Almost every business that talks to us asks some version of the same question: should we be on Facebook, or should we be on Google?
The answer people expect is "both, eventually." That's technically true and completely useless. Running two channels badly costs more than running one well, and most businesses starting out don't have the budget or the patience to learn two platforms at once.
So here's the more useful version.
They do genuinely different jobs
Google catches demand that already exists. Someone has decided they have a problem, opened a search bar, and typed it in. Your ad meets them at the exact moment they're looking. That's the shortest distance there is between an ad and a phone call.
Meta creates demand that didn't exist that morning. Nobody opens Instagram planning to find you. Your ad interrupts someone who was doing something else, so it has to be interesting enough to be worth the interruption.
Neither one is better. They're answers to different questions.
The test that actually decides it
Ask yourself one thing: are people already searching for what I sell?
Not "would people want this." Everyone believes that about their own business. Whether there's real search volume, in your area, for the thing you actually do.
If the answer is yes, start with Google. The demand is already there and your only job is to show up and be relevant when someone goes looking. You'll usually see results faster too, because you're not waiting on a creative testing cycle to find out what lands.
If the answer is no, Google can't help you no matter how much you bid. You can't buy your way into searches nobody is performing. That's when Meta earns its place: you have to go find the people who'd want this and give them a reason to care.
Where each one tends to hurt
Google is competitive, and competitive means expensive. Clicks in some categories cost more than a decent meal. That's fine when one new customer is worth a lot to you and painful when they aren't.
The other trap is quieter. It's remarkably easy to spend a lot of money on searches that were never going to turn into anything. Most underperforming Google accounts we look at aren't badly intentioned. They're just paying for the wrong searches, and nobody has done the boring work of excluding them.
Meta is unforgiving in a different way. A search ad only has to be relevant. A Meta ad has to be interesting. So creative matters far more, and creative takes iteration. If you need leads next week, a channel that needs a testing cycle is a hard place to start.
The case for starting with one
Splitting a modest budget across two platforms usually means neither one gathers enough data to learn from. Both sit in a permanent learning phase, both look mediocre, and you end up deciding that "ads don't work for us."
Put the same budget into one channel and you get to a real answer faster. Once that channel is genuinely earning, you have both the evidence and the margin to add the second one properly.
What we do about it
When someone asks us which channel to run, we look at whether the demand already exists before we answer. Sometimes the honest conclusion is that neither one is the priority yet, and that the money is better spent fixing what happens after the click, because the ads were never the weak part.
That's an awkward thing for an ads agency to say out loud. It's also usually cheaper for the person asking, which seems like the right trade.
If you already know which way you're leaning, the detail on how we run each one is on the Meta ads and Google ads pages.
If you want that answer for your own business, book a call and we'll work through it with you. No pressure, and no obligation to work together afterwards.