The online ad market grew nearly 18 percent in 2019, pushing spending to more than $333 billion.

Google and Facebook account for a large chunk of that advertising. While they’re two of the biggest platforms in online advertising, there are some significant differences between them.

Let’s look at Facebook ads vs Google ads and how to choose the right one for your business.

Google Ads
Google Ads, originally known as Google AdWords, have been around the longest between the two platforms. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. While they’ve had more time to perfect their platform, there are more advertisers bidding on the ads, which can drive the costs up.
Google’s ads have a wider reach than Facebook’s through Google’s Display Network. This is the Google Adsense system that lets websites place Google ads on their pages and then earn a percentage of each click on those ads. The ability to generate revenue from these ads means they’re displayed on more sites, which in turn means your ads can have a larger reach.

Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are displayed on the Facebook site itself. While this doesn’t have as wide a reach as Google’s network, Facebook gets a lot more user attention every day.

Millions of users visit Facebook every day, giving you a huge potential audience for your ads.

If your goal is increasing brand awareness or demand generation, Facebook ads may be more economical for you. However, if you’re looking to generate sales or leads (i.e., demand capture), then Google Ads might be a better choice for your business

User Intent

Users have different intentions when they visit Google and Facebook. On Google, they’re searching for information about something. Which means they’re actively looking for solutions.

If your ad offers the solution they need, clicking on it to read more is a natural response.

With Facebook, users aren’t typically looking for a solution to a problem so much as to be entertained. They’re there to read updates from friends and family, get the latest news about topics they’re interested in, and see the latest updates from pages they follow.

Ads can interrupt that process so they need to promise some kind of entertainment or information that’s worth clicking away from the news feed to see.

Targeting Users in Online Marketing
Google ads and Facebook ads both let you target your ads to the people most likely to be interested in them. Demographics like age, income levels, and location can filter down who sees your ads. You can also target users who are interested in particular topics related to what you have to offer.

While both platforms provide this kind of targeting, Facebook can give you more granular control. Because of the nature of the way people use Facebook, it has a huge amount of information about them.

Advertisers can use that information to drill down to a very specific group of people. You can also use your competitors’ Facebook pages and other related groups and pages on Facebook to create “lookalike” audiences, letting you literally advertise to your competition’s customers.