The short answer: if people are already searching for what you sell, run Google Ads first. If they are not, run Meta first. Everything else (creative quality, audience size, cost per click) is downstream of that one fact about your market.
The two platforms are doing genuinely different jobs. Google captures demand that already exists: someone has a problem, they typed it, and you appear. Meta creates demand: someone was not looking for you, and something interrupted them well enough to make them care. Capture is cheaper and finite. Creation is more expensive and has no ceiling.
Below: the real difference in operating terms, the twenty-minute check that decides which one you start with, what "how much do ads cost" actually depends on, and the measurement mistake that will make both channels look like they are failing when only one of them is.
The real difference: capture versus creation
| Google Ads | Facebook and Instagram Ads | |
|---|---|---|
| The buyer's state | Actively looking, often with a deadline | Not looking; doing something else entirely |
| What you buy | A position in front of existing intent | Attention, and the chance to create intent |
| Creative burden | Low — the search already did the persuading | High — the ad has to do all of it, and wears out fast |
| Ceiling | Hard. Only so many people search this month | Soft. Constrained by creative and by budget, not by demand |
| Time to signal | Days. Intent converts fast | Weeks. Requires creative iteration before you know anything |
| Fails when | Nobody searches for your category yet | The offer is weak, or the audience was never going to care |
Read the last row as the honest failure warning for each. Google cannot manufacture searches that do not happen, so a genuinely new category will produce a beautifully optimised account spending almost nothing. Meta will happily spend your entire budget showing a mediocre offer to people who were never going to buy, and the dashboard will look busy the whole time.
There is a third use for Meta that gets lost in the comparison and is often its strongest: retargeting. Showing something to people who already visited your site or engaged with your content performs on a completely different economic footing than cold prospecting, and it is frequently where Meta earns its place in a small budget. Judge those two uses separately, or the retargeting numbers will flatter the cold campaigns sitting in the same account.
The 20-minute check
Do not decide this from opinion. Pull the search volume.
Write the words a buyer would type
Five to ten phrases, in the buyer's language, not yours. Not your product name and not your category jargon, but the words someone would use while describing the problem to a friend.
If you cannot produce five, that is itself a finding: it usually means the category is unfamiliar enough that people are not searching for it at all.
Pull real monthly volume, not estimates
Run the phrases through Google's own Keyword Planner for your country and use the reported monthly volumes. Autocomplete suggestions and third-party guesses give you query shapes with no numbers attached, and a plan without numbers is a list of guesses you will spend real money against.
Look at the whole family, not one head term. Ten related phrases at 200 searches a month each is a bigger, cheaper opportunity than one at 2,000.
Convert volume into money
Take the share of those searchers you could realistically reach and convert, and multiply by your average order or contract value. That is the size of the demand sitting there waiting to be captured this month.
Now compare it with what you were planning to spend. If capturable demand comfortably exceeds your budget, start with Google: you have not yet reached the ceiling of demand that already exists, and capturing it is the cheapest revenue available to you.
If the demand is not there, start with Meta
Small or zero search volume is not a verdict on your business. It means the demand has to be created before it can be captured. That is Meta's job, and it takes creative iteration and weeks rather than days.
Budget accordingly, and judge it on whether category and branded searches start rising over two quarters, not on last-click return. That is the top-of-funnel measurement problem in its most expensive form.
How much do ads cost?
The published averages will not help you, because cost per click is set by your specific auction: your category, your location, your competitors' budgets this month, and your own quality signals. Two businesses in the same industry one town apart routinely pay different amounts.
The number that actually decides anything is not cost per click anyway. It is cost per qualified conversation: spend divided by conversations with people who could genuinely buy. A channel with cheap clicks and no qualified conversations is expensive, and a channel with alarming click costs and a steady flow of real buyers is cheap. Only one of those two numbers appears in the platform dashboard by default.
