Meta Ads or Google Ads?

With a limited budget you can't do both properly. Here's how to work out which platform your store should start with — and it depends far more on your product than on your revenue.

The fundamental difference

Google is demand capture. Someone types "linen bedding double" into Google and you appear. They've already decided they want the thing; you're competing to be the one they buy it from.

Meta is demand creation. Nobody opens Instagram intending to buy linen bedding. Your ad interrupts them, and the job of the creative is to make them want something they weren't looking for two seconds ago.

Everything else follows from that distinction.

Start with Google if…

• People search for your product by name. Replacement parts, specific tools, known categories — if there's existing search volume, capturing it is the cheapest revenue available.
• You're solving a problem, not selling a want. Urgent or functional purchases live on Google.
• You have some brand recognition already. Branded search is almost absurdly cheap and profitable, and it's often the first thing worth switching on.
• You don't have good creative and can't produce it. A strong Shopping feed can do a lot of work with product photography alone. Meta genuinely cannot.

Start with Meta if…

• Your product is visual or aspirational. Interiors, fashion, jewellery, homeware, anything where seeing it is the pitch.
• You're new or niche. If nobody's searching for what you sell yet, there's no demand to capture — you have to create it.
• You have, or can make, good content. Even phone-shot UGC beats polished studio work quite often.
• You want scale. Google runs out of volume. Meta doesn't.

What about running both?

Eventually, yes — they compound. Meta creates the awareness, and a meaningful share of those people then go and search your brand name on Google, where you pick them up cheaply. Turn Meta off and watch your branded search volume fall a fortnight later.

But splitting a small budget across two platforms usually means neither gets enough data to exit the learning phase. As a rough rule, below about £1,500 a month in total ad spend, pick one and do it properly. Above that, a sensible starting split is roughly 70/30 in favour of whichever platform suits your product, then rebalance on evidence.

Before you spend anything on either

Three things will sink a campaign on either platform, and all three are cheaper to fix first:

1. Tracking. Conversions API on Meta, proper conversion tracking on Google. Without it you're optimising blind and both algorithms are working with bad data.
2. Your product pages. Traffic doesn't fix a page that doesn't convert. It just makes the leak more expensive. Fixing the store first is almost always the higher-return job.
3. Email capture. Most first-time visitors won't buy on the first visit. If you're not capturing them, you're paying twice for the same customer.

My honest recommendation

For most small UK Shopify stores selling something visual, Meta first — it builds the demand that later makes Google cheap. For anything functional, technical or already searched for, Google first, starting with branded search and Shopping.

If you're genuinely not sure which applies to you, that's a twenty-minute conversation rather than a project. I work hourly with no retainers and no minimum term, so it costs you nothing to get a straight answer — and if my honest view is that you shouldn't spend on ads yet, I'll tell you that instead.