How to expand from Meta Ads into Google Ads

Brands that have built success on Meta’s ad ecosystem have mastered the art of the thumb-stopping creative. 

However, as competition heats up and audiences saturate one PPC platform, acquisition costs typically go up. 

This is when social-first advertisers might start to explore a different channel, like Google Ads.

Google’s advertising ecosystem is based on search intent, which fundamentally differs from Meta’s, built around behavioral and interest-based targeting. 

As people actively search for products, Google offers a massive advantage: It knows exactly what they want.

Between legacy campaigns (like Search, Shopping, and YouTube) and newer technology (like Performance Max and Demand Gen), social-first advertisers have options and a powerful opportunity to open up new acquisition channels.

When is the right time for Meta advertisers to try out Google Ads?

Platform diversification tends to work better for brands that have succeeded in one place (Meta) and have sufficient budget to expand into a new one (Google) without disrupting their existing growth operations.

Part of that means knowing where you’re going to put your money, as Google offers a variety of options. For retail and direct-to-consumer ecommerce, explore these options:

Bottom funnel

• Search can work if people are actively searching for your product or category or if you have informational content that can help nudge mid-funnel prospects to purchase.
• Shopping lets you showcase your catalog to in-market buyers by building a solid product feed.

Mid-to-bottom funnel

• Performance Max offers multiple inventory placements – Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps – under a single campaign at the cost of some granularity, visibility, and control.

Upper funnel

• Demand Gen helps boost discovery and engagement through YouTube, Gmail, and Discover by running your top-performing creative assets to people potentially interested in what you’re selling
• YouTube can be its own campaign separate from Demand Generation and is typically best used to seed awareness and interest. (Note: Video Action Campaigns are being rolled into Demand Gen in early 2025.)

How does Google know?

Google’s user database is unlike any other, with access to millions of data points that indicate where someone is in a hundred different purchase journeys. 

While you and I can’t see any of this, it’s there, and it works very well when the messaging is on point.

Google gives advertisers access to intent-driven audiences and unmatched data on individual users. 

If you have winning creatives on Meta and a brand with product/market fit – and people are searching for what you’re offering – then you’ve got a very good chance of turning Google Ads into a profitable channel.

Dig deeper: Top 5 Google Ads opportunities you might be missing

Auditing your Meta setup ahead of launching Google Ads

All good things begin with an audit. Before you launch any campaigns, you need to study what has worked and what hasn’t.

Auditing your marketing before testing a new platform allows you to tailor your approach to the needs of the platform in terms of budget, creative assets, and campaign selection and structure.

Step 1: Budget allocation

Google Ads demands a different mindset than Meta, including budget allocation. A good place to start is by identifying your goals. 

Are you looking to simply capture bottom-of-funnel conversions for which demand already exists? Or are you willing to invest in nurturing new demand further up?

• For conversion-oriented campaigns like Search and Shopping, you can only capture as much demand as possible. If 100 people search for your product daily, you can’t reach a bigger audience without moving up-funnel.
• Performance Max is similar in its mechanics, but you should expect a higher budget due to the amount of testing required for the system to start generating quality conversions. Typically, the learning phase lasts about 4–6 weeks.
• Google recommends setting a daily budget above 15 times your average cost per conversion. Fine-tuning your budget is a matter of finding how much you can realistically spend on demand that exists without telling the system to spend more, irrespective of relevance or quality.
• Reserve around 10–30% of your total budget for testing and learning, depending on your tolerance and appetite for risk.

Step 2: Reusing creative assets

The best part about moving from a Meta-first setup to Google Ads is that you don’t need to start from scratch. 

Simply take your top-performing Meta creatives – the ads that are driving engagement and conversions – and repurpose them for Google.

You can also use fatigued creative on Meta since you’ll be showing it to people who might not have seen it on Meta.

• Static images can be used in Performance Max, Demand Gen, and Discovery campaigns, as well as Display (resized appropriately).
• Videos can be repurposed to high-engagement Reels and Stories for YouTube Shorts (via Demand Gen) or video assets in Performance Max.
• Product catalog assets can be used in your ecommerce product feeds for Shopping and Performance Max.

Step 3: Campaign selection

While Google used to be a demand capture ad platform, you can now use it to nurture people who would otherwise have never looked you up. 

Still, not all Google Ads campaign types fit the same goals.

