In this guide, you’ll find a list of Google Ads alternatives.
Previously known as AdWords, Google Ads is one of the top ad networks for managing digital marketing ad campaigns. However, Google’s advertising platform is not always the most cost-effective service to reach your target audience with pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
If you’re looking for the best Google Ads competitors you can compare for your marketing budget, then these reviews and recommendations below can help you find a good alternative to Google AdWords.
Table of Contents
Google Ads Alternatives
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads is one of the top Google Ads alternatives that has a higher average return on investment (ROI) of 152% and an average conversion rate of 9.21% than Google Ads which has an average ROI of 3.48% on the Search Network and 0.72% on the Display Network and an average conversion rate of 100%.
Facebook offers many various ad types for you to market your business to potential customers. Some of the most popular ad types include photo ads, video ads, story ads, ads on messenger, carousel ads, slideshow ads, and collection ads.
Microsoft Bing Ads
Microsoft Bing Ads is the next best Google Ads competitors because it has the second-largest market share for an online search engine at 2.96% and attracts more than 1 billion visits a month. Ads created on the Microsoft Advertising platform can run on all Microsoft search and advertising networks which include multiple platforms and devices that can help you reach 724 million monthly unique searchers and 96 million unique users through display and native advertising on brand-safe experiences. See this related guide on Bing Display Ads to learn more about this option.
Yahoo Gemini Ads
Yahoo Gemini Ads is another popular AdWords alternative with more than 60 billion monthly global native impressions across our network. It allows you to reach a selection of premium websites as well as publishing partners such as ESPN, ABC News, Apple News, and MSN. You can choose from a wide variety of ad types too, including image ads, video ads, app install ads, carousel ads, Yahoo Mail ads, and moments ads.
Adroll Ads
Adroll Ads is a good alternative to Google AdWords that allows ecommerce brands to launch display ads, social media ads, and email ads that engage existing customers, attracts new customers, and grows revenue. Its set of advertising tools includes a larger number of templates for display ads, banners, text ads, and emails than Google Ads provides. AdRoll’s retargeting and remarketing features also help businesses custom tailor advertisments to better meet their audience’s shopping and browsing behaviors, interests, demographics, and more.
Brave Ads
Brave Ads is another one of Google AdWords competitors. Verizon, for example, experienced 23.9 million ad views, 8% blended click-through rate (CTR), 10+ second landing page visits, and over 1,000 tweets from a Brave Ads campaign. This platform also has two unique features for business owners for brand awareness and lead capture: Native Push Notifications with call-to-action (CTA) buttons and the ability to get their ads featured in the Brave web browser as a background image.
Adobe Ads
Adobe Ads is a fast-growing alternative to Google Ads for programmatic advertising and media buying. It offers a suite of advertising products that also includes TV advertising and Search Marketing. You can use Adobe Ads for automated media buying with a demand-side platform with AI-powered optimization. Automatic creation, dynamic editing, and ad campaign reporting work across the most popular search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads is one of the top Google AdWords alternatives for One thing to keep in mind is that Amazon Ads uses a Second Price Auction System in which the highest bidder pays $0.01 more than the second highest bidder. For example, if you bid $2 for an ad and the next highest competitor’s bid was $1.50, you’ll pay $1.51 for the ad click. Amazon offers multiple ad types, including sponsored product ads, sponsored brand ads, sponsored display ads, audio ads, and video ads.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads is the best competitor to Google Ads for Business to Business (B2B) advertisements. The platform is full of working professionals you can target for all types of business-related products and services. IT has more than 830 million users and 58 million companies across 200+ countries. According to ad spending data, the average cost-per-click (CPC) for LinkedIn ads is $5.26 per click, $6.59 per 1,000 impressions, and $0.80 per send.
Outbrain Ads
Outbrain Ads is one of the most popular native advertising platform that is a direct competitor to Google AdWords Display Network. According to Outbrain, it helps brands and agencies connect with one-third of the world’s consumers who are engaging with content on the open web. The top businesses that use Outbrain Ads in replacement of Google Ads or in addition to them, include editorials like CNN, The Washington Post, MSN, The Guardian, El País, and more.
Infolinks Ads
Infolinks Ads is a global advertising platform offering ad solutions for both publishers and advertisers. That makes it a good alternative for both AdSense and AdWords. What makes Infolinks unique is that advertisers manage their own inventory through a self-service system to customize their campaigns in real-time. Ads can be shown across 25,000 publishing partners as display ads, video ads, and native ad units.
Taboola Ads
Taboola Ads is another content discovery and native advertising platform for both publishers and advertisers. With Taboola, you can get your ads displayed on top websites like Bloomberg, Business Insider, The Weather Channel, USA Today, and more.
Eskimi Ads
Eskimi Ads is a programmatic advertising service that allows your ads to appear on more than 2.5 million sites and apps across the Internet. Eskimi combines big data, research, and digital media into a powerful platform that specializes in helping businesses reach unique audience segments in the Telecom, Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, and Banking industries.
