Google Ads — capturing intent
Google search ads reach people actively looking for what you sell. Someone typing "emergency plumber near me" has a problem now and a wallet open, and that intent is why search converts well. You pay for it, though — clicks run expensive in competitive markets, and a search campaign only works if real search volume exists for what you offer. No one searches for a product they've never heard of, which is exactly where Google runs out of road. Best when demand already exists and you just need to be the answer when someone looks.
Facebook / Meta Ads — creating demand
Meta reaches people by interest and behaviour, before they're searching. It's strong for building awareness, retargeting people who visited and left, and selling visual or impulse-friendly products that look good in a feed. Clicks are usually cheaper, but intent is lower — the person wasn't looking for you, so your creative has to earn the stop, the read, and the click. That shifts the work: on Meta the ad and the audience do the heavy lifting, and a weak creative sinks an otherwise sound campaign. It's also where you reach people who don't yet know they want what you sell.
Choose Google when, choose Meta when
Choose Google when people already search for your product, when the purchase is urgent or considered (a service call, a B2B tool, a repair), or when you need leads this week and have the margin to pay for high intent. Choose Meta when you're launching something new that no one searches for yet, when the product is visual or impulse-friendly, when you want to retarget site visitors cheaply, or when your margins are thin and you need lower-cost reach. And if your offer is genuinely visual and also gets searched — say, furniture or cosmetics — both can run, but split the budget by job, not evenly by habit.
How to combine them without wasting money
The textbook pairing is Meta to create interest and Google to capture it when people later search your brand — and it works, but only past a certain budget. Run both on too little and neither gets the data to optimise, so you end up with two mediocre campaigns instead of one good one. My rule of thumb: prove one channel can convert profitably before adding the second. The cheapest test of all is retargeting — show Meta ads to people who clicked your Google ad and didn't buy. It's low-cost, it reaches a warm audience, and it tells you fast whether the gap is traffic or your offer.