Differences in advertising between Facebook and TikTok

In the context of the rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape of 2026, the two platforms Facebook and TikTok continue to be “giants” that cannot be ignored by advertisers, marketers, and businesses looking to expand their reach. But the big question many of you ask is: which platform is more effective in building brand awareness, increasing conversions, and optimizing advertising costs?

Both Facebook and TikTok possess massive user bases, diverse advertising features, and sophisticated targeting systems, but each platform has its own strengths in customer approach, content engagement, and user behavior. In this article, Optimal Agency will join you in a comprehensive analysis of the differences in advertising between Facebook and TikTok in 2026, from demographics, campaign performance, and ad costs to leading content trends, helping you make the most suitable strategic choice for your business model.

What made TikTok advertising a wave in 2026?

In the past few years, TikTok has completely escaped the image of a platform solely for dancing or lip-syncing. By 2026, many advertisers and we viewed TikTok as a true “traffic mine” for e-commerce and branding. With over 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok is becoming the preferred choice for many businesses wanting rapid growth, especially brands targeting younger generations.

TikTok and the young user base with high purchasing power

The biggest difference of TikTok lies in its user structure. This platform is where Gen Z and young Millennials spend a lot of time every day. According to recent statistics, approximately 41.7% of TikTok users are between the ages of 18 and 24, and an additional 31% belong to the 25 to 34 group. This is exactly the group of customers who tend to shop emotionally, like trying new products, and are easily influenced by short video content.

For those of you selling trending fashion, tech accessories, cosmetics, personal care products, or even online education apps, TikTok provides a huge advantage. We have implemented many campaigns using just one honest review video, filmed with a phone, that still generated thousands of visits and orders in a short time.

What do TikTok advertising metrics say?

One reason TikTok became a “wave” in 2025 is its very high engagement performance. Users tend to watch videos to the end, comment, share, and save more than on traditional platforms.

Regarding costs, common figures recorded by us and many advertisers are as follows: average CPM is about $10 per 1,000 impressions, and CPC falls around $1 per click. ROAS can fluctuate quite strongly, from 0.2 to 3, depending on the product, creative, and campaign optimization.

However, one point you need to note is that TikTok’s conversion attribution window is quite short, often only 1 day. This means that if a customer purchases after 2 or 3 days, the system may not record it fully. Therefore, when running TikTok Ads, we often combine tracking with actual data from websites, CRMs, or third-party tools to accurately assess effectiveness.

Advertising formats make TikTok attractive

TikTok is not only strong in traffic but also very creative in how it displays ads. In-feed Ads are the most popular format, appearing naturally in the video feed, feeling almost non-intrusive if the content is good enough. This is why review-style, real-experience, or personal storytelling videos often perform very effectively.

Branded Hashtag Challenges are suitable for brands wanting to create massive coverage and encourage user-generated content. We have seen campaigns gain tens of thousands of user-posted videos in just a few days, helping the brand go viral extremely fast.

Spark Ads are a huge plus for TikTok. This format allows advertisers to boost existing organic content, such as videos previously posted by influencers or KOLs. Instead of creating an entirely new ad, you leverage videos that already have good engagement to scale the ad, which is both natural and saves production time.

All the above factors combined have turned TikTok Ads into a powerful wave in 2025, and will certainly continue to have a profound impact on advertisers’ marketing strategies in the coming years.

Facebook advertising still maintains its dominant position

Although TikTok is emerging strongly with a youthful image and explosive content trends, if looked at from the perspective of overall advertising performance, we still see Facebook as an extremely solid and hard-to-replace platform in 2026. With over 3 billion monthly active users across the entire Meta ecosystem, Facebook provides massive reach, suitable for both small businesses and advertisers scaling large budgets.

The biggest difference that allows Facebook to maintain its dominant position lies in its extremely detailed targeting capabilities. Advertisers can target by age, gender, geographic location, interests, shopping behavior, device used, and even specific actions on a website through the Meta Pixel. For example, if you sell online courses, you can retarget the group of people who viewed the pricing page but haven’t registered, or those who watched more than 50% of an introductory video. This is an advantage that not every platform does well at the same level.

Diversity in Facebook advertising formats

Another reason Facebook is still trusted by advertisers is its flexibility in ad formats. We can implement many different strategies within the same ad account. With Carousel Ads, you can showcase multiple products or features in a single ad, very suitable for e-commerce shops. Video Ads are an ideal choice if you want to tell a brand story, share case studies, or provide real customer testimonials.

For e-commerce, Collection Ads provide a seamless shopping experience where users can view products and move to the purchase page with just a few taps. Additionally, Messenger Ads are used by many businesses to pull customers into the inbox, especially effective for industries requiring consultation like real estate, education, and high-end services. This diversity helps Facebook easily adapt to many different business models.

Costs and advertising effectiveness on Facebook in 2026

In terms of cost, Facebook still maintains a fairly competitive level compared to the value it brings. CPM usually fluctuates from $7 to $20, depending on the target audience, industry, and placement. Average CPC falls between $0.60 and $1.50, a figure that is still very reasonable if you have good content and strategy. With properly optimized campaigns, common ROAS usually reaches levels of 2 to 3, or even higher for accounts with strong data.

