Introduction
In 2024, digital advertising for e-commerce is expected to evolve, with statistics indicating that over 20.1% of retail purchases will take place online this year. This underlines the growing importance of platforms such as Facebook, Google, and TikTok in digital marketing.
Each of them presents distinct opportunities and problems for ads. So, it’s essential to figure out which platform will best meet your e-commerce requirements and target audience.
In the realm of modern advertising, two major players emerge TikTok Ads, a hot newcomer, and Google Ads, an experienced veteran. While both provide effective tools for reaching out to potential clients, they cater to dramatically different groups and have different uses in the world of online marketing.
If you’re on the fence about whether to invest in Google Ads or TikTok Ads, this post is for you. We’ll break down the Google Ads vs. TikTok Ads debate, providing real-world insights to help you make an informed decision.
What are TikTok Ads?
In the realm of social media, TikTok was a breath of fresh air. TikTok is all about watching short videos and sharing entertaining, educational, and viral content. Its brief video-based content format grew in popularity, particularly following the development of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it quickly achieved milestone after milestone.
An average TikTok user uses the app 19 times per day and enjoys interactive and targeted content curated by TikTok’s algorithm based on their likes and viewing habits.
TikTok Ads offers a powerful but simple platform for businesses and brands to reach millions of users globally. It’s a paid feature that allows you to market your video content based on a specific goal, like video views, website visits, or new followers.
Advertisers use TikTok to run marketing and advertising campaigns for branding or sales goals, like driving vast scale, high levels of interaction, and improved landing page traffic.
What is Google Ads?
Google has dominated search advertising for more than 20 years. And for good reason: their advertising strategy directly targets those who are actively looking for items, services, and information to buy.
When users search for relevant terms, you can use Google Ads to strategically position your promotions next to those highly sought-after search results pages. It gives you the ability to create web advertisements that are specific to those who are interested in your goods and services. Google uses a paid search system, actively displaying advertisements in response to inquiries from users.
With Google AdWords, you can market your company, generate sales, build brand awareness, draw more customers into physical stores, and direct users to your website or mobile application.
Google ads vs Tiktok ads: How it Differs?
Targeting options
This advertising platform provides four main ways to target users. This is how it operates:
- Keywords for the content: Keywords are the most popular and well-known targeting options in Google Ads. Here, marketers leverage keywords to reach potential customers who are really looking for certain topics.
- Topics: With this Google targeting option, marketers can reach a wide range of sites on the Display Network. Google AdWords will target your advertising to the most relevant websites depending on the topic you select after analyzing the text, language, and page structure of websites.
- Placement: Google Ads allows you to target websites on the Display Network that your consumers frequent. This targeting option has two methods: managed placements and automatic placements. Placement could be the full website or a part of it.
- Display expansion for search: This targeting option, which is compatible with both Search and Display campaigns, enables Google Ads to identify users through automated bidding and smart targeting.
This platform offers numerous TikTok Ad targeting options:
- Audience targeting: This includes lookalike and custom audiences.
- Demographic Targeting: Gender, age, region, and language are all factors considered when segmenting TikTok ads.
- Behavior targeting: Advertisers can target audiences based on interests, past involvement with a hashtag, purchase intent, and content activity by using interests and behavior targeting.
- Device: eCommerce marketers can choose to target by operating system version (Android 4.0 and higher), mobile carrier, operation type (iOS/Android), and connection types (Wi-Fi/5G/etc.) with TikTok marketing.
Google Ads for Search Intent versus TikTok Ads for Virality in Kylie Cosmetics
- Google Ads: Kylie Cosmetics uses Google Ads to target customers with high purchasing intent. They use Google Search Ads and remarketing ads to target beauty lovers looking for specific products such as lip kits and eyeshadow palettes. With Google ads, they consistently get conversions from their Google Ads campaigns, and their return on ad spend (ROAS) has increased by 25%.
- Tiktok Ads: But with TikTok Ads, Kylie Cosmetics made a viral breakthrough. One video, which was created by using influencer content and introducing a product review challenge, received over 3 million views. Although TikTok Ads didn’t result in any sales right away, the viral content created a lot of attention and eventually increased website traffic.
