For ecommerce brands, Meta and Google aren’t competitors. They’re complementary channels that serve different functions in your acquisition system. Meta generates demand by putting your product in front of people who weren’t looking for it. Google captures demand from people already searching for what you sell. The question isn’t which platform is better. It’s how to allocate your budget between them based on your specific product, margin profile, and growth stage.
If you’ve got £50,000 to spend next month and you’re not sure where it should go, this framework will help you make that decision with numbers rather than gut instinct.
How Ecommerce Brands Actually Split Their Spend
According to ThoughtMetric’s Q3 2025 analysis of 100 ecommerce stores, Meta accounted for 77.9% of total ad spend while Google represented just 22.1%. That’s a significant lean toward Meta, and it reflects a broader trend: for most DTC and Shopify brands, Meta remains the primary acquisition engine.
But averages hide important variation. The right split for your brand depends on several factors that most agencies don’t bother to model before spending your money.
The Four Factors That Should Drive Your Allocation
1. Product Type and Discovery Potential
Meta excels with products that are visually compelling, emotionally driven, or solve a problem people didn’t know they had. Think fashion, beauty, homeware, jewellery, and lifestyle products. These categories thrive on discovery because the purchase is often triggered by seeing the product rather than searching for it.
Google works best when there’s existing search demand. If people are actively typing “best protein powder for women” or “gold huggie earrings,” Google Shopping and Search campaigns can capture that intent at the moment it exists. Categories like supplements, electronics, and replacement purchases (skincare refills, consumables) tend to have strong search volume.
Let’s say you’re a fashion brand launching a new collection. Nobody is searching for your specific designs yet. Meta is where you introduce the product and generate interest. Google picks up the residual search traffic that comes after people see your Meta ads and then search for your brand or product category.
2. Average Order Value and Margin
Your AOV and margin profile dictate how much you can afford to pay for a customer on each platform. Google clicks are generally more expensive than Meta impressions, but the intent behind them is higher, which often translates to better conversion rates.
For high-AOV products (£100+), Google Shopping can be extremely efficient because the click-to-purchase path is shorter. Someone searching “cashmere scarf gift” and landing on your Shopping listing is already close to buying. The higher AOV absorbs the higher cost per click.
For lower-AOV products (£20-£50), Meta’s lower CPMs make it easier to generate volume. But you need to be ruthless about creative efficiency, because at lower order values, even small increases in cost per acquisition can destroy your margins.
A practical rule: if your gross margin is below 50%, you need to be very careful about Google Search spend where CPCs can eat your profitability quickly. If your margin is above 60%, Google Shopping becomes a strong complement to Meta because you can absorb higher acquisition costs.
3. Brand Awareness and Search Volume
If you’re an established brand with meaningful branded search volume, Google becomes more valuable. People who search your brand name convert at much higher rates than cold traffic, and capturing that demand through branded search campaigns is usually cheap and highly profitable.
If you’re a newer brand with minimal search volume, Meta is where you build the awareness that eventually creates search demand. Many brands make the mistake of over-investing in Google too early, when there simply isn’t enough search volume to justify the spend. You end up competing on generic, expensive keywords against brands with much deeper pockets.
The typical progression looks like this: start with 70-80% of budget on Meta to build awareness and generate initial sales, then gradually shift toward a 60/40 or 55/45 split as your branded search volume grows and Google Shopping data matures.
4. Where You Are in the Scaling Journey
£10K-£30K/month total spend: Most of this should be on Meta. You’re in the phase of finding winning creative, validating your offer, and building pixel data. Google Shopping should be running on a modest budget to capture branded and high-intent searches, but it’s not your primary growth lever yet.
£30K-£70K/month: Start shifting more toward Google. By this point, your Meta campaigns should have generated enough branded search and product awareness that Google Shopping and Performance Max can capture incremental demand. A 65/35 Meta-to-Google split is common here.
£70K-£150K+/month: The split becomes more balanced. At this spend level, you’re likely hitting diminishing returns on Meta unless your creative pipeline is very strong. Google becomes increasingly important for capturing mid-funnel and bottom-funnel demand. Many brands at this level run 55/45 or even 50/50, with the exact split depending on product category and seasonality.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Imagine you’re running a DTC jewellery brand with a £120 AOV, 58% gross margin, and moderate branded search volume. You’ve got £50,000 to spend this month.
A sensible starting allocation might be:
Meta (£32,000, 64%): Prospecting campaigns focused on new customer acquisition through UGC and lifestyle video. Retargeting with dynamic product ads. Creative testing budget of roughly 15% of Meta spend allocated to new concepts.
Google (£18,000, 36%): Google Shopping campaigns for your bestselling product lines. Branded search to capture anyone Googling your brand name. Performance Max with a product feed optimised for your highest-margin products.
This isn’t a permanent split. You’d review weekly, shifting budget toward whichever channel is delivering better blended results. If Meta creative fatigue sets in and CPAs rise, you might shift £5,000 toward Google for a few weeks while new creative is developed. If a product goes viral on Meta and branded searches spike, you increase Google spend to capture that demand.
The Mistakes That Waste Budget
Running both platforms in isolation. Meta and Google should be managed as a system. If your ecommerce ad agency has separate teams for each platform that don’t communicate, you’re missing the compounding effect of cross-channel strategy.
Judging each platform by its own ROAS. Meta prospecting will always show a lower ROAS than Google branded search. That doesn’t mean Meta is underperforming. It means Meta is doing the hard work of introducing your brand to new people, and Google is capturing the downstream demand. Judge both platforms by their contribution to blended MER.
Ignoring creative on Meta. You can optimise targeting, bidding, and audiences all day on Meta. If your creative isn’t strong, none of it matters. At serious spend levels, creative is the targeting. Meta’s algorithm will find the right audience if you give it compelling ads to work with.
Over-investing in Google too early. If your monthly branded search volume is under 2,000, putting 50% of your budget into Google is premature. Build the demand first, then capture it.
The Allocation Is Never Final
The right Meta-to-Google split changes monthly, sometimes weekly. Seasonality, product launches, creative performance, and competitive dynamics all shift the equation. The value of working with a specialist ecommerce marketing agency isn’t just in how they run campaigns on each platform. It’s in how they think about the relationship between the two and adjust allocation based on real performance data, not default assumptions.
Your next £50K should work as a system, not as two separate bets.