Reddit Ads
Reddit Ads is a cheap way to get your advertisements in front of a highly engaged audience. This platform has more than 430 million monthly active users and offers two main ad types: promoted post ads and display ads. The minimum required bid depends on which locations you are targeting. For example, US, UK, and/or Canada rates include $3.50 for CPM, $0.10 for CPC, and $0.01 for CPV. All other locations: $1.00 for CPM, $0.05 for CPC, and $0.01 for CPV.
Quora Ads
Quora Ads is another way to grow your business as a alternative to Google AdWords. You can reach over 300 million people who use Quora every month to discover and buy your products or services. With Quora Ads, you can select an ad campaign objective: Conversions, Traffic, Awareness, App Installs, or Lead Gen, and define your specific Budget, Audience, and Bid. However, the minimum daily budget is $5 per day to run a campaign.
Twitter Ads
Twitter Ads is a great alternative to Google Ads because you can target potential customers while also amplifying your message from Twitter users sharing your ads and updates with their communities. Ad types on Twitter include Promoted Ads, Follower Ads, and Trend Takeover ads.
According to a Twitter Marketing research study, “For every dollar spent on Twitter ad campaigns, the four brands in the study averaged a return of $2.70; an average ROI nearly 40% higher than the average ROI across all other media investments.”
YouTube Ads
YouTube Ads is the dominant format for video advertisements online. This platform is owned by Google and offers advertising solutions for both publishers and advertisers. Publishers can earn money by allowing ads to be shown before, during, or after their videos and is paid through Google AdSense. As for advertisers, statistics show that 70% of people have bought a product after seeing it in a YouTube ad.
To get the highest ROI from your YouTube ads, research conducted by Nielsen shows that video ads following the ABCD principles (Attention, Branding, Connection, Direction) saw a 30% higher sales lift than ads that didn’t adhere to them. See this article on ABCD Pricinciples by Think With Google for more details.
Instagram Ads
Instagram Ads is one of the best alternatives for driving brand awareness and increasing your customer base through visuals. Owned by Facebook, Instagram is the leading photo and video sharing platform with numerous ways to advertise your products and services through the app, including image ads, stories ads, video ads, carousel ads, collection ads, explore ads, IGTV ads, and shopping ads. The average Instagram ad costs around $0.50 to $1.00 CPC with some competitive industries reaching up to $3.50 CPC.
Pinterest Ads
Pinterest Ads is one of the top advertising platforms with the highest purchasing intent from its users. Consider this: 89% of US pinners use Pinterest for inspiration on their path to purchase and 83% of weekly US Pinners have made a purchase based on Pins from brands. If you want to reach more than 400 million people online who are ready to discover and buy your products or services, then Pinterest Ads may be the best alternative for your Google Ads budget.
Who Is Google Ads Biggest Competitor?
Google Ads biggest competitor is the Facebook Advertising platform. Facebook Ads have an average return on investment (ROI) of 152% and an average conversion rate of 9.21%, which is higher than Google Ads at 3.48% on the Search Network and 0.72% on the Display Network.
See Search Engine Watch Facebook Retail Advertiser Report and WordStream Facebook Ad Benchmark Report for more details.
Why Is Google Ads Better Than Competitors?
Google Ads is better than competitors because it can be faster to get started with and has a wider potential reach than competitor advertisers. Google owns more than 90% of the global search engine market which allows you to target your Google Ads to a larger audience.
Google’s advertising options are also split across two networks:
- The Search Network includes pay-per-click (PPC) ads shown across Google’s search engine that allow advertisers to bid on millions of keywords and phrases to target prospective customers.
- The Display Network spans approximately 98% of the World Wide Web to help businesses reach people as they browse millions of websites, which is better for marketing goals that are not as heavily conversion-driven as PPC ads.
What Is the Best Alternative to Google Ads?
The best alternative to Google Ads is Facebook Ads followed by Microsoft Bing Ads and Yahoo Gemini Ads. These alternatives have the largest audience reach for pay-per-click (PPC) ads targeting search engines and display networks.
Now, Google also offers other ways to advertise on its platform in addition to Google Ads. See this related guide on how to advertise your business on Google for more details.
Google AdWords Competitors List
Here’s s summary of the top Google AdWords competitors you can use to create and run advertisements that can be just as effective as Google Ads:
- Facebook Ads
- Microsoft Bing Ads
- Yahoo Gemini Ads
- Adroll Ads
- Brave Ads
- Adobe Ads
- Amazon Ads
- LinkedIn Ads
- Outbrain Ads
- Infolinks Ads
- Taboola Ads
- Eskimi Ads
- Reddit Ads
- Quora Ads
- Twitter Ads
- YouTube Ads
- Instagram Ads
- Pinterest Ads
Google Ads Alternatives & Competitors Summary
I hope you enjoyed this guide on Google Ads alternatives.
As you discovered, there are many Google Ads competitors that can help you reach your target audience in a cost-effective way. Hopefully, one or more of the top Google AdWords alternatives listed on the page will meet the digital marketing goals and objectives for your business’s PPC campaigns.