2. Type of Ad Formats!
Google Ad Formats
To accommodate a wide range of advertising requirements, Google Ads provides an adaptable selection of ad formats. Search ads are text-based adverts that show up at the top of Google search results when users type specified keywords.
- Display ads: Display ads are visually appealing and can include graphics, animations, or videos. They are shown on websites in Google’s vast Display Network.
- Video Ads: Video advertising are heavily displayed on YouTube, as well as on other Google Display Network partner sites. For instance, the YouTube video’s opening advertisement.
- Purchase Ads: Shopping advertisements provide product photos, prices, and store information, making them perfect for e-commerce companies.
TikTok Ad Formats
TikTok Ads provide compelling forms meant to appeal to a mobile-focused audience base:
- In-Feed Commercials: When users go through the TikTok app, in-feed advertisements show up in their feeds. They can include images, movies, and links that blend in with user-generated material.
- Challenges with Branded Hashtags: Users are invited to take part in imaginative challenges using a specific branded hashtag through Branded Hashtag Challenges. For example, a sportswear company might start a #FitnessChallenge, urging people to post about their exercise regimens while wearing the company’s apparel.
- Branded Effects: Brands may design personalized augmented reality (AR) effects with Branded Effects, which users can apply to their movies. It adds fun and interactive factors while improving brand visibility.
- Top view Advertisements: Top view ads are full-screen videos that play as soon as consumers start the TikTok app. These advertisements give marketers a powerful approach to grab viewers’ attention at the outset of their TikTok experience, all while enjoying high visibility.
3. User Demographic
Google User Demographic
Google is a universal dictionary. As a result, the age distribution of the Google Ads audience is divided into several categories. Globally, there are 4.3 billion Google users. Given the size of the consumer base, you must segment and go deeper.
The majority of Google users fall within the 18-44 age group, which represents a key demographic for businesses looking to reach a broad yet engaged audience. Statista reported that Google’s largest user segment is between the ages of 25 and 34, accounting for about 30% of its user base. Additionally, both men and women make up nearly equal parts of Google’s demographic.
Tiktok User Demographics
TikTok has more than 1 billion monthly active users, second only to Hootsuite. The majority of TikTok users are in the 18–35 age range. Because of their online shopping habits, this demographic is ideal for eCommerce-enabled firms to reach out to and convert into consumers.
According to Statista, 21.5% of TikTok’s global audience were women aged 18 to 24, while male users of the same age accounted for around 17% of the platform’s viewership as of January 2023.
The famous social video platform’s online viewership also included 17% female users aged 25 to 34, and 15% male users in the same age range. That is, if you want to be successful on that platform, your content, products, or service should be towards those particular demographics.
Increasing sales with Google Ads and engaging young people with TikTok ads for Crocs
Crocs, a prominent footwear manufacturer, has successfully expanded its e-commerce presence with Google Ads and TikTok Ads.
- Google Ads: Crocs used Google Shopping and Search Ads to target customers who were shopping for particular shoe styles. When Crocs concentrated on high-intent phrases like “summer footwear” and “comfortable shoes,” their online conversion rate increased by 30% during the busiest shopping seasons.
- TikTok Ads: Crocs started a popular TikTok campaign with influencers and celebrity collaborations showcasing their products. A TikTok challenge they posted received over 2 billion views, which boosted brand engagement and increased sales by 18% among younger consumers.
4. Ad Costs
Google Advertising Costs
Google uses a pay-per-click business model, which means you have to pay them to show and click on your advertisement. More specifically, Google Ads will offer distinct advantages for every kind of ad format.
Furthermore, regardless of your company’s size or available resources, you can adapt the advertisements to meet your budget. With the Google AdWords tool, you may pause or discontinue your ad spending at any time while staying within your monthly budget.
Google search advertisements have an average cost per thousand (CPM) ranging from $0.50 to $4. The average CPM is $3.12, which is somewhat less than TikTok.
Depending on the industry, the typical cost-per-click (CPC) for Google search advertisements might range from $1 to $2. However, depending on the sector, costs can vary from $0.5 to $150.
TikTok Ads Cost
TikTok offers a number of ways to pay for ads. This implies that marketers might allocate their TikTok spending in a different way for purposes of branding or sales. To schedule commercials, you may either design your own campaign or get in touch with TikTok partners.
