Google answers a question somebody chose to ask. Meta interrupts something somebody chose to do. Every cost difference between the two follows from that, and so does the answer to which one you should be running.

The comparison is usually made on cost per click or on market size, and both of those framings mislead. This page gives what each platform documents about its own mechanics, what one panel with a declared sample shows on B2B accounts, and the single fact that decides the choice.

What each platform documents about itself

Both publish enough to settle the conceptual question, and neither is coy about it.

What Google says about its display network. “People on Display Network pages are browsing through information, not searching with keywords.” Its search network, by contrast, is described as reaching “people actively searching for what you offer”.

Read that as a statement about your buyer’s state. On search, somebody has already named their problem in their own words. Everywhere else, including on Meta, they have not, and you are proposing rather than answering.

What Meta documents about its auction. “The winner of the auction is the ad with the highest total value”, and that total value “is a combination of 3 major factors”: the bid, “estimated action rates”, meaning an estimate of whether a particular person will engage or convert, and “ad quality”.

The consequence Meta states explicitly. “Together, estimated action rates and ad quality measure ad relevance. Because these are components of the auction, an ad that’s more relevant to a person could win an auction against ads with higher bids.”

Why that matters operationally rather than philosophically. On both platforms, creative quality is a price lever and not just a response lever. A better ad costs less per result, in the auction mechanics themselves. That is the single most under-used fact in most accounts.

What neither platform publishes. An average cost figure of any kind. Every benchmark you have seen for either was produced by a third party aggregating accounts, which makes the methodology question the whole question.

Social and search advertising costs on a single business-to-business benchmark panelTable comparing social and search advertising costs on a single business-to-business benchmark panel covering one hundred and fifty-three advertisers and fifty-seven point six million dollars of two thousand and twenty-five advertising spend, published under an open licence with a rule that no cut appears with fewer than five advertisers or under fifty thousand dollars of spend. The social line rests on seventy-one advertisers and shows a cost per lead of one hundred and forty-five dollars, a cost per click of one dollar ninety-five, a cost per thousand impressions of fifteen dollars fifty, a click-through rate of zero point seven nine percent and a click-to-lead rate of two point six percent. The search line rests on fifty-six advertisers and shows a cost per lead of five hundred and twenty-four dollars, a cost per click of nine dollars seventy-six, a cost per thousand impressions of six hundred and seventeen dollars ninety-one, a click-through rate of six point three three percent and a click-to-lead rate of one point nine percent. A lead on the social platform therefore cost roughly a quarter of a lead on the search platform on this panel, which is a real measurement but not an argument for reallocating budget, because the two channels are not producing the same lead: a cheap lead is typically somebody who was scrolling and gave an email address, whereas somebody who typed a category and the word pricing into a search engine before completing a form sits at a different point in their own buying process. The cost per thousand impressions comparison in particular is close to meaningless, since search impressions are scarce, targeted and delivered on demand.One panel, two channels, 2025 B2B spend153 advertisers, $57.6M of spend, identical definitions.METRICMETA (n=71)GOOGLE ADS (n=56)Cost per lead$145$524Cost per click$1.95$9.76Click-to-lead rate2.6%1.9%Click-through rate0.79%6.33%CPM$15.50$617.91The cheaper lead and the higher-intent lead are not the same lead.The cost gap and the intent gap point in opposite directions. Neither figure decides on its own.
A Meta lead cost roughly a quarter of a Google Ads lead. The two channels are not producing the same lead. Source : Metadata B2B Ad Spend Benchmark (2026)

What the costs look like on one panel

Comparing a Meta figure from one source with a Google figure from another compares two methodologies. One dataset publishes both, and that is the comparison worth having.

The dataset. A B2B advertising benchmark released under an open licence, covering 153 advertisers and $57.6M of 2025 ad spend, with a rule that no cut appears with fewer than five advertisers or under $50,000 of spend.

The two lines. Meta, on 71 advertisers: cost per lead $145, cost per click $1.95, CPM $15.50, click-through rate 0.79%, click-to-lead 2.6%. Google Ads, on 56 advertisers: cost per lead $524, cost per click $9.76, CPM $617.91, click-through rate 6.33%, click-to-lead 1.9%.

The headline, and why it is not the conclusion. A Meta lead cost roughly a quarter of a Google Ads lead on this panel. That is a real measurement and it is not an argument for moving your budget, for one reason: the two channels are not producing the same lead.

What a cheap lead usually is. Somebody who was scrolling, saw an offer, and gave you an email address. Somebody who typed “[your category] pricing” into a search engine and then filled in a form is at a different point in their own process. The cost gap and the intent gap point in opposite directions.

