Meta Ads vs Google Ads for a New D2C Brand in India: What Case Studies Show

Is there a published Meta vs Google case study?#

No: as of September 2026, no public case study compares Meta Ads and Google Ads for the same new Indian D2C brand. Meta and Google each publish success stories about their own platform only.

Meta's case-study library has several recent Indian D2C examples. Google's recent India case studies mostly feature large retailers such as Nykaa, or sales made on marketplaces rather than on a brand's own website.

A lift test compares people who saw the ads with a similar group who didn't. Advantage+ sales campaigns were previously called Advantage+ shopping campaigns.

Why these case studies can't set your budget#

1. The platform chooses them. Meta and Google publish success stories to sell their products, so you see strong results, not typical ones. One Meta case-study page, for a WhatsApp campaign, says: "All results are self-reported and not identifiably repeatable. Generally expected individual results will differ."
2. Each covers one platform. None reports the same brand's results on the other platform over the same period.
3. The results are percentages. Most compare against a test group or the brand's own earlier ads. None gives a cost per new customer in rupees, so you can't set it beside your own.
4. Few describe a new brand. None of the pages calls its brand new. Noise was founded in 2014, and Nykaa is a large retailer.

Apply the same checks to agency blog posts that compare the two platforms. If a post doesn't name the brand, the period and the spend, its numbers can't be checked.

Use platform case studies to pick features worth testing, not to set your budget split. Meta's search studies make one point worth testing on your own account: Meta ads can raise searches for a brand. Underneat measured a 75% lift in brand search traffic. That matters when you read Google's results.

What do new brands pay per customer on each platform?#

About the same on each: ₹717 per new customer on Meta and ₹702 on Google, for Indian D2C brands in their first 12 months. These figures come from ProfitBox360 research, 2025 (client data and shopper surveys).

The all-brand Google figure covers Search and Shopping campaigns. New brands put 67.5% of their paid ad spend on Meta. They typically start with a monthly ad budget of ₹2,25,000.

Three things stand out.

1. New brands pay close to the all-brand average. Both platform CACs sit near ₹700, the average CAC across all Indian D2C brands.
2. The CAC gap between the platforms is small. Meta costs ₹15 more per new customer, or 2.1%. That's too small to decide a budget split on.
3. The ROAS gap is much wider. For every ₹1,00,000 spent, Google's dashboard claims ₹4,30,000 of sales and Meta's claims ₹3,35,000.

CAC and reported ROAS disagree because they count different things. CAC divides spend by new customers only. Reported ROAS counts every sale the platform claims, including repeat buyers and people who searched for the brand by name.

Why does Google's ROAS look higher than Meta's?#

About a third of what Google counts comes from people who already know the brand: brand-name searches make up 32.5% of Google conversions for new brands.

Someone who types your brand into Google has already heard of you. They may have seen a Meta ad, a creator's post or a marketplace listing. Google Search still gets the credit for the sale.

So compare Meta with Google's non-brand results: the category searches and Shopping ads that reach people who don't know your name yet. The same applies to CAC. Google's ₹702 includes new customers who searched for the brand by name, so its non-brand CAC is likely higher.

Illustrative example: Google's part of a typical starting budget.

• Monthly ad budget of ₹2,25,000, with 67.5% on Meta and the remaining ₹73,125 on Google
• Google reports the new-brand average ROAS of 4.3x
• Brand-name searches supply 32.5% of Google's conversions, at the same average order value as other conversions
• A separate brand-name campaign takes 10% of Google spend

• Brand-name sales: ₹3,14,437.50 × 32.5% = ₹1,02,192.19
• Non-brand ROAS: ₹2,12,245.31 ÷ ₹65,812.50 = 3.23x

So ₹1,02,192.19 of the ₹3,14,437.50 Google claims came from people already looking for the brand. Without them, Google's 4.3x falls to 3.23x, just below Meta's 3.35x. If the brand-name campaign cost nothing, non-brand ROAS would be 4.3 × (100% − 32.5%) = 2.9x.

Neither figure is profit. Both platforms over-credit themselves, so check their claims against store orders before trusting either ROAS.

See your own brand-name share#

Keep brand-name keywords in their own Search campaign. Add your brand as a brand exclusion on non-brand Search and Performance Max campaigns, which blocks searches for your brand name and its common misspellings. Then check the search terms report, which also covers Performance Max, for brand-name searches that still get through.