TikTok has three ad options at varying price points, such as:
- Bidding: Four bidding techniques—CPP, CPM, oCPM, and CPV—are used to determine the cost of advertisements. At the moment, TikTok provides five different kinds of bidding ads: In-Feed, Collection, Dynamic Showcase, TikTok Shopping Solutions, and Deeplink to Marketplace.
- Booking: Advertisers that wish to employ the branding ad solutions (Branded Effect, Branded Hashtag Challenge, and TopView) must reserve ad spaces through the TikTok agency. This is also regarded as the most expensive ad type on TikTok.
- Reach and Frequency: This gives you the ability to manage, within a certain budget, both the reach of your intended audience and the frequency at which your advertisements appear. Advertisers can alter their budget at any point throughout an R&F campaign, and the TikTok system guarantees that they will never go over the budget you have established.
- To be more precise, the minimum budget for a campaign is $500, and the minimum for an ad group is $50. TikTok’s average CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, is $10. Similar to the cost per click on Google Ads, the average cost per click (CPC) on TikTok Ads is approximately $1.
5. Scalability
While we consider how the Google ads vs TikTok ads differs, it is important to consider the scalability factors of these two popular platforms. Scalability is crucial for growing your business and adapting to market changes.
Each platform offers varying levels of scalability, from local to worldwide markets. Let’s examine which platform provides the scalability choices that work with your future growth goals and methods for expanding your market.
Google Ads Scalability
Google advertisements have practically unlimited reach, with billions of daily searches and a broad network of websites. The platform’s pay-per-click methodology, along with the ability to adapt campaigns based on real-time performance data, allows you to scale your campaign effectively.
With this platform, you can easily reach new markets and audiences with your successful ads.
TikTok Ads Scalability
TikTok advertisements are becoming more and more scalable, especially among younger audiences worldwide. TikTok offers a more limited ecology than Google, but because of its viral nature and immediate visibility boost, it’s still a useful tool for businesses trying to expand quickly in niche sectors.
The bidding method facilitates scalable campaign management as well; but, because it is a relatively new platform, its audience variety and worldwide reach may be restricted.
6. Analytic Tools and ROI Measurement
The capacity to track and evaluate ad performance using advanced tools differs per platform, influencing how exactly you can assess and optimize your ROI.
That is why it is critical to do a thorough analysis for each campaign and assess which platform’s tools would best assist us in tracking performance and refining plans to maximize impact.
Google Ad analytics
Google Ads includes a sophisticated analytics package that integrates with Google Analytics to provide insights into user activity, ad performance, and conversion tracking. Essentially, the platform collects precise information on how consumers engage with ads in Google’s search results, websites, and YouTube.
By creating targeted goals in Google Analytics (such as leads or sales) and connecting them to Google Ads, you can use conversion tracking to calculate return on investment. Google’s Enhanced E-commerce Analytics improves on this by providing specific data on user interactions, such as examining products and completing purchases.
Tiktok ads analytics
TikTok Ads is a relatively new platform that provides unique analysis solutions for online merchants. We’re referring to its Ads Manager, which shows analytics like views, engagement rates, and click-through rates.
The technology tracks user actions on the advertiser’s website when they interact with a TikTok ad through a pixel, much like Facebook, in order to calculate return on investment. Additionally, it offers integrations for third-party tracking, which makes deeper analytics and ROI evaluation easier.
To Conclude
Well, here’s a wrap on the complete differentiation guide about Google Ads vs TikTok ads. Google is a legend, that businesses have been using for so many years and is quite effective. While Tiktok is relatively new but has high engagement and conversion rates. But, in the end, it all boils down to the products/services you are offering, your preferred ad format, budget, target audience, and other things.
Google Ads is ideal for reaching users with high intent through search, display, and video ads, offering precision targeting and scalability. On the other hand, TikTok Ads excels at capturing the attention of a younger, highly engaged audience through creative, immersive content.
You can also target both platforms, simultaneously or even alternatively as per your business needs and target market preferences changes.
If you need help in how to get started, you can book a consultation call with me and I can better assist in choosing the right platform at the right time to get the maximum impact.
