Google Ads vs. LinkedIn Ads: Which is Right for My B2B Ad Strategy?

When helping B2B clients brainstorm their digital ad strategies, we’re often considering two channels right off the bat: Google and LinkedIn. One using a massive search engine and the other a niche social platform, both of these tools are considered industry-leading for B2B advertising. 

Because of this, the question of “which is better” is constantly floating around, but one is not better than the other. Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads have fundamentally different use cases, meaning the two shouldn’t step on each other’s toes much. 

Rather than having one or the other, we’ve found that in many cases, the two can even work together.

To help you understand the different advertising use cases for Google and LinkedIn, we’ll walk through each platform separately to get a full understanding of what we’re working with.

Google Ads: Benefits, disadvantages, and when to use it

Benefits

Through its intent-based search platform, Google provides a simple and powerful way to reach consumers. Whether they’re seeking an answer to a question or something to buy, people use Google when they need something — and for a certain price, your advertisement can be their answer.

As of May 2025, Google made up approximately 90% of the search market, meaning the vast majority of the world goes to the browser with its queries. Google also owns YouTube and other properties, allowing you to reach your audience through different channels. Yet, the biggest advantage of using Google Ads remains in the main search engine, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on.

Google Ads is excellent at capturing pre-existing demand and bottom-of-funnel leads due to the nature of intent-based search. The idea of B2B advertising using Google is that people will search for their business solutions on the platform, and find your product or service as their answer.

Another big upside to Google Ads is its pricing. The platform has lower-on-average CPCs and CPMs than LinkedIn. Google prices its keywords using an auction system, so pricing naturally depends on the popularity of your target keywords.

Lastly, while we’re mainly focusing on search ads due to their ability to capture intent, it’s worth mentioning Google’s other formats intended to capture top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel leads. For instance, YouTube ads can be effective for creating brand awareness and storytelling through video assets. Furthermore, Google’s Performance Max campaigns use AI to target and deliver ads to specific audiences across all of Google's assets — search, YouTube, Gmail, and Display.

Disadvantages

While Google Ads is an incredibly powerful tool for its capability to convert bottom-of-funnel leads, it naturally has its disadvantages. First and foremost, search ads require that pre-established demand to be truly effective — it’s not good for demand creation. 

That being said, Google Ads presents a variety of solutions to acquiring top- and middle-of-funnel leads: Google display ads, retargeting ads, YouTube ads, and the combination of methods in Performance Max. Used properly, these tools can be effective for your business, but they may not be as powerful as LinkedIn for creating B2B brand awareness. One of the reasons for this is LinkedIn’s ability to target niche audiences, something Google can’t achieve due to a lack of professional information on the user. Because of this lack of information, the leads you get from Google may be less qualified — the platform doesn’t know a person’s job title, industry, or deeper professional background solely based on their search behavior.

When to use Google Ads 

When it comes to B2B advertisers, the ideal use case for Google Ads is for bottom-of-funnel lead acquisition after you’ve already laid a solid foundation for brand awareness and demand for your product. 

However, Google retargeting, display, and Performance Max are all worth consideration, especially if you have a lower budget, or an audience that isn’t active on LinkedIn. For example, if your audience is composed of mechanics — or any other profession that likely isn’t at a computer for a lot of the day — it might be worth sticking to Google by targeting keywords and trying out Performance Max. Yet, if your audience is active on LinkedIn, it’s best to focus on brand awareness there and use Google Ads to drive traffic and conversions.

In most cases, Google is the most effective platform for capturing search demand. While search engines like Microsoft Search still have traffic, Google’s monopoly on search makes it the objectively best channel for search ads in nearly every situation. 

LinkedIn Ads: When should I use it?

Benefits

LinkedIn isn’t some massive scale monopoly with the potential to get hundreds of millions eyes on a piece of content. LinkedIn gets far less traffic, and is a fundamentally different platform from Google — it’s a social media platform for professionals. Yet, despite the lower traffic on the site, the very nature of LinkedIn makes it perfect for creating brand awareness, nurturing leads, and account-based marketing.

