Detailed comparison between Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising is given in this article. Find the complete details below.
Comparatively Google Adwords has a higher average click rate of 2% with Facebook ads having just 0.051%. Google Adwords follow a PPC (Pay-per-click) model providing a nice platform for advertisers to get leads for their business.
Popularity
Google is a prominent search engine used by everyone and is more popular that Facebook. For instance, if you want to find information about a particular topic, you will search for that topic only through Google and not through Facebook.
If users want to search for any product, Google is the first thing which will come to their mind and hence it’s easier to reach your audience through Google Adwords. Facebook on the other hand is a popular social media website, but not suitable for targeted ads owing to lower click rate.
Focus on Target Audience
With AdWords, advertisers target buyers by bidding on keywords and targeting a location. That’s the gist. It’s easy to target buyers if you are experienced with PPC. With negative keywords, maybe a few broad match modifiers and some understanding the psychology behind intent — getting in front of people ready to purchase your product or service is simple. With Facebook, you target the interests of people rather than their search phrases and you target users based on who they actually are rather than what they are searching right now.
Also Advertising in Facebook does not help you to target specific user groups. Suppose if you design an advertising campaign for your web design agency. Your ads are visible to anyone in US who is registered in Facebook despite the age group and sex. Now, how can you be sure that users visiting your ads require your services or not? There might be users who don’t even have a website and they won’t bother seeing your advertisement at all.
But in case of Google Adwords, the ads will be displayed on search results to users who are searching especially for a web design company. So, you have a great chance of success as you can reach your target audience more easily through Adwords.
Facebook also has some advanced techniques for targeting as it makes use of cookies to track user’s interests on specific topics which is used to display relevant ads targeting those users. But it’s not effective enough as Google Adwords in terms of targeting specific audience.
Pricing
Google AdWords follows a cost-per-click bidding model, in which users based on number of clicks they get on their posted advertisements. If you are using this option, charges levied will depend on maximum CPC bid which you set in your account which is highest amount that you will for click received in your advertisement.
Google also allows you set daily limits on your advertising campaign to help you control costs. The factors like ad quality, positioning and size determine the charges levied per click on the ads. Facebook on other hand also has cheaper advertising options and follows Cost-per-click (CPC) or Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) model. You can also set daily budgets as cheap as 10 USD per day for your advertising campaigns.
Branding
When it comes to establishing a new brand in market, then Facebook can be much more helpful than Adwords. You can use fan pages in Facebook to popularize your brand online.
It’s similar to public mail list and helps to spread your brand through word of mouth. But you will not be sure that users who have liked your page require your service immediately. You can make your brand popular but you won’t be able to sell your services immediately through Fan pages. Facebook helps you to test your ad campaigns to find out the effectiveness in terms of results.
Final Verdict
Through Google Adwords has an advantage over Facebook Advertising in terms of easier targeting and tracking tools, the cost is much higher. You can display ads on Facebook with one third the cost of Adwords and hence you can save a lot of money spent on ad campaigns.
But you should also consider about other factors like purpose of advertisement, budget, user-interface, target audience etc. before choosing your advertising platform. Also, Google Adwords has more powerful tracking tools to Google Analytics to monitor the effectiveness of your ad campaigns which is not possible in Facebook.