To get your own figures before spending: Keyword Planner reports top-of-page bid ranges alongside volume, which gives you a realistic Google cost, and Meta's own delivery estimates give you a reach and frequency picture at a given budget. Both are free and both take an afternoon. What you can afford to pay once you have them comes from your unit economics (allowable CAC) and what to set aside overall is on the small business marketing budget page.
The mistake that wastes both budgets
Comparing the two channels using each platform's own reported conversions. It is the single most common way a small paid program ends up cutting the campaign that was working.
Each platform counts with its own attribution window and its own view of who saw what, and each counts generously in its own favour. Sum the conversions the platforms claim and you will regularly exceed the number of orders your business actually took. Meta will claim a customer who saw an ad and later searched your name; Google will claim the same customer for the branded search. Both are being internally consistent, and the comparison between them is meaningless.
The fix is unglamorous and takes an afternoon: define one conversion event, record it somewhere outside both platforms, and compare channels on that number only. Use platform-reported conversions for what they are genuinely good at, deciding between two ad sets inside a single account, and never for allocating budget between channels. The wider version of this is the attribution problem, and the metric hygiene that goes with it is on the marketing KPIs page.
Running both
Once one channel is genuinely working, the second one usually gets cheaper rather than more expensive. That is the argument for running both, and it is a real one.
Meta creates awareness that later shows up as branded search Google captures at a low cost. Google intent data tells you the exact language to put in Meta creative. Retargeting on Meta picks up the Google visitors who were not ready. Each channel makes the other's job easier, which is why mature programs run both and why the pair is hard to evaluate one campaign at a time.
The sequencing rule for a small budget: get one channel to a repeatable cost per qualified conversation before adding the second. Splitting a small budget across two channels usually produces two campaigns with too little data each, and the resulting decision, cut both, is worse than either channel deserved.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
Neither is better in general; they do different jobs. Google captures demand that already exists: someone typed the problem and you appear. Meta creates demand by interrupting people who were not looking. The decision comes down to one fact about your market: if people are already searching for what you sell, start with Google, because capturing existing demand is the cheapest revenue available. If they are not, start with Meta.
How do I decide between Google Ads and Facebook Ads?
Run a search-volume check, which takes about twenty minutes. Write five to ten phrases a buyer would actually type, pull their real monthly volumes from Google's Keyword Planner, then multiply the share you could realistically reach and convert by your average order value. If that capturable demand comfortably exceeds your planned budget, start with Google. If it does not, existing demand is too small to absorb your spend and Meta's creation motion is the better first move.
Are Facebook ads cheaper than Google ads?
Facebook clicks are usually cheaper and Facebook customers are often not. Cost per click compares badly across platforms because the two are buying different things: Google is buying a position in front of someone already looking, Meta is buying attention from someone who was not. Compare on cost per qualified conversation, total spend divided by conversations with people who could genuinely buy, which is the only figure that makes the two commensurable.
Should I run Google Ads and Facebook Ads at the same time?
Eventually yes, but not from a standing start on a small budget. The channels compound: Meta creates awareness that later becomes branded search Google captures cheaply, and Google's intent data tells you what language to put in Meta creative. Get one channel to a repeatable cost per qualified conversation first. Splitting a small budget across both usually produces two campaigns with too little data each, and the decision that follows, cut both, is worse than either deserved.
Why do my Google and Facebook conversion numbers not add up?
Because each platform counts with its own attribution window and its own view of who saw what, and each counts generously in its own favour. The same customer can be claimed by Meta for the ad they saw and by Google for the branded search that followed. Summing platform-reported conversions routinely exceeds the orders a business actually took. Define one conversion event, record it outside both platforms, and compare channels only on that.
How much do Facebook and Google ads cost?
There is no useful average, because cost is set by your specific auction: category, location, what competitors are spending this month, and your own quality signals. Get your own numbers before spending: Keyword Planner reports top-of-page bid ranges alongside search volume, and Meta's delivery estimates give reach and frequency at a given budget. Then judge affordability against your allowable customer acquisition cost, not against a published benchmark.