• Search and Shopping: Great for brands looking to capture mid- and bottom-funnel conversions based on specific search terms and queries (Shopping uses product feed attributes to match with search queries).
• Performance Max: More automated like Advantage+, and best for mid- and bottom-funnel conversions by using Google’s automation to find high-intent buyers.
• Demand Gen: Google’s closest equivalent to Meta’s prospecting and retargeting campaigns, optimized for top-of-funnel engagement and the only way to run performance-focused YouTube ads as of April 2025.
• Vertical-only Demand Gen (YouTube Shorts): Ideal for brands that already have success with short-form video ads on Meta.

Step 4: Audience targeting

Advertisers used to Meta will need to adjust as Google Ads doesn’t rely on interest-based targeting. Instead, you’ll use:

• Custom intent audiences based on user search behavior that Google can see deeply.
• Customer match audiences using email lists and first-party data.
• Google’s AI-driven audience signals in Performance Max and Demand Gen (important to note these are guidelines for targeting and not actual targeting lists).
• Affinity and in-market audiences of users actively researching related products.

Covering all the bases: Expanding to Google step by step

If it were as easy as pulling your best ads from one platform and popping them into another, more brands would be winning on all fronts. 

Instead, you’ll want to make sure all the pieces are in place as you set up a methodical expansion and testing regimen.

Account and campaign structure

Meta advertisers are used to audience segmentation at the ad set level. 

But in Google, you’ll want to structure campaigns around search intent, product categories, and performance signals.

• Search: Segment ad groups by brand, competitor, and generic keyword themes. Proprietary brand search (people searching for your own brand by name) should run in its own campaign.
• Shopping and Performance Max: Group products by margin, best-sellers, bundles, etc. You can use any segmentation you like as long as it ties back to a business goal and financials. For Performance Max, structure asset groups around a theme, category, or pain point.
• Demand Gen: Create separate campaigns for prospecting and retargeting, making sure that YouTube Shorts ads run in vertical placements.

Managing budgets and bidding

Budget pacing works differently in Google than in Meta, which makes bid strategy selection extra important.

• Most notably, your budget pacing is based on your daily budget multiplied by 30.4, the average number of days a month.
• Google will spend up to twice your daily budget in a day but will rarely exceed your monthly budget.
• Experiment cautiously with Smart Bidding and watch how Google adjusts spend. Automated bid strategies can ramp up slowly and then very quickly, and any significant adjustments can reset the learning period.

Dig deeper: How each Google Ads bid strategy influences campaign success

Targeting and audience differences

Meta’s audience targeting leans heavily on interest-based signals and lookalikes. 

When targeting audiences in Google, you will generally pick one of these options:

• Search behavior and intent signals (e.g., keywords and browsing activity).
• First-party data from Customer Match (e.g., your latest customer list).
• AI-driven audience expansion, which behaves differently than Meta’s lookalike

Measuring effectiveness

As a Meta-first advertiser, you’re likely accustomed to near-instant feedback on performance. 

As you test out Google Ads, you will need more patience.

• Search and Shopping drive high-intent conversions, but attribution can take longer.
• Demand Gen and Performance Max need learning phases before stabilizing.
• Consider blended MER (marketing efficiency ratio) to compare Google’s impact with Meta’s.
• Google Ads has an innate conversion lag, especially in Smart Bidding. Expect a 3–7 day delay in performance data.
• There are no view-through conversions in Shopping and Performance Max, which are the two campaigns you will most likely use.
• Don’t ignore Google Analytics 4 and a custom Looker dashboard for full-funnel insights. It’s worth investing the time and energy in this upfront.

Pitfalls and common errors

Avoid these common mistakes paid social professionals tend to make when expanding into paid search:

• Oversegmenting campaigns instead of consolidating data.
• Ignoring keyword intent and treating Google like another social or display platform.
• Not testing audience signals in Performance Max before scaling.
• Failing to adjust bid strategies based on performance trends, like seasonality.
• Neglecting negative keywords in Search and Shopping campaigns (coming soon to Performance Max).

Scale beyond Meta: Making Google Ads work for your brand

Expanding to Google Ads can be a massive opportunity for social-first advertisers if approached strategically.

It’s important to remember that Google isn’t Meta. 

They’re very different products built by entirely different companies with their own cultures.

Don’t make the rookie mistake of treating them the same just because they’re both ad platforms.

While intent is king with Google Ads, you can still use your best (and past) creatives to target users actively searching for what you sell. 

Lean into Google’s automation and guide it at every step with the right inputs.

Google’s ecosystem offers a new dimension for brands with product/market fit that want to think beyond social for growth opportunities. 

If you’ve been Meta-first or social-only, now is a great time to start testing what lies beyond.

Dig deeper: Meta wants its advertisers to connect to Google Analytics