Google vs Meta vs Microsoft, side by side

Everyone has a favourite platform. Usually the one with the prettiest in-app dashboard, or the one the last agency talked up. The trouble is you cannot actually compare platforms inside their own walls.

Each one grades its own homework. Google counts a conversion its way, Meta counts it another, Microsoft a third. Each lays out spend and revenue in whatever framing makes that channel look worth funding. Ask three platforms which of them is winning and all three will tell you it is them.

The only honest comparison is a neutral one: the same metrics, the same definitions, the same window, laid out in one column each. That is what the Platform Comparison report does. It puts Google, Meta and Microsoft next to each other on ground none of them controls.

Here is why the in-app view misleads, on sample data. The left column is what each platform tells you in its own dashboard. The right two are what you get once every channel is measured the same way and real costs are subtracted:

Sample data, for illustration.

Read left to right and the ranking inverts. On the in-app ROAS every platform reports, Google looks like the clear winner and Microsoft the laggard. On real ROI, the same definition for all three and every cost in, Microsoft is quietly the most efficient euro in the account and Google the least. Two things did that. The in-app numbers each count conversions their own generous way, and none of them subtract COGS, fees, shipping or returns, which land unevenly across channels. Rank on the claimed column and you would starve your best channel to feed your worst.

The result is often a small surprise. Sometimes the "expensive" channel is the one quietly carrying the account. Sometimes the darling everyone defends is coasting on sales another platform also claimed. The ranking you would have given from memory and the ranking the numbers give are not always the same list.

That gap is the point. If you have never seen the three side by side on one consistent number, you have been ranking channels on vibes, and vibes are a lagging indicator.

Which platform do you defend by reflex, and how sure are you? The pillar Stop guessing, start seeing sets up why the comparison has to be neutral to be true.