4 Things Meta Ads does better than Google
- George C
- Dec 12, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 8, 2025
As someone that came up through the Paid Search side of digital marketing, I tend to think of the Google Ads tools as more sophisticated than the Meta Ads tools. I still feel that way overall, but having done a lot of work also in Meta Ads, I have to admit there are several features Meta offers that are just superior to Google. Here's some of them:
Spending money on Meta Ads is just easier in more ways than one. The first useful feature Meta offers that Google doesn't is the ability to set a minimum daily spend.
Another useful option Meta allows is the ability to set budgeting at the Ad Set level, whereas whereas Google only lets advertisers set campaign level budgets (though you can use shared budgets. Bottom line is it's nice to have the option since that can impact how users decide to structure an account.
Meta also does a better job respecting the budgets that are set. Google reserves the right to spend up to double your daily budget. Officially, they say over the course of the month it averages out (and in my experience that's largely true). However, that doesn't change the fact it's still annoying that from day to day you don't know if it's potentially going to spend double the budgeted amount.
Meta's fine print also gives it wiggle room to overspend, but only up to 25% more (for now). For the most part, Meta doesn't go over the daily caps set and that is definitely appreciated!
2. Meta Ad Library
This is really handy tool that allows advertisers see what their competitors are doing with their paid ads on Meta. It has a nicely designed interface. Users can search within specific countries and ad category. The ad library will then organize and display the ad copy, creative, landing page from the competitor.
It will also return specific info on when the competitor's ad first started running, what platforms they are serving on (FB vs IG) and if there are multiple versions of the ad in rotation. On Google, if I want to find this out I have to just Google it, start plugging in search terms and take screenshots.
Access the Meta Ad Library
3. Checking for Audience Overlap
A large part of digital marketing is knowing your audience and being able to target them. It's common to create different audiences based around interests, interactions with your website, customer data and more. Inevitably there's bound to be some overlap between the audiences. Meta offers a comparison feature so advertisers can see the amount of overlap there is.
Learn more at Meta's support page
4. Ad Specs and Dimensions
There's a lot of different places ads can appear on both Meta and Google, so keeping up to date with the creative specs and dimensions is important. Meta again wins in this category by creating a both visual and user friendly web experience. Users can toggle between the type of ad (image, video, carousel,etc) and use a drop down to see how an ad would look on Facebook vs Instagram, in Stories vs Reels - while also letting you know what the optimal design recommends are.
Read the Meta Ads Guide
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