The CPM comparison to ignore entirely. $15.50 against $617.91. Search impressions are scarce, targeted and delivered on demand, which is the whole point, and comparing their cost per thousand to a feed’s is close to meaningless.

The metric that would settle it, and which the panel cannot give you. Cost per meeting held, or cost per closed deal. Those depend on your qualification and your sales process, which is why the decision ends up being made on your own data or not at all.

What a B2B Meta campaign actually needs to work

Meta is not a bad B2B channel. It is a channel with preconditions, and most failed B2B Meta accounts failed a precondition rather than an execution.

An audience you can define without a search query. Job titles are unreliable here in a way they are not on a professional network. What works is behavioural and contextual: people who visited specific pages, people who resemble your existing customers, people in a geography where you have a reason to be known.

An offer worth interrupting somebody for. A demo request is not that. A specific, concrete thing they can want in the next ten seconds is: a benchmark, a calculator, a short assessment, a piece of research on their exact problem. The offer carries the campaign far more than the targeting does.

Creative that stops a scroll without lying. The tension is real. Anything strong enough to interrupt tends to overpromise, and overpromising produces the cheap useless leads described above. The resolution is specificity rather than volume: name the exact situation, and let the people it does not describe scroll past.

A retargeting layer, which is where most of the value sits. People who visited your pricing page, read three articles, or started a form. This audience is small, cheap to reach, and converts at rates the prospecting layer never will. In B2B it is frequently the only Meta activity that pays.

Patience matched to your sales cycle, not to the month. Prospecting on Meta plants rather than harvests. Judged in a month against a search campaign, it will always look bad, for the same reason a seed looks bad against a harvest.

And the measurement discipline that keeps you honest. Track cost per meeting held from the first week. If cost per lead is falling while meetings held stay flat, you are not scaling a channel, you are scaling a leak.

Three ways this comparison gets made badly

Recognising these before the meeting saves an argument, because each of them produces a confident, decisive-looking chart that means nothing.

Comparing cost per click. $1.95 against $9.76 on the panel above. It looks like a five-fold advantage and it says nothing, because the two clicks are not comparable events. One is somebody answering their own question, the other is somebody pausing on a feed.

Comparing click-through rate. 0.79% against 6.33%. Same problem inverted. This measures interrupting a scroll against answering a question, and no creative work closes a gap that is structural.

Comparing platform revenue. Discussed above and worth repeating, because it is the argument most likely to come from outside the marketing team: social revenue and search revenue are not parallel categories in the report they come from, and neither figure describes B2B.

What the three have in common. Each channel looks best on the metric the other is structurally weak at. Anyone can build a decisive chart for either side by choosing the row. The defence is to ask which rows were omitted.

The only comparison that carries information. Cost per meeting held, on your own account, over a window matching your sales cycle. It is slower to obtain and it is the one that decides.

The cheap lead trap in business-to-business social advertisingDiagram describing the failure pattern most common in business-to-business social advertising campaigns, in which cheap leads arrive quickly, appear excellent in the reporting dashboard, and never become meetings. The pattern begins with a broad or loosely targeted campaign carrying an offer that is easy to accept, which produces a rapidly falling cost per lead that reads as success in every weekly report. Because the reporting stops at the lead, nothing in the dashboard reveals that the number of meetings actually held has not moved, so the apparent improvement invites the advertiser to increase the budget, which increases the volume of leads that do not convert and the sales time consumed in qualifying them. The remedy is to track cost per meeting held from the first week rather than cost per lead, since a cost per lead that falls while meetings held stay flat indicates that the campaign is scaling a leak rather than a channel. The underlying tension is that creative strong enough to interrupt a scroll tends to overpromise, and overpromising produces exactly these leads, the resolution being specificity rather than volume: naming the exact situation addressed and allowing the people it does not describe to scroll past.The cheap lead trapCost per leadfalling fastLeads receivedrisingMeetings heldflatEvery weekly report says this is working.Because the reporting stops at the lead, and the problem starts after it.Track cost per meeting held from week one, or you will scale a leak.
Watch cost per meeting held from week one. If leads get cheaper and meetings do not move, you are scaling a leak. Source : MASTRATOS (2026)

The market-size argument, and why it is invalid

You will meet a version of “social is now bigger than search, so go where the money is”. The comparison does not hold, for a reason worth knowing.

The figures usually cited. US internet advertising revenue for 2025 puts search at $114.2 billion, growing 11.0%, and social at $117.7 billion, growing 32.6%.

