Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: Which Is Better for Your Business?
One platform captures demand that already exists. The other interrupts people and creates it. Which one deserves your money depends almost entirely on whether anyone is searching for what you sell.
Google Ads captures demand that already exists. Facebook and Instagram ads interrupt people and create it. If customers actively search for what you sell, start on Google. If nobody searches for your product by name, start on Meta. In Australia expect roughly $2 to $12 a click on Google search and $0.40 to $2.50 on Meta, with very different lead quality behind those numbers.
What is the real difference between Google Ads and Facebook Ads?
Google puts your ad in front of someone who has just typed a problem into a search box. Meta puts your ad in front of someone who was halfway through looking at photos of their cousin’s dog. That is the whole thing. Every other difference flows out of it.
On Google you are competing for demand that exists right now, this minute. You do not have to convince anybody they need a plumber. They already know. Your job is to get them ringing you rather than the four other advertisers stacked above and below you. On Meta your ad has to do the work the search would have done: stop the scroll, name the problem, build enough want to justify a tap, then sell. Much harder. Much cheaper per click, because the attention is worth less.
Anyone who tells you one platform beats the other in general is usually selling the one they happen to run.
Which businesses do better on Google, and which do better on Meta?
An emergency plumber belongs on Google and nowhere else until Google is genuinely maxed out. Someone with water coming through a ceiling searches. They do not scroll. Intent is at its absolute peak, the job is worth $300 to $2,000, and even a $28 click pays for itself at a 25 per cent close rate.
A homewares brand selling $89 ceramic vases has the opposite problem. Almost nobody searches for a vase by category with a credit card out, and the few who do are already on Amazon or eBay. But put a nicely lit photo of that vase on a hallway table in front of a woman in her forties in Sydney who follows a few interior accounts, and you have created a sale that was never going to happen otherwise. Meta earns its keep on visual, impulse friendly products under about $150.
The B2B consultant sits awkwardly between the two. National search volume for something like fractional CFO or ISO certification consultant might be 50 to 200 a month, which sounds hopeless, except each signed client is worth $20,000 or more. Run Google on that thin volume anyway, because the leads are gold. Then use Meta for the slower work: the case study video, the webinar registration, the guide download that gets you in someone’s inbox six months before they need you. Do not expect a Meta lead form to produce a signed retainer next Tuesday.
What do clicks and leads actually cost on each in Australia?
Google search clicks sit around $2 to $12 for most Australian service businesses, with legal, finance, insurance and emergency trades pushing well past that. Meta clicks are far cheaper, usually $0.40 to $2.50, occasionally under 20 cents on a strong creative in a broad audience. All figures below exclude GST and exclude management fees.
| Sector | Google cost per click | Google cost per lead | Meta cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency trades (plumbing, electrical) | $12 to $35 | $60 to $180 | $40 to $120, mostly poor fit |
| General trades and home improvement | $6 to $18 | $50 to $150 | $25 to $90 |
| Legal, finance, insurance | $18 to $45 | $150 to $450 | $80 to $250 |
| Allied health and dental | $4 to $12 | $40 to $120 | $20 to $70 |
| B2B services and consulting | $8 to $25 | $120 to $400 | $50 to $200 |
| Ecommerce and retail | $1.50 to $5 | Cost per sale $30 to $90 | Cost per sale $25 to $80 |
Cost per click is a vanity metric. A $45 Meta lead that closes at 5 per cent costs you $900 per customer. A $140 Google lead that closes at 30 per cent costs you $467. Always run the maths at the sale, not at the enquiry, and make sure your Google Ads campaigns are tracking conversions properly before you compare anything.
Is lead quality really that different between the two?
Yes, and it is the most misunderstood part of this whole comparison. A Google lead has already decided they want the thing and is choosing a supplier. A Meta lead saw something interesting between two reels. Same word, completely different animal.
Across the accounts we manage, Google search enquiries for service businesses close somewhere between 15 and 40 per cent when there is a decent follow up process behind them. Meta instant form enquiries close at 3 to 12 per cent, and a meaningful share never answer the phone at all, because filling in that form took one tap and no thought whatsoever.
