UK businesses spent £35.5 billion on digital ads in 2024. And most of it went into two buckets: search and social. Which begs the question, where should your money go when planning paid ad campaigns? Google or Facebook? TikTok or YouTube? If only it was that simple. In reality, they’re not interchangeable. Google is great
UK businesses spent £35.5 billion on digital ads in 2024. And most of it went into two buckets: search and social.
Which begs the question, where should your money go when planning paid ad campaigns? Google or Facebook? TikTok or YouTube?
If only it was that simple. In reality, they’re not interchangeable.
Google is great for scooping up existing demand. Social can help create demand and, in eCommerce, close sales immediately.
Google Ads covers Search, Display, and YouTube. It’s about making money from existing intent (because your ads only appear when someone searches for something specifically).
Social Ads cover platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and X/Twitter. These ads are about making money from attention because they show up as your customer is scrolling, rather than actively searching for something.
The main difference between the two ad options is customer intent.
Think about the last time you saw an ad on Google vs the last time one came up while you scrolled on social media.
With Google, it’s more reactive to existing intent.
Someone searches “X service near me”, and your ad is put in front of them. They’re looking to buy something now, and without them searching for it, they never see your ad.
Facebook, TikTok or Instagram don’t sit around waiting for a specific search. They automatically push ads to potential customers based on their interests, demographics, or behaviours.
But it’s not just brand awareness on social media.
While your audience may not have searched for a product, direct-response ads (product carousels, shoppable videos and flash discounts) tap into existing demand, designed to push sales.
As we’ve said, Google Ads is about generating sales from existing demand, which brings some big advantages.
Because people who see your ads have specifically searched for your products or services, it means clicks are usually from people who want what you’re selling.
Because you bid on keywords, you know what you’re paying for and can forecast future costs based on search volume and click spend.
You can see where sales and conversions have come from down to a specific keyword, so you know where your results have come from.
In competitive sectors like finance and legal, clicks can easily hit £10 or more, so Google Ads can get expensive.
CPCs can also fluctuate, which makes forecasting difficult.
If you’re using text ads and sitelinks, you don’t have much creative freedom to create impactful visual ads.
Instead, you’re working within pretty fixed guidelines around what your ads can look like (a combination of headings and descriptions, etc).
Because you’re tapping into existing demand, it means if that demand falls, so do you’re chances of selling. It also means you can only scale campaigns as high as that search volume (even the best performing ads can only tap into a certain percentage of existing demand)
Although you’re not necessarily working with high intent, you do have a lot of advantages in paid social advertising to create demand.
With carousels, reels, live shopping, stories, etc, you have a lot more types of ads you can create to grab attention and create demand, including text, visual and video.
You can target potential customers based on demographics, interests and lookalike audiences to get your ads in front of people who are interested in your products. You can be as precise or broad as you want.
By targeting people based on interests or who share similarities with your audience, your ads can get in front of people who didn’t even know about your brand.
Because people aren’t actively searching for your product or service, it can mean conversion rates will be lower.
Because things move quickly on social media and you’re fighting for attention, your ads can fatigue quickly and become less effective as your audience gets used to seeing them.
This means you have to put more time into refreshing ad creatives, which can put strain on your resources.
Things never stay the same with social media and algorithm changes, privacy updates, and fluctuating CPMs mean your ad performance can become unpredictable over time.
When looking at the costs of Google Ads vs Social Ads, it’s not just the costs of clicks, reactions or impressions you need to look at.
It’s important to think about the conversions and intent of the people who react to your ads on the different platforms.
Here’s a quick explanation:
Tends to have higher CPCs (legal/finance often £5–£15+ per click) but stronger conversion rates.
So while you might spend more for one click, that click has a higher chance of converting into a lead and a customer.
Social media platforms tend to be cheaper in terms of reach (recent UK CPMs average around £4.70).
But they can also have weaker conversion rates, meaning you’ll need to pay for more clicks to convert.
One way to think of it is like a marketing funnel.
Social is mostly top and middle funnel activity that builds awareness and nurtures people towards a sale. There can be outliers in eCommerce, with ads that drive immediate sales.
Google Ads is more bottom of funnel, with campaigns designed to get clicks and conversions from an audience actively looking to buy what you’re selling.
Not the answer you want, but it depends. I’d say there’s an argument for using both in most situations, but that depends on your budget and goals.
A lot of it depends on your goal.
If you’re looking to do lead generation for B2B or local services, then Google Ads is usually best for driving high-intent traffic to your landing page.
The exception can be bottom-of-the-funnel ads on LinkedIn (using case studies, for example). This can work well depending on your service. For example, a SaaS business or professional service business. It’s worth a small budget to test.
If you’re launching a new product, I’d say go with Social Ads, because people aren’t going to be searching for a product or service they don’t know about, so Google Ads will be less effective.
Instead, your social ads could target an audience who show behaviours or interests that closely match your new product, so you can get your ad in front of them and raise awareness.
For eCommerce, both can work well. Google Shopping ads are effective for grabbing high intent buyers. Social can target the full funnel, with ads to build awareness and demand, and direct sale ads to sell.
We’ve done our fair share of audits of both Google Ads and Social Ads, so we’ve seen the regular mistakes that can waste your budget.
Not narrowing down your keyword match types means your ads can show for irrelevant searches, potentially wasting your budget.
Not adding negative keywords to your campaigns means your ads are appearing for irrelevant searches, which damages the ROI of your campaigns.
Your landing pages should match the intent of your ads, pushing visitors towards a sale.
Poor landing pages, with the wrong messaging, poor imagery for product pages, or unclear CTAs are one of the biggest causes of low conversion rates for Google ads.
Paid social media isn’t the same as organic, and the aim isn’t just to generate clicks and likes for your profiles.
Everything should be targeted towards making sales, whether directly or nurturing customers through a funnel.
Paid ads that only focus on vanity metrics won’t deliver the ROI you want.
One of the main benefits of paid social vs Google Ads is the freedom you have to test different creative ad types. But we’ve seen many accounts that just run the same ads for too long.
You should test as many ad variations as you can to see what your audience responds to.
Paid social media is ideal for keeping your brand top of mind by using it to retarget users who’ve been on your website or engaged with your brand in the past.
When users are scrolling, seeing an ad from your brand can remind them of the products or services they were looking at and can nudge them back to your website or landing pages.
There is no “better” between Google Advertising vs social media advertising.
Which you choose will depend on your goals:
When looking at your paid media strategy, think of these two options as partners rather than one vs the other.
But if you’re not sure where to start, get in touch for a free strategy session with our Strategic Growth Director, Sam.
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