“Should I run Meta Ads or Google Ads?” is one of the most common questions we get from online store owners, and it’s usually the wrong question. The right one is: how should a limited budget be split between the two, and does that split change as the store grows?
They’re not competing for the same shopper
Google Ads catches someone who’s already looking, typing “buy running shoes online” or “best kurta sets for Diwali” into search. That intent is valuable, which is also why it tends to cost more per click. Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) does the opposite: it puts your product in front of someone who wasn’t looking for it yet, based on their interests and behaviour, which is what makes it good at discovery and top-of-funnel growth.
A store that only runs Google is leaving discovery on the table. A store that only runs Meta is leaving high-intent, ready-to-buy searchers to a competitor’s Search ad.
A starting split that works for most small online stores
For a store just getting going, we typically recommend leaning Meta-heavy at first, something like 60 to 70% of budget on Meta and the rest on Google Search and Shopping. Early on, most of your audience doesn’t know your brand exists yet, so there isn’t much branded search volume for Google to capture. Meta builds that initial awareness and gets your first wave of buyers and reviews.
As branded search volume grows (people searching your brand name directly, a strong signal of recall from your Meta campaigns), it’s usually worth shifting the split closer to 50/50, and letting Google Shopping pick up the non-branded, high-intent searches your category gets.
The metric that actually decides the split isn’t impressions or clicks
It’s blended ROAS, what you’re getting back across both platforms combined, and how each one performs on its own. If Google Search is consistently returning 4x and Meta is at 2x, that’s a signal to shift more budget toward Google, not because Meta is “bad,” but because right now your money works harder there.
Most sellers we talk to are running one platform reasonably well and completely ignoring the other, not because it wouldn’t work, but because nobody set it up and nobody’s watching the split.
Not sure how your ad budget should be split right now?
We’ll review your current Meta and Google accounts and tell you exactly where the budget is working and where it’s being wasted.
