Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads

It’s been a debate for years, Facebook Ads or Google Adwords? Which one is better for your business? They each have their own benefits depending a couple of different factors. Google Adwords is more beneficial for immediate sales, where as, Facebook Ads is best used for lead generation and brand awareness. Here’s Why. Reach There are about 3 billion internet users in the world. One of the main advantages of using Google Adwords is its immense reach. Google Adwords can... Read More Read More

They each have their own benefits depending a couple of different factors. Google Adwords is more beneficial for immediate sales, where as, Facebook Ads is best used for lead generation and brand awareness. Here’s Why.

Reach

There are about 3 billion internet users in the world. One of the main advantages of using Google Adwords is its immense reach. Google Adwords can reach over 2.6 billion searchers every month, with the potential to reach 90% of all internet users. Facebook also has a very large reach with 1.5 billion monthly active users, however unlike Google, rather then showing ads to their entire audience, Facebook targets their users who are most likely to be interested in the ad, which makes their potential reach a little less then 50% of all internet users.

Targeting Options

While both of these popular digital advertising platforms allow you to target your ads by location and demographics, they each have their own set of targeting options with different benefits. Facebook Ads lets you target your audience by behaviors, based on previous actions such as Likes and devices used, interests based on Page Likes, lookalike, which targets future prospects based on similarities to current Fans, customers, and website visitors, and lastly, website custom audiences which allows you to target to bounced traffic from your website or landing pages. Google Adwords has targeting options that include language, keywords used in search, negative keywords that are not relevant to your business, and device that you prefer your ad to show up on.

Return on Investment

The ROI for Facebook Ads and Google Adwords varies only slightly. The average cost-per-click for Google Adwords is between $0.35 and $5 and Facebook Ads is under a $1. The CPM for Google Adwords is $2.75 and Facebook Ads is between $0.80 and $1. The average click-though-rate for Google Adwords is 2% where as Facebook Ads is between 0.27% and .91% depending on the industry of the ad being shown. Google Adword’s average conversion rate is 2.35% and Facebook Ad’s average conversion rate is between 1% and 2%. The cost-per-conversion varies for Google Adwords because CPA bidding allows you to set your own CPA, the average cost-per-conversion for Facebook Ads is between $0.34 and $1.57.

So the debate ends here. The question is not which one is better or which one is best for my business because any smart business owner knows that utilizing both of the popular digital advertising platforms is will allow them to reach the most people while also targeting potential customers.