Online advertising can be expensive. This is why it’s not surprising to see that some companies prefer to choose to invest on a single advertising platform such as Google AdWords or Facebook.
However, before choosing your preferred advertising platform, it is important to understand all the features offered by Google and Facebook. While both sites offer an online advertising service, the creation and management of ad campaigns is quite different.
In this article, we will compare three elements of the Google Ads search network to Facebook advertising to help you choose between two platforms: ads, audiences, and awards.
The types of advertising available on AdWords and Facebook
While ads on Google AdWords rely primarily on text, Facebook clearly promotes visual content. Up until this year, it was not possible to use an image on the social network that consisted of more than 20% text. Now, images can be sponsored even though they contain text, but their scope depends on the text included in the photos. Therefore, the more an advertisement uses text on its image, the less their scope will be interesting.
However, it is important to note that Facebook is also based on the text side for its ads: two descriptions (one for the ad and one for the URL) can be written. As a result, social network ads are much larger than Google AdWords text ads.
Text ads on AdWords can be up to 140 characters long. Advertisers must ensure that they provide a short but direct message. So, if a company relies on a visual strategy, advertising on Facebook may be more interesting than Google's search network.
However, the search network is perfect for companies offering sought-after services in masonry, car maintenance or landscaping for example. Because these services are directly searched on the Google search engine, the Google AdWords platform is perfect for these types of businesses.
To summarize, Facebook ads rely on a more visual aspect than Google AdWords ads, but these different ads have assets for each company according to their objectives (sensitization campaigns, conversions ...).
Audiences
One of the main differences between the Google search network and Facebook is the fact that audiences are not reached in the same way. While users search Google AdWords for specific services, audiences on the social network are affected based on the interests of users.
If you want to advertise to promote disposable men's razors for example, Facebook might be more interesting as men over 15 years old can be targeted on the platform. In addition, the term "disposable razors" has an average monthly search count of 10 on Google AdWords. This is why Facebook is advantageous for this example because the term is not currently sought-after on the search engine.
Facebook offers more precision in terms of targeting your audience: via age, geographic positioning, interests and behaviours. However, Google AdWords now offers audience targeting based on different demographic data such as gender and age. But the strength of AdWords is always based on keyword targeting.
So, depending on your target market and industry, both ad platforms have benefits to hone in on your target market based on your goals.
Pricing on Google AdWords vs Facebook
What is of interest here is obviously the price of the advertisement campaigns on both platforms. While the average cost-per-click (CPC) on Google AdWords is between $1 and $2, the average CPC is $ 0.64 on 56% users of Facebook. Advertising on the social network can therefore be seen as “cheaper”, but it depends on how the campaigns have been set up, among other factors.
Moreover, the most important thing for a company to do is calculating their return on investment for their advertisement campaigns: (Turnover-Cost price)/Cost price.
If a company realizes that its return on investment is more advantageous on Google AdWords than on Facebook, Google will therefore be more interesting in this case.
Even though the average CPC is usually cheaper on social networks, it is important to analyze which platform is more profitable for your business by calculating your return on investment.
Conclusion
Google and Facebook advertising platforms are tools that can be particularly beneficial for businesses. If you want to bet on the search power of Google, it is obvious that it is better to invest on Google AdWords. However, if you want to bet on a more visual and creative side, touching a specific audience, Facebook is the perfect platform. But let's not forget that Google also offers a display network to show image ads.
It is clear that Google AdWords and Facebook have similar characteristics, but it is not mandatory to choose a single platform to advertise on. Indeed, they can be complementary and being present on a search engine as well as a social network can be a real advantage for any company.
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