Paid Search vs Paid Social: Complete 2025 Comparison

Starting point: 60% to paid search, 40% to paid social. Adjust based on: if your product has high search volume → weight toward search. If your audience does not actively search but responds to inspiration → weight toward social. After 90 days, analyze channel-specific CPA and shift budget toward the more efficient channel while maintaining minimum presence in both.

Full-funnel paid advertising covers all buyer stages: (1) Awareness (TOFU) — paid social video ads reaching cold audiences, (2) Consideration (MOFU) — retargeting website visitors with more detailed content or offers, (3) Decision (BOFU) — paid search capturing high-intent searches, remarketing with direct-response offers. Running only BOFU search ads misses audiences before the search stage; running only TOFU awareness without conversion campaigns wastes potential. The full funnel maximises total conversion volume.

New accounts without conversion history should: (1) Start with a small focused campaign (5–10 exact-match keywords, one service/product), (2) Use Maximize Conversions bidding (Smart Bidding without a target) to accumulate data, (3) Set a clear conversion action (form submit, phone call), (4) Run for 30–60 days to collect 30+ conversions before switching to Target CPA, (5) Review Search Terms report weekly for negative keywords. Do not try to run 20 campaigns from day one — focus builds conversion data faster.

Impression Share (IS) is the percentage of times your ads appeared out of all eligible auctions. If IS is 60%, your ads showed in 60% of searches that could have triggered them — missing 40% due to budget or rank. Click Share is the percentage of available clicks you captured. Lost IS due to budget = increase budget. Lost IS due to rank = improve Quality Score or increase bids. Target 80%+ IS for your most important keywords; below 60% means significant revenue is being left on the table.

Google Ads runs an auction every time a user searches. Ad position is determined by Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid × Quality Score × Expected impact of ad extensions and other formats. Key insight: you do not necessarily pay your max CPC — you pay just enough to beat the advertiser below you (actual CPC is typically lower than max CPC). This means improving Quality Score is as valuable as raising bids — a higher Quality Score gets better positions at lower costs.