Meta Ads vs Google Ads: Where Should Your Next Dollar Go?
A practical way for ecommerce brands to decide where incremental paid media budget is most likely to create profitable growth.
One of the most common questions ecommerce brands ask is whether they should be putting more money into Meta or Google.
There isn't a standard percentage that works across ecommerce, and I wouldn't allocate budget simply because one platform is currently delivering the higher ROAS.
The better place to start is with how customers are buying the product.
Are people already looking for what you sell? Does the brand need to create the demand first? Which products are driving acquisition? What happens after someone discovers the brand? And importantly, where is there still room to grow without simply paying more for customers you were likely to get anyway?
Those questions usually tell us much more than comparing the two dashboards side by side.
Meta and Google often play different roles in the buying journey
For many ecommerce brands, Meta is very good at putting a product in front of someone who wasn't actively looking for it.
The customer sees an ad on Instagram or Facebook, becomes interested in the product and enters the buying journey from there.
Google can behave quite differently.
Someone searching for a specific product, category, problem or brand is already expressing some level of intent. Shopping and Search campaigns can put the business in front of that customer when they are actively researching or looking to buy.
Google now also stretches well beyond traditional Search and Shopping. Performance Max can serve across Google's broader advertising inventory, so the distinction between Google as purely a search platform and Meta as purely a discovery platform is much less clean than it once was.
But the underlying customer behaviour still matters.
A person searching Google for "linen maxi dress" is behaving differently from someone who wasn't thinking about buying a dress until an Instagram ad caught their attention.
Understanding where your product sits within that behaviour is one of the first things to consider when deciding where additional budget should go.
When Google has more room to grow
Google becomes particularly interesting when there is already meaningful search demand around the products you sell.
If customers know what they want, understand the category and are actively searching for it, there may be an opportunity to capture more of that existing intent.
For ecommerce, the product feed is also extremely important. Google can use Merchant Center product data across ecommerce campaign types, giving brands the ability to advertise products across a broad range of Google inventory.
That makes Google particularly useful for businesses with a strong product catalogue and clear demand.
But this is where I would look beyond headline ROAS.
I would want to understand how much revenue is coming from branded search, how much is genuinely coming from non-brand acquisition, which products are attracting new customers, how competitive the search terms are, whether there is additional search volume available, and what happens to efficiency when spend increases.
A Google account can look incredibly efficient when a large portion of its revenue comes from people already searching for the brand.
That revenue still matters. But it is very different from acquiring someone who had never heard of you.
So before putting significantly more budget into Google, it is worth understanding what is actually creating incremental demand and what is simply capturing demand that already exists.
When Meta deserves the next dollar
Meta becomes more important when the brand needs to introduce the product, create interest or build demand beyond the people already searching.
This is particularly relevant for products that are visually strong, differentiated or easier to understand once someone sees them being used.
Fashion is an obvious example. So are beauty, homewares, accessories and many products where the customer may not have opened Google that morning with an intention to buy that exact item.
The creative does a large amount of the work. It shows the product, demonstrates the problem, introduces the offer and gives the customer a reason to care.
That means the opportunity on Meta is closely connected to the brand's ability to produce good creative and continue finding new ways to communicate the product.
If there is plenty of audience opportunity but very little new creative entering the account, simply increasing the budget may not produce the growth the business expects.
Likewise, if the website converts poorly or the economics are already stretched, Meta cannot compensate for that indefinitely.
So the question isn't simply whether Meta can spend more. The rest of the acquisition system needs to be able to support more spend as well.
A higher ROAS does not automatically tell you where to invest next
Imagine Google is currently generating a 6x ROAS and Meta is generating a 3x.
It would be tempting to put the next dollar into Google.
But there is more to understand first.
Google may be capturing customers who initially discovered the brand through Meta. It may include a significant amount of branded search. There may be limited additional search volume available. Or Meta may be bringing substantially more new customers into the business, while Google is converting some of that demand later in the journey.
The opposite can also happen.
A brand can continue pushing Meta spend because it has historically been the main acquisition channel while there is significant untapped demand sitting in Google Shopping or Search.
Neither platform should be assessed in isolation.
For ecommerce, what matters is what the channels are contributing to the overall acquisition model.
Your product matters more than most channel comparisons acknowledge
The answer can also be completely different from one product to another within the same business.
Some products naturally perform better when someone discovers them visually. Others benefit from existing category search.
A hero product with strong creative appeal might acquire customers extremely well through Meta, while a broader product range performs strongly through Shopping because people are searching for specific styles, features or categories.
Price matters too. So does margin. So does how much consideration is involved before someone buys.
A relatively inexpensive impulse product has a very different acquisition journey from a $1,500 piece of furniture.
This is why I would be cautious of generic advice such as "ecommerce brands should spend 70% on Meta and 30% on Google." The channel mix should reflect the business.
Look at where your next customer can realistically come from
1. How much untapped demand exists?
If Google is already capturing most of the available high-intent search demand, doubling the budget doesn't automatically mean there are twice as many customers available.
Likewise, a Meta campaign may technically be capable of spending more, but the economics can deteriorate as the platform has to reach further to find additional customers.
The available opportunity matters.
2. What kind of customer is each platform acquiring?
New customer acquisition is important here.
It is worth understanding whether the platform is genuinely bringing new people into the business or largely converting customers who already knew the brand.
Both have value, but they play different roles.
3. What happens to profitability as spend increases?
The first $5,000 of advertising spend and the next $50,000 rarely behave exactly the same way.
As you scale, acquisition costs can change.
So rather than asking which platform has historically produced the highest ROAS, look at the expected marginal return from putting more money into it.
Where can the business increase spend while still acquiring customers at a commercially acceptable cost? That is a much more useful question.
4. What does the business need more of right now?
Sometimes the business needs more demand generation.
Sometimes it needs to capture existing demand better.
Sometimes it needs neither because the bigger opportunity is improving conversion, increasing AOV or strengthening retention before adding more paid traffic.
Paid media budget decisions need to sit within the wider ecommerce strategy.
Should ecommerce brands be running both?
For established ecommerce brands, often yes.
They can complement one another extremely well.
Meta can introduce the product and generate interest. Google can capture customers who search during the consideration process.
Google can also generate new customer acquisition through Shopping, Search and its broader campaign inventory, while Meta can continue creating demand through creative-led discovery.
But running both platforms doesn't mean they deserve equal budgets.
There are brands where Meta should carry the majority of acquisition spend. There are businesses where Google has significantly more room. And there are times when the allocation should change as the business, product mix and customer behaviour evolve.
So where should your next dollar go?
Start by looking at what each additional dollar is expected to do.
If there is strong existing search demand that you are not capturing, Google may have more room.
If the business needs to reach customers who aren't already looking for the product, Meta may have the bigger opportunity.
If one platform appears significantly stronger, understand why before moving the budget.
Separate branded demand from new acquisition. Look at new customer economics. Look at conversion rate. Look at margins. Look at how performance changes as spend increases. And look at the role each platform plays across the buying journey.
For most ecommerce businesses, the smartest channel decision isn't choosing Meta or Google permanently.
It is knowing where the next stage of profitable customer growth is most likely to come from, and allocating budget accordingly.
Book a discovery call with me here. I'll look at your ad account and your business numbers together, and tell you honestly whether your ceiling is a campaign fix, or whether it's sitting somewhere else in the business.
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