully booked). Who would refuse to invest $1 000 to make $10 000? Simple, smart, and efficient!

Case study 2: Startup Promotion via Facebook Ads

Graphic design startup Design Pickle implemented an awesome attitude "Ah, a free design doesn’t hurt", which helped them to get "almost $6 000 in monthly recurring revenue."

People get skeptical towards unlimited free giveaways, particularly in the field of tedious and time-taking design. The company used the campaign to get high-quality leads, which were redirected to the following survey:

Many questions can decline the conversion rate. But this approach was implemented intentionally. They wanted to sift out the freeloaders and keep only the leads that were conversion-prone.

As a result of the campaign, Design Pickle received around 500 leads, and 30 leads converted "into subscribers to their $200/month service." Moreover, the company estimated its customer lifetime value (CLV) around $1 100, which brings the 633% ROI for the campaign.

As you see, it’s important to know how to leverage Facebook ads for the success of your campaigns. It should become an integral part of your social media strategy.

Case study 3: Established Brands Use Facebook Ads

The brand ran a Facebook advertising campaign to "create awareness for dogs in shelters". As a result, the number of likes on the company's Facebook page increased from 55 000 up to more than a million. However, the most important outcome of the campaign was raising over $600 000 in donations for dogs in shelters.

Google Adwords

Well, Google Adwords is the largest and most popular PPC advertising platform. The awareness reached the level that the term ‘paid search’ is synonymous with Google Adwords despite the presence of other large platforms that function in a similar way.  

How Does It Work

The core of the paid search is in targeting keywords, "specific words and phrases included in search queries entered by Google users". Advertisers include keywords into their ads in the hope that Google will display the ad within other search results. When a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays a certain amount. This explains the term ‘PPC, pay-per-click advertising’.  

People make over 3.5 billion searches daily or more than 60 000 searches every second on Google; therefore advertisers receive access to a huge audience of potential customers.

Google Ads are split into two major networks: the Google Search and the Google Display Network. The Search network provides advertisers with an opportunity to bid on millions of keywords to target potential clients. The Google Display network offers more visual ad options, for example, banners. This ad type is more suitable for brand awareness, while PPC ads are more conversion driven.

Why Use Google Adwords

According to recent researches:

• 63 000 searches are processed by Google every second.
• People who click on ads are 50% more likely to make a purchase.
• 73% of the paid search market share belongs to Google.
• 65% of small and mid-sized businesses use PPC campaigns.
• 35% of users buy a product within 5 days of searching for it on Google.
• 46% of clicks go to the top three paid ads in search results.
• 75% of users comment that paid search ads make it easier to find information.
• 63% of people have clicked on a Google ad.

To put it simply, currently, no other search engine has the audience that Google has. It explains the popularity of Adwords. One of the common stereotypes is that the budget rules the market. Wrong. Google Adwords is focused on the relevance of ads and advertising quality, not on the budget of an advertiser. The better experience for the users the platform provides, the more likely users continue using Google as a search engine.

Naturally, some keywords can be more expensive than others. It is particularly true for the finance vertical, which is considered as one of the most expensive industries. What is more, Google evaluates the ad quality via click-through rate as a parameter that indicates the appeal and relevance of the ad.

AdWords was launched in 2000 and offered text-based ads (as of now they looked a bit rudimentary) that appeared alongside Google search results. In 2020 PPC ads are still text-based, but advertisers received an array of advanced features to make their ads more inviting. There are sitelinks, ad extensions, social proof (for example, location targeting and user reviews), and shopping ads. Additionally, Google offers new ad formats targeted at specific industries: ads with rich visual elements, including interactive map data and high-resolution images.

Advantages of Google Ads

New marketers and webmasters often wonder whether Google Ads is worth the investments.

Let’s see what advantages Google offers to advertisers.

• Google has the largest audience with an average of about two trillion searches yearly. Though, keep in mind that your targeting options are limited to keyword targeting and basic demographics (gender, age, income, etc.)
• Various ad formats and different extensions, such as location extensions, sitelink extensions, call extensions, price extensions, and so on. Google ad formats include text ads, image ads, app promotion ads, responsive search ads, video ads, shopping ads (aka product listing ads), and call-only ads.
• No need to have a large advertising budget to be competitive on Google. Focus on the quality of your ads: they must be helpful, relevant, well-written with relevant extensions. The platform implements a 3-step system to evaluate ads:
  • Quality of the ad in terms of its relevance and usefulness.
  • Keyword bid. This means the maximum amount you’re ready to pay for a click.
  • Expected impact of the ad. This aspect counts the use of extensions.

Unlike Facebook Ads that are efficient for brand awareness, AdWords works pretty well for conversions, when people search for a specific service or a product.

As an example: you need a carpenter, so chances that you’ll find the carpenter nearest to your home with Google are much higher than the chances that a relevant ad will appear in your NewsFeed on Facebook. Therefore, when a person is searching for the service, Google Ads are more likely to result in conversion than passive social ads.

Case study 1: Vodafone Boosts Search CTR by 100%

The well-known company Vodafone used structured snippets in Google AdWords and reached a click-through rate (CTR) of up to 100%.

Vodafone is not new to Google Ads.

"We were utilizing callout extensions, sitelinks, location extensions, and review extensions, but we were looking for more ways to differentiate ourselves from competitors,"explained Elliot Saxton, Account Manager for Vodafone at MEC UK.

"We started using structured snippets in AdWords with the aim of providing consumers more information about key USPs and the wide breadth of products that Vodafone offers, as well as increasing click-through rate."

Structured snippets represent an ad extension that allows highlighting some features of services and products before people click on the link.

