Comparison on ten criteria
| Criterion | Meta Ads | Google Ads | TikTok Ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Stores, D2C, education, messenger funnels | Services with explicit demand, expensive purchases | Mass-market impulse products |
| Not for | Offline-only sales with no digital trail | A product nobody searches for yet | Complex B2B with a long sales cycle |
| Blockers | Account bans and platform policies | Expensive clicks in a saturated niche | Without a stream of footage the setup burns out fast |
| First result | In 7–14 days, after the learning phase | Within days: demand already exists | Fast, if you have a stock of videos |
| What the result depends on | Creative and the event in the ad account | Keywords and a landing page matched to the query | A stream of videos, not one ad |
| To scale, you need | Enough conversions, otherwise it stays in learning | Enough clicks on target queries | New videos every week |
| How it finds people | Algorithm plus lookalikes from your customer base | By query, not by profile | Algorithm driven by watch time and reactions |
| What we need from you | Creatives and a pixel with events | A landing page and goals in analytics | Regular filming |
| Geography | Europe, USA, UAE, Israel, LatAm, SEA | Dozens of countries from one account plus YouTube | Markets where the platform has built an audience |
| Pairs well with | Search: it catches those who are ready | Social, once the queries are bought out | Meta, when its auction gets expensive |
What the channels delivered on our projects
Three travel projects, each on its own channel:
| Project | Channel | Ad spend | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premium hotels in the Maldives | Meta Ads | $7,207 | 174 leads at $41, 4 bookings worth $92,600 |
| Surf camp in Bali | Google Ads | $11,841 | 111 bookings, $76,538 revenue |
| Helicopter tours in Bali | TikTok Ads | $22,281 | 11,721 leads at $1.90, about $154,800 revenue |
The rest of the projects are in the case studies, which can be filtered by channel.