Importantly, Facebook is particularly suitable for long-term strategies. Conversion rates on Facebook are often higher than on many other platforms, ranging from 2% to 15%, especially for high-value products or services such as courses, software, finance, or business service packages. If you are an advertiser looking for stability, sustainable scaling capability, and deep enough data to optimize, Facebook remains a very difficult pillar to replace in 2026.

Differences in advertising between Facebook and TikTok

Before deciding whether to pour your budget into Facebook or TikTok in 2026, we advise you and advertisers to deeply understand the core differences between these two platforms. Although both are “big players” in the digital advertising industry, Facebook and TikTok serve very different user behaviors, content consumption styles, and marketing goals. Below is a detailed analysis of each important aspect.

User Demographics

TikTok stands out with a young user group, particularly Gen Z and young Millennials. This group is tech-savvy, likes discovering new trends, and is ready to experiment with products if the content is interesting enough. TikTok is associated with pop culture, humor, high entertainment value, and explosive creative ideas. A very notable point in recent years is that TikTok is gradually becoming an alternative search engine for Gen Z. Instead of going to Google, many young people look for product reviews, restaurants, beauty tips, or shopping suggestions directly on TikTok. This opens up a huge opportunity for new brands wanting to reach the market quickly.

Conversely, Facebook possesses a wider and “older” user base. The largest group usually falls into the 25–34 age range, but there is also a very large volume of users aged 35 and up, including Baby Boomers. This is a customer group with stable income, clear shopping behavior, and a willingness to spend money on high-value products.

Additionally, Facebook’s close link with Instagram helps this platform cover multiple generations, from young people to family groups, office workers, and small business owners.

Engagement rates and Advertising performance

TikTok is famous for its ability to create extremely fast engagement if the content is right.

• In-feed Ads usually have a CTR fluctuating from 1% to 5%.
• Brand Takeover Ads can reach a CTR of 10% or more as they occupy the full screen.
• TopView Ads can even go up to 16% because they appear right when the user opens the app.

For advertisers, TikTok is very suitable for creating viral effects, attracting attention, and boosting brand awareness in a short time.

Facebook usually has a lower CTR, averaging around 0.9% to 1.6%, as user behavior tends toward passive scrolling. However, Facebook’s strength lies in its conversion capability. Conversion rates can range from 2% to 15%, especially effective for e-commerce, services, or high-value products. For us, Facebook is still a very strong platform at the middle and bottom stages of the funnel.

Content creation requirements

To run TikTok effectively, brands are forced to invest in short, natural, and eye-catching videos. The more the content resembles a real user video, the easier it is to be distributed. Ads that are too polished or overtly sales-oriented are usually skipped very quickly by viewers. The biggest challenge when running TikTok is the first 5 seconds. If you don’t attract them immediately, the video is almost a failure. Additionally, you need to constantly update trends, memes, and viral challenges, and often combine with influencers or user-generated content to maintain effectiveness.

Facebook is much more flexible in terms of creativity. You can run static images, short videos, long videos, or carousels, depending on the campaign goal. It is not mandatory to chase trends every day. Furthermore, Facebook possesses a very strong A/B testing and Dynamic Creative system, helping us optimize content based on data rather than intuition.

Advertising placements

TikTok ads usually appear in prominent positions such as In-feed Ads, TopView Ads, Brand Takeover Ads, or through Branded Hashtags and Branded Effects. These positions are highly visible and very suitable for branding campaigns.

Facebook is more diverse in placement, including News Feed, Stories, Messenger, In-stream Video, and the Audience Network. This helps ads follow users at different touchpoints throughout the day.

When to use TikTok advertising

We often advise advertisers to prioritize TikTok when the target audience is Gen Z or young Millennials, when the brand can produce natural and attractive videos, or when the main goal is to increase brand awareness quickly.

TikTok is particularly effective when running influencer marketing with Spark Ads. Additionally, TikTok frequently supports free ad credits, for example, spend $30, get $20, or spend $100, get $100, which is very suitable for market testing. Installing the TikTok Pixel for Shopify is also quite simple, helping to track effectiveness easily.

When to use Facebook advertising

Facebook is a good choice when you need to reach many different audience groups, want to optimize conversions and ROAS, or are selling complex products that require much explanation of features. Additionally, the powerful remarketing capability, thanks to Meta Pixel, makes Facebook an indispensable tool for closing orders and optimizing long-term costs.

How to combine both platforms

In practice, the most effective strategy we apply for many clients is combining both Facebook and TikTok. TikTok is used at the top of the funnel to create awareness and attract attention. Then, Facebook takes over the role of retargeting and closing orders thanks to its accurate targeting capability and thick data. When the two platforms support each other correctly, the overall campaign effectiveness will increase markedly in 2026.

Facebook and TikTok do not directly confront each other, but supplement each other if you know how to exploit the strengths of each platform. TikTok is suitable for creating quick attention, catching trends, and expanding brand awareness, while Facebook excels at deep targeting, remarketing, and long-term conversion optimization. For advertisers in 2026, the smart choice is not “choose one, drop one,” but building a flexible combined strategy, utilizing TikTok to pull users into the funnel and using Facebook to maximize revenue and sustainable ROAS.

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