Why placing them side by side is wrong. In that report, the mutually exclusive format categories are search, display, video and audio. Social is not one of them. It is a channel that cuts across display and video, which means its revenue overlaps with categories already counted.

The report says as much about the equivalent case. On programmatic, it notes that “it is not a separate format. Therefore, revenue may appear duplicative to other revenues listed.” The same logic applies to social.

What survives the correction, and it is still interesting. Search grew 11.0% in 2025, down from 15.9% the year before. That deceleration is real and it is the number worth discussing, without dressing it as a defeat by another category.

The other thing that report does not do. Distinguish B2B from B2C advertisers. Its only use of “B2B” refers to a media category, trade magazines and trade shows, not to who is buying the advertising. No aggregate figure in it describes your situation.

What follows for your decision. Nothing. Market-level revenue tells you where large advertisers are spending, which is a fact about consumer brands with mass audiences. Your addressable market is a few hundred companies, and no aggregate can speak to it.

Difference in buyer state between search advertising and social advertisingDiagram contrasting the state a buyer is in when reached by search advertising against the state they are in when reached by social advertising, as documented by the platforms themselves. On the search side, the platform describes its search network as reaching people actively searching for what an advertiser offers, and states plainly about its own display network that people on those pages are browsing through information rather than searching with keywords, which means that on search somebody has already named their problem in their own words whereas everywhere else, including on social platforms, they have not and the advertiser is proposing rather than answering. On the social side, the platform documents an auction in which the winner is the advertisement with the highest total value, that value combining three factors, namely the bid placed by the advertiser, the estimated action rates representing an estimate of whether a particular person will engage with or convert from a particular advertisement, and the advertisement quality as determined from sources including feedback from people viewing or hiding the advertisement. The platform states explicitly that estimated action rates and advertisement quality together measure relevance and that, because these are components of the auction, an advertisement more relevant to a person could win an auction against advertisements carrying higher bids, which makes creative quality a price lever in the auction mechanics themselves rather than merely a response lever.Two states, not two channelsSearch: a question was askedSomebody named their problemin their own words.You answer.Fails when nobody is asking, which nobudget can fix.Social: a scroll was interrupted”Browsing through information,not searching with keywords.”You propose.Fails when the proposition needsexplaining to someone who did not ask.On both, relevance is a price lever, not just a response lever.Meta states it: a more relevant ad “could win an auction against ads with higher bids”.
Google says it plainly about its own display network: people there are browsing, not searching with keywords. Source : Google Ads Help and Meta Business Help (2026)
Why comparing social advertising revenue with search advertising revenue is invalidDiagram explaining why the frequently made comparison between social advertising revenue and search advertising revenue is invalid as usually presented. In the industry revenue report from which both figures come, the mutually exclusive format categories are search, display, video and audio, which together account for the whole market. Social is not one of those categories: it is a channel that cuts across display and video, which means its revenue overlaps with revenue already counted under those formats. The report states the equivalent point about programmatic advertising, noting that it is not a separate format and that its revenue may therefore appear duplicative of other revenues listed, and the same logic applies to social. What survives the correction is still worth discussing, namely that search revenue grew eleven percent in two thousand and twenty-five, down from fifteen point nine percent the year before, a genuine deceleration that does not need to be dressed as a defeat by another category. The same report also makes no distinction between business-to-business and business-to-consumer advertisers, its only use of the term business-to-business referring to a media category comprising trade magazines and trade shows rather than to who is buying the advertising, so no aggregate figure within it describes a given advertiser’s situation.Two axes, not two categoriesThe mutually exclusive formatsSearchDisplayVideoWhere social sitsSocial cuts across display and videoIts revenue overlaps with revenue already counted.The report makes exactly this point about programmatic: “revenue may appear duplicative”.What survives: search grew 11.0% in 2025, down from 15.9%. That is the real discussion.
Putting the two revenue figures side by side compares two different axes. The report says as much about the equivalent case. Source : IAB and PwC (2026)

How to decide, in the order that works

The choice is a sequence, and the first step costs almost nothing.

Step one: find out whether anyone is searching. Run search alone for six to eight weeks on exact and phrase match with a tight negative list. Then read the search terms report, not the dashboard. People describing your problem in their own words means demand exists. Students, job seekers and adjacent categories means keyword volume without demand.

If demand exists, harvest it first. It is the cheapest and fastest pipeline available to you, and no other channel competes with it on either dimension.

If demand does not exist, or you are already taking all of it. That is the case for Meta, and it is a real case: narrow B2B categories often have almost no search volume, and a company at the ceiling of its search demand has nowhere left to harvest.

