You have a budget, maybe €500 a month, maybe €5,000, and two platforms both telling you they’re the answer. Google says people are searching for you right now. Meta says your customers are scrolling past you on Instagram right now.
They’re both right. That’s what makes the choice so hard.
Here is the short answer. Google Ads catches demand that already exists: someone types what they need, and your ad is there. Facebook ads, run by Meta across Facebook and Instagram, create demand: they put your offer in front of people who weren’t looking for it yet.
So for most Irish service businesses, Google comes first. For visual products, new ideas and anything people buy on impulse, Meta usually does. And most businesses that grow end up using both, for different jobs.
Below is which one gets more leads, which is really cheaper, how each works for online shops and local services, and how we would split your budget between them. For what each costs in Ireland, see our guides to Google Ads costs and Facebook ad costs.
What’s the difference between Google Ads and Facebook Ads?
It comes down to what the person was doing a second before they saw your ad.
On Google, they were searching. “Emergency plumber Navan.” “Accountant for a limited company.” “Oak dining table.” They’ve told Google, in their own words, exactly what they want, and your ad answers them.
On Facebook and Instagram, they were scrolling. They weren’t looking for you at all. Your ad has to stop their thumb, then make them want something they hadn’t been thinking about.
| Google Ads | Facebook and Instagram ads (Meta) | |
|---|---|---|
| What the person is doing | Searching for something specific | Scrolling, watching, catching up with friends |
| What you target | The words people search, and where they are | Who people are: place, age, interests, behaviour and your own customer lists |
| Main formats | Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Maps, Performance Max | Feed, Stories, Reels, lead forms, catalogue ads |
| What wins | The right searches, a relevant ad and a page that converts | Creative that stops the scroll and an offer worth acting on |
| Best at | Catching people who are ready now | Creating interest, and building audiences to come back to |
Google tells you what people searched before they clicked. Meta tells you who responded. Both are useful, but they answer different questions.
Which is better, Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
Neither, in general. The better one is the one that matches how your customers buy.
If someone needs you now, and knows what to call it, Google wins. A burst pipe. A solicitor after a car crash. A dentist for a broken tooth. Nobody scrolls Instagram hoping one of those turns up.
If someone has to see it to want it, Meta wins. A new skincare range, a kitchen showroom’s finished projects, a restaurant’s Friday night offer, a course that solves a problem people haven’t named yet.
| If you are | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| An emergency trade: plumber, locksmith, electrician | Google Search | People search and ring within minutes |
| A solicitor, accountant or mortgage adviser | Google Search, then retargeting on Meta | Search catches the need; Meta keeps you in mind while they decide |
| A new product, fashion or beauty brand | Meta | People buy what they see, often on Reels |
| A restaurant, café or hotel | Both | Google catches “near me”; Meta sells the offer and the event |
| A high-ticket home improvement business | Google Search, plus Meta video and retargeting | Search catches the research; Meta keeps showing the work |
| An online shop with a product feed | Google Shopping and Meta | Shopping catches product searches; Meta finds new buyers |
| A B2B service | Google Search, with Meta retargeting | Search catches active buyers; Meta stays visible through a long decision |
For B2B, LinkedIn can beat both when your buyers have a clear job title, and our guide to LinkedIn advertising costs covers when it’s worth it.
Which gets more leads, Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
Facebook usually gets you more leads for the money. Google’s leads are usually closer to buying.
The benchmarks show the first half of that. In LocaliQ and WordStream’s 2026 search benchmarks, drawn from more than 13,000 US campaigns, the average search lead cost $66.69. In their 2025 Facebook benchmarks, the average lead from a Facebook lead campaign cost $27.66.
That looks like a clear win for Facebook. It isn’t, because a lead is not a customer.
Someone who searched “wedding photographer Kilkenny” and filled in your form was already shopping for one. Someone who tapped a Facebook lead form between two videos may have been curious for eight seconds. Lead forms make it easy to say yes. That’s their strength, and their weakness.
So judge both on cost per customer, not cost per lead.
Is Facebook advertising cheaper than Google Ads?
Per click, almost always. Per customer, not necessarily.
In those two reports, an average search click cost $5.42, against $0.70 for a Facebook traffic campaign and $1.92 for a lead campaign. Meta sells attention cheaply because the person hasn’t shown any intent yet. Google clicks cost more because several businesses are bidding for someone who already has.
Here’s how that plays out. The numbers are illustrative, not benchmarks, but the maths is the point.
On Google, say a click costs €4, 8% of visitors send an enquiry, and you win one enquiry in four. €100 buys 25 clicks, 2 enquiries and half a customer. That’s €200 a customer.
On Facebook, say a click costs €1, 3% of visitors enquire, and you win one in ten. €100 buys 100 clicks, 3 enquiries and 0.3 of a customer. That’s about €333 a customer.
The cheaper click lost.
Now make the business an online shop, selling something people love on sight, with strong video. It can easily go the other way. Which is why nobody can tell you the cheaper platform without knowing what you sell.
In Ireland, a Google click runs from a euro or two in quiet local markets to €10 and more in legal, finance and insurance. The detail is in our guides to Google Ads costs, Facebook ad costs and Instagram ad costs.
Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for ecommerce
For an online shop, the real contest is Google Shopping against Meta’s catalogue ads.
Google Shopping puts your product, its price and its picture in front of someone searching for that product. If people already search for what you sell, “oak dining table” or “women’s trail running shoes”, Shopping is usually where the first sales come from.
Meta’s catalogue ads show your products to people who have never searched for them, and follow up with the ones who looked and left. That’s where a shop finds new customers, and where visual products do best.
Most shops need both. Meta creates the demand. Google Shopping and Search catch it when it turns into a search. Either way, the product feed has to be accurate and complete before the ads can work.
Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for local services
For a local service business in Ireland, Google Search is almost always where the first euro should go.
People search with the town in it, or “near me”. Then they ring. Google puts your ad on the search page and in Maps, and one call from someone who searched “boiler service Navan” is worth more than a hundred likes.
Meta earns its place for local businesses in two ways. It sells offers and events, the Friday menu or the January sale, to people nearby. And it keeps you in front of people who visited your website but didn’t ring yet.
Our guide to advertising a small business with €500 goes through where the first money should go.
How much should you spend on Google Ads and Facebook Ads?
These are the splits we’d usually start from, before your own results take over.
| Business | Meta | Remarketing on both | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local service business | 60% to 80%, on Search | 10% to 25%, finding new customers | 10% to 20% |
| Online shop | 25% to 40% on Shopping or Performance Max, plus 10% to 20% on Search | 35% to 50%, finding new customers | 5% to 15% |
| B2B service | 40% to 60%, on Search | 15% to 30%, video, case studies and retargeting | What’s left, with LinkedIn if your buyers are easy to name |
Don’t overfund remarketing. A small retargeting audience can report a lovely return while bringing in very little that wouldn’t have come anyway.
And don’t split a small budget four ways. €500 across Google, Facebook, Instagram and a leaflet drop buys four campaigns, each too small to teach you anything. Our Google Ads budget calculator turns the enquiries you want into a starting budget.
What has changed in 2026
Three things are worth knowing before you choose.
Meta has caught Google. eMarketer forecasts that Meta will take $243.46 billion in worldwide ad revenue in 2026, against $239.54 billion for Google, the first time Google hasn’t been the biggest.
Meta’s own results for the second quarter of 2026 had its ad revenue up 27% on a year before, with 3.6 billion people using its apps every day in June.
Ireland is going the same way. IAB Ireland’s adspend report puts social ad spend at €576 million in 2025, up 12%, against €345 million on search, up 4%, though the figures for Google and Meta themselves are modelled rather than reported by them.
That tells you where the money is going. It doesn’t tell you where your return is. What a platform earns is what advertisers spend, not what they make.
Search advertising is still growing. Alphabet’s results for the same quarter put Google Search and other revenue at $63.3 billion, up 17%, and YouTube ads at $11.1 billion, up 13%. AI answers have changed how people search, but people still search when they’re ready to buy.
Automation now does the targeting. Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns and Google’s Performance Max decide who sees your ads, learning from the conversions you send back to them.
So the signal you feed them decides the result. Send “form submitted” as your only conversion and they will find you people who fill in forms, not people who become customers.
How to judge Google Ads and Facebook Ads fairly
Stop comparing clicks. Compare customers.
Track calls as well as forms, and feed back which leads became sales: offline conversion imports in Google Ads, the Conversions API on Meta. Then compare the cost per customer and the profit each customer brings, not the platforms’ own conversion counts, because both will happily take credit for the same sale.
Know one number before you spend anything. For a service business, the most you can afford per lead is the average value of a customer, times your margin, times the share of leads you win. For a shop, it’s what is left of an order after the product, delivery and payment costs.
For a shop, that number is a break-even return on ad spend, and our free ROAS calculator works it out from your margin.
Stay under that number and it pays. Go over it and you’re buying a hobby.
Questions people ask about Google Ads and Facebook Ads
Do Google Ads work better than Facebook ads?
For people who are already searching, usually yes, because they’ve told you what they want. For creating interest in something people don’t search for yet, Facebook and Instagram usually work better.
Should I run Google Ads and Facebook ads at the same time?
Once your budget allows it, yes: Google catches the demand, Meta builds it and brings back the people who looked. Start with the one that matches how your customers buy, get it working, then add the other.
Are Instagram ads part of Facebook ads?
Yes. Both are run from Meta Ads Manager, and one campaign can appear on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. When people compare Google Ads with Facebook ads, they usually mean Meta’s ads across all of them.
Which is better for a small budget?
The one that matches how your customers buy, with all of the budget on it. For most local service businesses, that’s Google Search. Splitting a small budget across both usually means neither gets enough to work.
Is €20 a day enough for Google Ads or Facebook ads?
On Facebook, €20 a day is enough to test one offer on one audience. On Google, it depends on what a click costs in your market: at €4 a click, €20 buys five clicks a day. Our budget calculator works out what your target needs.
If you’d rather have both working properly
Most businesses don’t have to choose between Google and Facebook forever. They need to know which to start with, and when to add the other.
Our paid media team runs Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram ads side by side, in accounts that stay in your name, judged on enquiries and sales rather than clicks. Tell us what you sell and who buys it, and we’ll tell you where your first euro should go.
