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Below is how that plays out by business type, what each channel needs before it can work, what a $2,000 a month budget buys on each, and the measurement trap that makes both look better than they are. Both sit inside paid media across Meta, Google, and TikTok.

The actual difference

Google Ads is an auction on intent. Someone types "emergency furnace repair" and you pay to be the answer. The demand exists, the timing is theirs, and your job is to be present and credible at the moment of the search. Volume is capped by how many people search. You cannot buy more demand than the market produces.

Meta ads are an auction on attention. Nobody opens Instagram to buy your product. Your creative interrupts a feed and has to earn the click, which means creative is the targeting. Volume is effectively uncapped, which is why Meta scales further and why bad creative burns money faster there than anywhere else.

Everything else follows from that one difference.

Pick by business type

Emergency and urgent local services. Plumbing, furnace, locksmith, towing, urgent dental. Google, without hesitation. Nobody scrolls Instagram deciding to have a burst pipe. The search happens at the moment of need and the click is worth a lot.

Considered B2B with a real sales cycle. Google first, for the bottom-funnel terms your buyers use, then Meta or LinkedIn for B2B as the awareness layer once the search terms are exhausted. B2B search volume is small, which means Google saturates quickly, and the second channel becomes necessary sooner than in consumer categories.

DTC product with strong visuals. Meta first. The product needs to be seen to be wanted, the creative does the selling, and Advantage+ catalogue campaigns handle retargeting well. Add Google Shopping once there is enough brand search and enough product-level demand to bid on.

A new category nobody searches for yet. Meta, because there are no keywords to buy. If your product is the first of its kind, Google keyword planner will show you nothing, and that is the answer, not a data problem.

Local restaurants, gyms, salons. Meta for reach and offers, Google Business Profile and local search for the people already looking. Both are cheap in these categories, and the Google side is often more about the profile and reviews than about paid search.

Ecommerce with an established catalogue. Both, with Google Shopping capturing product-level intent and Meta driving discovery and retargeting. Running only one leaves obvious money on the table. That pairing is the spine of DTC ecommerce marketing.

What each channel needs before it will work

Google needs three things. Search volume for terms you can afford, which you can check before spending anything. Correct conversion tracking, meaning a conversion counts a real lead rather than a page view or an unanswered phone click. And a landing page that matches the search, because a click on "emergency furnace repair" landing on a homepage is a wasted click.

There is also a practical floor. Below about $1,000 a month in Google Ads spend, the management overhead is too large a share of the budget and automated bidding does not gather enough conversion data to learn from.

Meta needs four things. Creative volume, because ads fatigue on a schedule and one video is not a campaign, which makes creative that keeps working a production question before it is a media one. An offer, because interrupting someone requires a reason. Clean signal, which means the pixel plus Conversions API rather than the pixel alone. And enough budget to fund a full funnel.

That last one is the constraint people miss. Running prospecting, retargeting, and lookalikes at once takes about $3,000 a month in media as a floor, which is the level Meta ads management is scoped around. Below that, every stage starves and none of them get enough data to optimise. If your total budget is smaller than that, run one stage properly instead of three badly.

What $2,000 a month actually buys

This is the budget where the choice gets real, so here is the honest version.

On Google, $2,000 a month is a working account. It clears the $1,000 floor with room to spare, it funds one tightly structured Search campaign against high-intent terms, and it generates enough conversions in most local categories for bidding to learn. This is a legitimate starting position, and the level our Google Ads management is scoped around.

On Meta, $2,000 a month does not fund a full funnel. It does fund one thing well. The usual best single choice is retargeting plus a small prospecting budget behind your two strongest creatives, aimed at a specific offer. What it will not do is support broad prospecting, lookalikes, and retargeting simultaneously while producing enough conversions per stage to optimise anything.

So at $2,000 a month, for most businesses with existing search demand, Google is the better first channel. For a DTC brand with no search demand and strong creative, spend it all on Meta in one stage, prove the creative, then expand.

One thing that is true on both: the management fee is separate from the media. A fixed management fee on most accounts lands at $1,500 to $3,500 a month, which is PPC campaign management priced as its own line, and ad spend should go directly to the platform on your billing profile, with no agency markup. For the Google side specifically, here is what a Google Ads agency costs. If your total available budget is $2,000 including management, you are running it yourself for now, and that is a reasonable answer.

The measurement trap

Both platforms report their own performance and both count generously.

Meta's default attribution window includes 7-day click, so a purchase a week after someone saw an ad gets credited to the ad. Google's data-driven attribution spreads credit across the path. Add them together and you will "generate" more revenue than your bank account received. That is not fraud, it is two systems each claiming the same conversion.

Three habits fix it. Pick one source of truth outside the ad platforms, usually your CRM or your store's own reporting. Compare platform-reported revenue to actual revenue every month and keep the ratio, because the ratio is what you plan with. And run brand search separately, because people typing your company name were already coming.

When to run both

Add the second channel when the first one is capped, not when it gets boring. On Google, capped means impression share is high on the terms that convert and adding budget only buys worse queries. On Meta, capped means frequency is climbing on your best audiences and new creative is not moving cost per acquisition.

The sequence that works for most businesses: prove the offer on one channel, get the tracking honest, then add the second channel as a discovery layer feeding the first. Retargeting on the second channel is almost always the cheapest place to start.

The related budget question, once paid is working, is paid versus SEO.

What goes wrong

Splitting a small budget in half. Two half-funded accounts collect half the data each and neither learns. One channel funded properly beats two funded badly at every budget under about $5,000 a month.

Judging Meta on last-click. Discovery channels look terrible in last-click reporting because their job is the first touch. If you are going to run Meta for prospecting, decide up front which number you will judge it on. It is the same decision that sits behind performance versus brand budget.

Blaming the channel for the page. A high click cost and a page that converts at nothing is a page problem. Fix the destination first, before switching platforms.

Expecting the same close rate. A Google lead is usually further along than a Meta lead. Same cost per lead across the two channels does not mean same cost per customer. Track them separately all the way to revenue.

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheaper, Facebook ads or Google Ads?

Meta usually has a lower cost per click and a lower cost per lead, because it is interrupting people rather than meeting existing intent. Google leads tend to close at a higher rate for the same reason. Compare cost per customer rather than cost per click, otherwise the cheaper channel looks better than it performs.

Should a small business start with Facebook ads or Google Ads?

Start with Google if people already search for what you sell, especially for urgent or local services. Start with Meta if the product is visual, impulse-driven, or a category nobody is searching for yet. Fund one channel properly rather than splitting a small budget across both.

Can I run Facebook and Google ads at the same time on a small budget?

Under about $5,000 a month in total media, it is usually a mistake. Each platform needs a minimum volume of conversions to optimise, and splitting the budget means neither reaches it. The exception is adding a small retargeting campaign on the second channel, which is cheap and does not need much volume.

How much should I spend on Meta ads to start?

About $3,000 a month in media is the floor for a full funnel with prospecting, retargeting, and lookalikes running at once. Below that, run one stage well. A single retargeting campaign with strong creative and a real offer is a valid starting point at a much smaller number.

Does Google Ads or Facebook work better for B2B?

Google, for bottom-funnel search terms your buyers actually type. The catch is that B2B search volume is small, so Google saturates quickly, and a second awareness channel becomes necessary earlier than in consumer categories.