What happened to one new skincare brand in six months?#

It paid more per customer than the new-brand average on both platforms, kept two-thirds of spend on Meta, and cut its blended CAC by 21% between month 1 and month 6.

The skincare figures come from ProfitBox360 client audit, 2025 (new skincare brand, months 1–6).

• It paid more on both platforms. Meta cost ₹137 more per customer than the new-brand average (19.1%), and Google ₹107 more (15.2%). This is one brand in one category, so it doesn't show that new brands pay more in general.
• Google was cheaper, but Meta kept the budget. Google cost ₹45 less per customer than Meta, yet Meta still took 67.5% of spend at month 6. New brands on average split their budget the same way.
• Its costs fell as the months passed. A 21% fall means every ₹100 the brand paid per customer in month 1 became ₹79 by month 6. The same budget bought about 26.6% more new customers.

The ₹854 and ₹809 are six-month averages, so they include the costlier early months. Judge a platform on several months, not the first. In this case, a verdict in month 1 would have rested on the higher early cost.

How should a new brand split its first ad budget?#

Start with about two-thirds on Meta and the rest on Google. Then move money each month towards the platform with the lower non-brand CAC.

That's how new brands split spend on average, and how the skincare brand stood at month 6. Meta can show ads to people who aren't looking for your product yet. Google Search and Shopping ads reach people who are already searching, so they can spend only as fast as those searches come in.

Illustrative example: a ₹2,25,000 first month.

• Budget: ₹2,25,000, the typical starting monthly budget for new brands
• 67.5% on Meta and the rest on Google
• Each platform brings new customers at the new-brand average CAC

Blended CAC: ₹2,25,000 ÷ 316 = ₹712 per new customer.

Buying Meta's customers at Google's ₹702 instead would save about ₹3,177 a month. That's a small prize. What limits Google is the number of people searching, not its cost per customer.

Review the split every month#

1. Wait at least a week after the month ends, so most late conversions have reached both dashboards.
2. Count each platform's new customers from your store's first-time orders, using UTM tags on every ad link.
3. Work out non-brand CAC for each platform: spend on non-brand campaigns ÷ new customers they brought.
4. Move budget in small steps, such as 10% of the monthly total (₹22,500 on a ₹2,25,000 budget), towards the lower non-brand CAC. Keep each change for a full month.
5. Before giving Google more, check its Search lost IS (budget) column: the share of time your ads didn't show because the budget ran out. If it's close to zero, more budget alone won't buy more searches.
6. For a firmer answer, run a lift test. Meta offers Conversion Lift, and so does Google, though not for every account.

FAQ#

Can a new D2C brand skip Google Ads at first?#

You can start on Meta alone, but you give up a channel that costs new Indian D2C brands about the same per customer: ₹702 on Google against ₹717 on Meta. Google Shopping and category searches reach people already looking for the product. Run both, keeping Google smaller until its non-brand CAC is clear.

Should a new brand pay for ads on its own name?#

Run a small, separate brand-name campaign once people start searching for your name. Until then, Google may give the keyword a Low search volume status and keep it inactive. For new Indian D2C brands, brand-name searches made up 32.5% of Google conversions. Those buyers already know you, so report them apart from non-brand results.

How long before judging Meta against Google?#

Give each platform about three months before moving large amounts of budget, and review it monthly. In one 2025 audit, a new Indian skincare brand's blended CAC fell 21% between month 1 and month 6. A verdict after the first month would have judged its ads before that fall.

Does Meta's bigger share of spend mean it works better?#

No. New Indian D2C brands put 67.5% of paid ad spend on Meta, yet their CAC there, ₹717, is slightly above Google's ₹702. The share reflects where a new brand can spend at scale. Meta shows ads to people who aren't searching yet, while Google Search and Shopping ads wait for searches.

Are agency case studies more reliable than platform ones?#

Not usually, because agencies also choose their case studies to win business. Before trusting one, check that it names the brand, the period, the spend and how new customers were counted. If any of those is missing, nobody can check the result. Treat it as a sales claim rather than evidence for your own budget split.

Why can't Google take most of a new brand's budget?#

Google Search and Shopping ads appear only when people search, and few people search for a brand or product they haven't heard of. A new brand's Google campaigns can run out of relevant searches before they run out of budget. When Search lost IS (budget) is near zero, extra budget alone won't buy more searches.