The fix is friction, oddly enough. Send Meta traffic to a proper landing page instead of an in-app form, or add one qualifying question such as budget or suburb. Volume halves. Close rate roughly doubles. Cost per actual customer usually improves.
How much do you need to spend before the numbers mean anything?
On Google search, in one metro service area, the floor is about $1,500 to $2,500 a month in ad spend excluding GST. At an $8 average click, $1,500 buys roughly 190 clicks, which at a healthy 10 per cent conversion rate is 19 enquiries. That is barely enough to tell whether a keyword is earning its place, let alone which ad copy won.
Meta needs a bit less money but a lot more patience. The delivery system wants around 50 conversions per week per ad set before it learns properly, and small Australian budgets almost never get there on a purchase or a booked job. Which is why you often optimise for a cheaper upstream event instead, then watch the real outcome in your CRM. Budget $1,200 to $2,000 a month and give it 6 weeks minimum before drawing conclusions.
Under $800 a month on either platform you are buying noise, not data. You will get some leads. You will have no idea which part of the campaign produced them, and that is how people end up running the same broken setup for two years.
Which platform is more work to run?
Different burden, not less. Google eats your time in keywords, negative keywords and landing pages. The search terms report needs a look every week or two, because Google will happily spend your money on loosely related nonsense if you let it. Broad match plus Smart Bidding is not the set and forget it gets sold as, and every service you advertise really wants its own landing page rather than everyone dumping onto the home page.
Meta eats your time in creative. Ad fatigue in a market the size of Sydney or Brisbane shows up fast, often within 2 to 4 weeks on a decent budget. Frequency climbs past 3 or 4, cost per result drifts up, and no amount of targeting fiddling saves it. You need a steady flow of new material, realistically 5 to 10 pieces a month, with video and user generated style content outperforming polished brand pieces most of the time. If nobody in your business can produce that, Meta will quietly stop working and you will blame the algorithm.
What did the iOS tracking changes do to Facebook Ads?
In 2021 Apple started asking iPhone users whether an app could track them across other apps and websites. Most said no. Australian opt-in rates settled somewhere around 20 to 30 per cent, and given how many Australians are on iPhones, Meta lost visibility of a large slice of what happens after someone leaves the app.
Two practical consequences. Meta now models and estimates a good portion of what it reports, so the numbers in Ads Manager are an educated approximation rather than a count. And attribution windows shortened, which makes Meta look worse for anything with a long consideration period. We regularly see Meta claim 40 conversions while the CRM shows 22 enquiries that mention Facebook or Instagram. Both numbers are wrong in different directions.
What to do about it: install the Conversions API so events are sent server side from your website rather than relying purely on the browser pixel, use UTM tags on every ad, and ask new enquiries how they found you. Judge the channel on booked jobs in your own system. Google is less affected because the click and the conversion usually happen in the same session, but it is not immune either.
Where does retargeting fit in?
Retargeting is the one area where Meta is unarguably better value, and it is the reason so many businesses end up running both. Staying in front of everyone who visited your site in the last 30 days costs very little on Meta, often $3 to $12 per thousand impressions, and those people already know who you are.
Google has its own version through Display remarketing and remarketing lists for search ads, which lets you bid higher on people who have already visited. Useful, less visually persuasive. A Display banner does not sell a renovation the way a 30 second video of a finished kitchen does.
The cheapest sensible combination for most Australian service businesses is Google search for capture and Meta retargeting for the ones who looked and left. It costs a few hundred dollars a month on top and it usually lifts overall conversion rate more than adding the same money to search bids would.