The upside to LinkedIn is its hyperfocused targeting. When creating a profile on the site, users self-report professional information like the company they work for and their current job title. This user-generated information is super useful, allowing the advertiser to filter their audience based on these niche criteria — companies, demographics, education, and interests.

Because of this, LinkedIn tends to present high-quality audiences — the targeting should allow you to get your ads in front of direct matches to your B2B buyer personas. Furthermore, the platform is fantastic for nurturing these leads, as it offers a wide range of ad types including direct messages.

Disadvantages

While LinkedIn has state-of-the-art targeting capabilities, you need your audience to be on the platform to see them. Because of this, you’ll likely run into issues with user inactivity — lots of your potential leads aren’t regularly logging into the platform.

On top of this, due to its nature as a social media platform, people don’t go to the site looking to buy things or spend money, making immediate leads pretty much nonexistent on LinkedIn. If that’s what you’re looking for, Google is the way to go. 

One of the biggest disadvantages of LinkedIn Ads is its pricing. Generally, CPCs and CPMs can be pretty steep — especially in comparison to Google — and the platform also requires a $10 minimum daily spend to keep campaigns running.

One last thing — LinkedIn’s reporting capabilities are rather limited compared to Google. Specifically, if you’re looking to see post-click behaviors, you’ll need to implement third party trackers like UTMs or integrations with your CRM or Google Analytics.

When to use LinkedIn Ads

If you’re looking to attract top-of-funnel leads and create brand awareness, LinkedIn Ads will be your best friend. While the conversion rate on standard landing pages is only 2.35%, the average conversion rate on LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms is a whopping 13%. The platform’s targeting capabilities allow you to get your ads in front of incredibly specific audiences relevant to your brand.

Furthermore, the capability to target users by industry and job title presents your business with the option for account-based marketing, which can be game changing for B2B businesses.

Where should I go with my ads?

While Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads have different use cases, campaigns run on both platforms at the same time can be mutually beneficial.

Generally speaking, Google is often seen as the final destination for your leads — it captures high-intent users ready to convert. But that doesn’t mean it always comes last. Many marketers start by targeting key audiences on LinkedIn, then drive those users to a website where they can later be retargeted with Google Ads. Whether you lead with LinkedIn for awareness and follow up with Google, or flip the strategy, the two platforms can work in tandem throughout the buyer’s journey.

While you can acquire and nurture leads through LinkedIn and send them to Google for conversion, you can also move in the other direction by importing your CRM contacts into LinkedIn to nurture them with direct messaging and other ad formats. One of the most effective ways to tie these efforts together is by using bi-directional audience syncing with a platform like HubSpot as the go-between. Most CRMs allow you to build audience segments and sync them to both Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads, enabling seamless targeting or retargeting across both platforms.

That said, Google and LinkedIn aren’t your only options. For example, while Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook aren’t considered to be go-to B2B channels, they all excel in their own unique ways. Reddit’s community-driven structure allows you to reach niche audiences, similar to LinkedIn but focused on interests. Instagram and Facebook are great for visual storytelling, reaching large audiences, and retargeting leads. 

Ultimately, it’s critical to understand where your audience is. Naturally, the success of any platform for advertising hinges on whether or not your target buyers are actually seeing your ads. For example, if your audience is composed of executives, you’ll want to emphasize LinkedIn. On the other hand, if you’re looking at machine shop managers who are rarely at a computer, you’ll likely want to go another route.

Once you know where to reach your audience, you’ll need to budget accordingly. If you’re looking to build brand awareness or target specific accounts, you’ll want to spend a little more of your budget on LinkedIn. Then, as demand and search volume ramps up, you’ll likely want to shift more of your budget toward Google Ads.

In conclusion, it’s best to look into all the resources at your disposal before making a decision. Google and LinkedIn are among the very best options for B2B advertising, but it always depends on the client’s specific needs.