Roshanak Kavian
Co-Founder and CMO of Indigo Mars
Paid advertising works when it's matched to the right moment in a customer's decision — Google Ads captures people already searching for what you offer, Meta Ads builds demand among people who aren't searching yet, and TikTok Ads reaches people through short, authentic video in a feed built for discovery. Most Los Angeles businesses don't need all three at once. They need to know which one matches where their customers actually are right now, and what a realistic budget looks like before committing to any of them.
How Google Ads Works
Google Ads places a business in front of people actively typing a search — "emergency plumber los angeles," "personal injury lawyer near me" — competing for a handful of visible slots against every other advertiser bidding on that same phrase. Because the person searching has already decided what they want, Google Ads tends to convert faster and more predictably than any other paid channel, which is exactly why it's the standard starting point for local, urgent-need service businesses: dental practices, HVAC companies, plumbers, lawyers, and similar categories where someone searches only once they actually need the service. For the specific, fixable mistakes that quietly waste the most budget, see Common Google Ads Mistakes That Waste Budget.
Cost varies enormously by industry. Across the board, average cost-per-click currently sits in the mid-single digits, with low-competition categories paying under $2 a click and high-value categories like legal services regularly paying $8 or more. A local business running Google Ads typically spends somewhere between $1,500 and $8,000 a month once ad spend and management are combined, with most landing in the $2,000 to $5,000 range — and businesses spending below roughly $1,000 a month often struggle to gather enough data for the platform to optimize effectively at all. Learn more about Google Ads.
How Meta Ads Works
Meta Ads — Facebook and Instagram — works on interest and behavior rather than active searching. Someone scrolling Instagram sees an ad based on what they follow, watch, or engage with, not because they typed a query. This makes Meta the stronger channel for building awareness and discovery, especially for visually driven categories: restaurants, beauty and wellness, fitness, retail, and any business where seeing the product or space is what actually sells it.
Meta's cost-per-click tends to run lower than Google's, but that's not the same as Meta being "cheaper advertising" — the comparison only makes sense next to what each platform is actually doing. Google captures demand that already exists; Meta creates demand that didn't exist yet. A business expecting Meta to convert at Google's speed, or expecting Google to work as a pure awareness play, usually ends up disappointed with both.
How TikTok Ads Works
TikTok Ads is the newest of the three, and the most accessible on cost: minimum ad-group budgets start around $20 a day, with a realistic small-business test budget in the $500 to $1,500 a month range. It rewards short, authentic, native-feeling video over polished commercial-style creative, and it has a real local advantage — precise geographic targeting means a single-location business can reach people specifically within their own neighborhood, and process-style or "satisfying to watch" content (a renovation coming together, a haircut transformation, food being prepared) tends to perform especially well for local service and retail businesses.
The tradeoff is content demands: TikTok punishes anything that looks like a traditional ad. A business with no ability to produce regular short-form video, or one serving a purely B2B or older demographic, usually gets more out of starting with Google or Meta first. For an honest, category-by-category breakdown of whether TikTok is worth it for your business, see TikTok Ads for Businesses: Is It Worth It in 2026?
Which One Should You Start With?
If your business has no paid advertising running anywhere yet, the category of business you run matters more than any general rule. A local, urgent-need service business — the kind where customers search only when they already need help — should generally start with Google Ads, since it captures a customer that's already decided to buy. A visually driven business — restaurants, salons, retail, fitness — often gets more out of starting with Meta or TikTok, since the sale depends on seeing the product or space rather than searching for a category name.
Once a business has a stable budget above roughly $3,000 a month, running a complementary mix — one platform capturing demand, another building it — consistently outperforms betting everything on a single channel. Below that threshold, splitting a thin budget across multiple platforms usually means none of them gather enough data to actually optimize, which is worse than picking one and doing it well. For a fuller breakdown of exactly which factors should drive that decision, see Meta Ads vs. Google Ads: Which Should You Start With?
What a Realistic Budget Actually Looks Like
The single most common mistake isn't picking the wrong platform — it's underfunding whichever one gets picked. A budget too small to generate meaningful data doesn't fail slowly; it just never produces enough signal for the platform's own optimization to work, which makes it look like "ads don't work for my business" when the real issue was never giving the campaign a fair test. For a full breakdown by platform — including what's realistic specifically in the LA market — see How Much Should a Business Spend on Ads in LA?
Where to Go From Here
Each piece of this — the specific mechanics of Google Ads, how to actually decide between Meta and Google, what to budget in an LA market specifically, whether TikTok is worth the content investment, and the most common ways businesses waste money on Google Ads without realizing it — deserves its own deeper walkthrough. Those are covered one at a time in the cluster posts under this guide.
Not sure which platform makes sense for your business, or what a realistic budget actually looks like for your category? Visit our website and Get in touch — we'll give you a straight answer, not a sales pitch for whichever platform we'd rather sell you.