Google Ads vs Facebook Ads compared side by side
| Factor | Google Ads | Facebook and Instagram Ads |
|---|---|---|
| Intent | High. They searched for it | Low to none. You interrupted them |
| Typical cost per click (AU, ex GST) | $2 to $12, up to $45 in legal and finance | $0.40 to $2.50 |
| Lead quality | Strong. 15 to 40 per cent close rate is normal | Weaker. 3 to 12 per cent, better off an in-page form |
| Setup and ongoing effort | Keywords, negatives, one landing page per service, weekly search term review | Constant creative production, 5 to 10 new assets a month |
| Time to useful data | 2 to 4 weeks | 4 to 8 weeks, algorithm needs volume |
| Attribution reliability | Good, same session clicks | Modelled and approximate since the iOS changes |
| Best use case | Urgent or considered services people search for by name | Visual products, impulse buys, retargeting, top of funnel awareness |
Should you run both at the same time?
Eventually yes, but sequence it. Google first, because it tells you fastest whether your offer and your website actually convert. If a page cannot turn a high intent searcher into an enquiry, throwing cold Meta traffic at it will only prove the point more expensively.
Move to Meta once one of two things happens: you have pushed Google budget up and leads have stopped rising with it, or your impression share on the keywords that matter is already sitting above 70 per cent. That is the signal that you have taken the demand that exists and need to go make more of it.
When you do run both, keep the budgets and the reporting separate, and stop judging Meta on last click. Meta’s job is to warm people up so they later search your business name. If your branded search volume climbs after a Meta campaign starts, that campaign is working even when the platform reports two conversions. We walk clients through this split as part of our Google Ads management service, and there is more on the mechanics across the rest of our Google Ads and marketing guides.
One last caution. Nobody can guarantee a cost per lead on either platform, and any agency quoting you a guaranteed number of leads for a fixed spend is either padding the price heavily or about to disappoint you. Ranges, yes. Guarantees, no.
Common questions
Can I split $1,000 a month across both platforms?
You can, but we would not. At $500 each you get roughly 60 Google clicks and not enough Meta conversions for the algorithm to learn anything, so both campaigns underperform and you learn nothing from either. Put the full $1,000 into Google search on a tight keyword set in one suburb cluster, prove the offer converts, then expand. Splitting small budgets is the most common way Australian small businesses waste ad money.
Do Facebook Ads still work in 2026 after all the tracking changes?
They work, they are just harder to measure and harder to attribute. Plenty of Australian ecommerce brands and consumer service businesses run profitably on Meta right now. What changed is that you cannot trust the in-platform numbers as gospel, and you need decent creative volume plus server side tracking through the Conversions API. If you are judging Meta purely on what Ads Manager reports, you are working off an estimate.
Is LinkedIn a better option than Facebook for B2B?
Sometimes, and it is expensive. LinkedIn clicks in Australia commonly run $8 to $20 with cost per lead of $150 to $500, so it only stacks up when a client is worth five figures or more. For a consultant selling $20,000 engagements it can be worth testing. For a bookkeeper charging $400 a month it almost never is. Facebook still reaches business owners, they are just not in work mode when they see you.
How long before I know whether a campaign is worth continuing?
Give Google search 30 days at a real budget before making any judgement, and 90 days before deciding the channel itself has failed. Meta needs 6 to 8 weeks because of the learning period and creative testing. Anyone changing bids and audiences every second day is resetting the clock constantly. Set it up properly, leave it alone, review weekly, make one change at a time.
Do I need different landing pages for Google and Meta traffic?
Yes, and it is worth the extra build cost. Google traffic arrives knowing what it wants, so that page can get straight to proof, price signals and a form. Meta traffic arrives cold and needs the problem explained before any ask, which usually means a longer page with more visuals and social proof up top. Sending both to your home page is the single most common reason ads underperform.
What happens to my leads if I pause the ads?
They stop, more or less immediately. That is the honest trade with paid traffic on either platform: you rent the attention and the tap turns off with the invoice. The exception is remarketing audiences and any email list you have built, which keep producing for a while. If you want enquiries that continue when you stop paying, that is a job for SEO running alongside, not instead of, your ads.
Not sure which platform your money belongs in?
Tell us what you sell and who buys it, and we will tell you straight whether Google, Meta or both makes sense for your budget. No lock-in contracts, Australian based team, 20 plus years running campaigns for businesses like yours.