What Meta needs in order to work here. A definable audience that does not depend on a search query, an offer worth interrupting somebody for, and patience measured against your sales cycle rather than the month.

The specific B2B trap on Meta. Cheap leads arrive quickly, look excellent in the dashboard, and never become meetings. Watch cost per meeting held from week one, not cost per lead, or you will scale something that is producing nothing.

What not to do. Split a small budget across both to compare them. Two underfunded campaigns produce two inconclusive results and a quarter lost. Fund one properly, learn what it tells you, then decide whether the second answers a question the first left open.

Decision sequence for choosing between search and social advertising in business marketsDiagram setting out the sequence for deciding between search advertising and social advertising in business markets, with what each step establishes. The first step is to find out whether anybody is searching, by running search advertising alone for six to eight weeks on exact and phrase match with a tight negative keyword list, then reading the search terms report rather than the dashboard: queries in which people describe the problem in their own words indicate that demand exists, whereas queries from students, job seekers and adjacent categories indicate keyword volume without demand. Where demand exists, it should be harvested first, since it is the cheapest and fastest pipeline available and no other channel competes on either dimension. Where demand does not exist, or where the advertiser is already capturing all of it, the case for social advertising becomes real, since narrow business categories often carry almost no search volume and a company at the ceiling of its search demand has nothing left to harvest. For social advertising to work in that situation it requires an audience definable without a search query, an offer worth interrupting somebody for, and patience measured against the sales cycle rather than the month. The specific trap to avoid is that cheap leads arrive quickly and look excellent in the dashboard while never becoming meetings, which is why cost per meeting held must be tracked from the first week. Splitting a small budget across both channels to compare them produces two inconclusive results.The order that works1. Run search alone for six to eight weeksThen read the search terms report, not the dashboard.People describe your problemDemand exists. Harvest it first:cheapest and fastest pipeline you have.Students and adjacent categoriesKeyword volume without demand.This is the real case for social.2. If you go to social, fund it properly and judge it on your sales cycleDefinable audience, an offer worth interrupting for, cost per meeting held from week one.Do not split a small budget across both to compare them. Two underfunded tests teach nothing.
The first step costs almost nothing and answers the question that governs everything after it. Source : MASTRATOS (2026)

What running both actually looks like, when it makes sense

Most companies end up on both eventually. The useful version has a division of labour rather than a split budget.

Search takes the demand that exists. Funded to capture all of it, which is usually a smaller number than people expect on a narrow category, and capped there rather than pushed into broader queries once the intent runs out.

Social takes retargeting first. People who visited, read, or started something. Small budget, high return, and the least contested claim in this whole debate.

Social takes prospecting second, and only with a reason. A defined audience, a specific offer, and an acceptance that it reports on the timescale of your sales cycle rather than your month.

The budget rule that avoids the usual failure. Do not fund social prospecting from the search budget while search still has unharvested demand. That trade is almost always negative, and it is the most common way a working account gets broken.

What to review quarterly. Whether search is still capturing everything available, which is visible in impression share and in the search terms report, and whether social retargeting is still producing meetings rather than leads.

The signal that you have the balance right. Search cost per meeting held is stable, social retargeting cost per meeting held is lower, and social prospecting is small, patient, and judged on a different clock from both.

Where to go next

You want to structure the search account. Google Ads account structure for B2B.

You want to structure the Meta account. Meta Ads account structure, and Meta Advantage+.

You are ready to split a budget across both. How to split budget between Google and Meta in B2B.

You are considering the professional network instead. LinkedIn Ads vs Google Ads.

Your cheap leads are not becoming meetings. Cost per lead.

You want to know what Meta actually costs. How much do Facebook ads cost.

In short

  • Google answers a question somebody asked. Meta interrupts something somebody chose to do. Every cost difference follows from that.
  • Google says it about its own display network: people there “are browsing through information, not searching with keywords”.
  • Meta documents its auction as bid, estimated action rates and ad quality, and states that a more relevant ad can beat a higher bid.
  • On one B2B panel of 153 advertisers, a Meta lead cost $145 and a Google Ads lead $524.
  • That is not an argument to move budget. The cheaper lead and the higher-intent lead are not the same lead.
  • Ignore the CPM comparison: $15.50 against $617.91 compares scarce on-demand impressions with feed inventory.
  • The “social is bigger than search” argument is invalid. Social is a channel cutting across display and video, not a format parallel to search.
  • Search first if anyone is searching. Meta earns its place when search volume is thin or already exhausted.

Find out whether demand exists before deciding how to create it. Book a diagnostic, or see how we approach B2B paid acquisition.