Almost every agency answers this question with "both, integrated, full-funnel". That is convenient advice to sell and poor advice to follow when you have five thousand dollars and need to learn something useful from it.
Split a small budget across two channels and you get two underfunded tests, neither of which produces enough data to act on. Pick one, fund it properly, learn, then add the second.
Here is how we decide.
Question one: does demand already exist?
Open Google Keyword Planner and look up what you sell. If thousands of people search for your product category every month, demand exists and Google Search will let you buy it directly. Someone typing "waterproof hiking boots size 10" has told you exactly what they want.
If searches are negligible, nobody is looking for your product — because they do not know it exists yet. That is not a failure, it is a category. Meta is built for exactly this: putting something in front of people who were not looking for it and making them want it.
This single question decides most cases.
Question two: how visual is the product?
Some products sell on demonstration. Skincare with a visible before and after, a kitchen gadget that solves an obvious annoyance, clothing that looks good in motion. These do exceptionally well on Meta, where a fifteen-second video can create desire that did not exist thirty seconds earlier.
Other products are bought on specification. Replacement parts, industrial supplies, anything where the buyer already knows the model number. Search wins those every time; no video is going to outperform being the result someone finds when they look.
Question three: what is your margin and order value?
Google clicks cost more than Meta clicks in most categories, sometimes several times more, because you are bidding on people who are ready to buy. If your product sells for $25 with a $10 margin and clicks cost $3, you need a conversion rate above thirty percent to break even. That is rarely realistic.
Low order value with thin margins usually points to Meta, where cheaper reach and bundling can make the maths work. High order value, or a strong repeat-purchase rate that lets you pay more for the first order, makes Google viable.
Question four: can you produce creative?
Meta is a creative-supply business. If you cannot produce three to five new concepts a week — or pay someone to — your Meta account will plateau quickly, because creative fatigue is the binding constraint there.
Google Search needs almost no creative. Well-written text ads and a clean landing page carry it. If your team has no capacity for content production, that matters more than any theoretical channel advantage.
Putting it together
Start with Google if people are already searching for your product, your order value supports the click cost, and you cannot produce creative at volume.
Start with Meta if you are creating demand rather than capturing it, your product demonstrates well visually, your order value is modest, and you can keep new creative coming.
Start with Shopping specifically if you are an established store with a wide catalogue and clean product data. Shopping often delivers the best return of any channel for retailers, and a well-optimised product feed is the cheapest win available to most stores.
How to run the first test properly
Whichever you choose, give it enough runway to answer the question. Four to six weeks, with enough daily budget to produce at least thirty to fifty conversions over that period. Below that you are reading noise.
Fix tracking before you start, not after. A test built on conversion data you cannot trust teaches you nothing and costs the same.
Judge it on contribution margin, not on the platform's reported return. Platforms attribute generously, by design. Compare total revenue in the period against total spend and see whether the business is actually better off.
When to add the second channel
When the first is consistently profitable and you have more budget than it can absorb efficiently. That is a real signal, not a hunch — you will see cost per acquisition begin to climb as you push spend.
At that point the second channel often performs better than it would have on its own, because people who first saw you on Meta go on to search your brand name. Just make sure you can tell that story with your data before you credit it, which is harder than it sounds once three dashboards start reporting three different numbers.
Whichever you start with, the build matters more than the choice. On the paid social side that means account structure; on search it means keeping broad match from buying queries you never wanted and watching that Performance Max is not just reselling your own brand traffic.
We run both channels, and the free growth audit will tell you honestly which one your money belongs in first.