The results: the team was monitoring click-through and conversion rates before and after the use of structured snippets. "Core brand terms saw an 8% growth in click-through rate, along with a 1.3% increase in conversion rate, while SIM-only activity produced a click-through rate increase of 100%".

Generally, ad extensions on search ads help to increase a click-through rate of 10-15% for every extension (source: Google Ads Help Center).

Case study 2: Loews Hotels Grows Customer Base with Similar Audiences

Initially, Loews Hotels & Resorts used Contextual Targeting and Remarketing on the Google Display Network. The campaign was successful. So, the brand decided to expand its reach with Similar Audiences to get introduced to new customers, "whose profiles are similar to those people on your remarketing lists."

Jumping forward a little, Loews had an overall 10% increase in total revenue, a 9% increase in bookings, and a 5% increase in unique site visitors.

The objective was to attract a wide audience to the brand's urban and resort properties. Previously, Loews Hotels focused on offline marketing channels "like print, but had difficulty tracking results and ROI... The company kept marketing to the same audience in the same ways."

Expanding its marketing strategy to grow reach, Loews Hotels began working closely with Google. If previously the brand spent 70% of its budget on print and 30% on digital channels, the new strategy included 70% investment in digital channels, of which 40% in search marketing and 60% in display.

Loews Hotels used contextual targeting, remarketing, and dynamic remarketing to expand its reach.

"Remarketing, in particular, proved a cost-effective means of acquiring new customers and bookings, generating $60 000 in revenue for just $800 invested... Through our increased and targeted investment across Google marketing channels, we nearly doubled the revenue from the Cyber Monday campaign over the year before… Google’s Display Network allowed us to reach a far greater audience than we previously had," commented Jimmy Suh, senior vice president of e-commerce and distribution.  

Case study 3: How Trivago Gets More Clicks and Lower CPA with Dynamic Search Ads

Trivago, one of the largest travel brands, planned to "quickly increase its search campaign coverage in all markets across large volumes of long-tail keywords."

The company set three major objectives for its new campaign:

• To establish Trivago as a global brand
• To expand long-tail search coverage globally
• To generate traffic at a profitable cost-per-acquisition.

For that, Trivago created DSA (Dynamic Search Ads) campaigns and implemented conversion-based automated bidding. With DSA, Trivago succeeded in "closing keyword gaps and expanding the reach of its search campaigns." Additionally, longer and more relevant ad headlines were automatically generated to help Trivago reach potential customers "with the right ad, at the right moment." Within several weeks the DSA campaigns were launched across 50 markets.

The campaign resulted in up to 140% higher click-through rate for DSA compared to original ads, lower CPA, and higher conversion rates in new markets.

Google Adwords vs Facebook Ads

Until recently, Facebook Ads and Google Adwords were considered competitors, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Every so often the media presented two platforms as rivals, forcing businesses and marketers to make a decision in favor of one of them. In fact, many advertisers benefit from using both platforms and their best features to boost brand visibility and awareness, discover new customers, increase sales and leads, etc.

Why use both platforms? Well, paid search (Google Adwords) helps brands and webmasters find new customers through keywords, while paid social ads (Facebook Ads) helps users discover brands and services according to interests and activity online. Now you know the main difference: "Adwords helps you find new customers, while Facebook helps new customers find you." So, it is a far cry from the days when Google Adwords and Facebook Ads were compared in terms of their efficiency. At the present day, two platforms might be taken as complementary parts of a marketing strategy. Hence, it is important to harness the power of both platforms and understand their strength to use them for higher ROI and business upgrades.

Generally speaking, Facebook CPC is around 56% lower than Google Ads.  At the same time, CTR is lower on Facebook, but the Facebook conversion rate is higher: 9-10% (Facebook) vs 3-5% (Google). Hence, small businesses with very tight budgets might benefit from the low-cost and high ROI Facebook Ads model. However, on a larger scale, Google Ads adds more value to the advertising strategy. Both Facebook Ads and Google Ads are proven platforms for advertising.

The issue is that sometimes businesses plan advertising campaigns incorrectly or set the wrong goals and in the end, they blame platforms for being inefficient or expensive.

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads (former AdWords) in Numbers:

• Audience size. Google has over 6 billion searches daily, while Facebook has 1.8 billion daily active users.
• ROI and cost. The average CPC on Google Ads is $2.69, but the cost varies significantly among different industries (Source).

To make it clear: ‘insurance’ is the most expensive keyword on Google Ads with a CPC of $54.91.

In this aspect Facebook ads seem more budget-friendly per click: in the e-commerce sector CPC can be as little as $0.45; however, CPC for the finance vertical is also high, but the average CPC is around $3.8 (Source).

One more parameter to consider is CPA (cost-per-action), which helps to evaluate ROI for campaigns.

The average CPA for Facebook across different verticals is $18.68:

The average CPA for Google Ads is $48.96 for search and $75.51 for display:

• Targeting options. As we’ve discussed above, Facebook is the winner in terms of targeting.

Conclusion

Now you understand the crucial difference between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and can expand your digital marketing strategy. What platform will work better for you? Look again at the key aspects of advertising campaigns. What is the objective of your ad campaign? If you need to introduce a new brand/product and expand recognition, Facebook might be a preferable option. If you look for more sales in a short time, try Google Ads.

Facebook Ads can be helpful for selling inexpensive products, which people are more likely to purchase on the spur of the moment. Next, consider your audience. If people search for the product/service, Google will be a better option. If you need to build an audience for a new service/product, Facebook will deliver better results.

You have two excellent options for PPC advertising campaigns, and believe it or not, in many cases Facebook Ads and Google Ads deliver the best results if employed together.