Go where the people are. Advertising open positions using Google Display and Meta ads

Stop leaving people behind. Triple your reach among potential employees with digital advertising.

Businesses across Europe and IT businesses everywhere are experiencing a common problem – a lack of skilled individuals to fill their open positions. Posting open positions on job sites is a solid tactic for attracting job seekers. However, posting solely on these websites guarantees you are exclusively communicating with a population of people who are actively looking for work. According to LinkedIn statistics, 87% of the working population is open to new job opportunities, while only 30% of people in the world are actively looking for work or a change in their careers. Doing some simple math will tell you that however many people you can attract on the job sites, there are almost double the number of people open to hearing about your opportunity who remain out of reach of your message.

Reasons for using digital advertising techniques to reach potential employees

1. Unmatched Reach and Visibility

Google Display Network (GDN) reaches over 90% of internet users worldwide, offering an unparalleled reach. Whether someone is watching YouTube, checking their Gmail, or browsing a favorite blog, your job ad can appear, ensuring high visibility among a diverse audience. Google is moving Display campaigns into Demand Gen, which serves the same Display Network inventory alongside YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and, in beta, Maps.

Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, reach 3.64 billion people every day (Meta’s average for September 2026). This ecosystem allows for massive reach, placing your job openings directly in front of individuals who might not even be actively looking for a job but are perfect for the role.

2. Precision Targeting

Geotargeting. Digital advertising platforms offer hyper-local targeting. Unless it is a remote position, in most cases, you want to hire qualified personnel who live close to their place of work. Longer commutes disrupt work-life balance and will decrease employee motivation. This could be a strong reason for switching positions. Meta Ads allow you to target people within a radius of the exact location where the work itself is performed. Job ads run in Meta’s employment special ad category, which in the EU, including Croatia, requires a radius of 17 km (10 miles), doesn’t allow postcode targeting, and must include all genders and all ages from 18 to 65+.

Google Ads excels with intent-based marketing. People often use Google to search for job opportunities explicitly. By targeting keywords related to job searches, your ads meet potential candidates at the moment of interest. Context matters too: leveraging the world’s largest advertising platform ensures that big data and AI work for you, offering your ads to the best potential candidates who are willing to apply. You can tailor your ads to appear to users based on their education, industry, or company size, or even their recent activity indicating interest in job-related content. Google’s ban on targeting employment ads by age, gender, parental status, marital status, or postcode applies in the US and Canada, not in the EU.

3. Cost-Effective with High ROI

Both platforms let you pay per click, which means you only pay when someone interacts with your ad. Meta charges per thousand impressions by default, while Demand Gen, which replaces Google’s Display campaigns, bids for clicks or conversions rather than viewable impressions. Here’s how they help in optimizing costs:

Budget control: You can set daily or lifetime budgets, ensuring you never overspend. Plus, Meta might spend up to 75% more than your daily budget on high-performing days, but balances it over the week.

Return on ad spend (ROAS): By leveraging Google’s and Meta’s advanced algorithms for conversion tracking, you can optimize campaigns for maximum efficiency, focusing your budget on ads that lead to actual applications.

Real-time results and analytics: Unlike other advertising methods, feedback from digital advertising is immediate. You can see people clicking and applying for the job in real time. Advanced analytics tools will help you have a more robust idea of the demographics of your audience, how your targets are responding to your advertising, and make real-time changes to ads to make them even more appealing.

Continuity: The low cost of advertising campaigns can allow for continuous advertising, reaffirming your brand position in the labor market, through employee value proposition messaging, as a fair and reliable employer. Make sure you are top of mind for employees when they eventually consider looking for work.

4. Engaging Ad Formats

Google Ads offers various formats like responsive display ads, which automatically adjust size and format to fit available ad spaces, providing up to 5 headlines, a long headline, and 5 descriptions for customization. In Demand Gen, the same job ad can use images, horizontal, vertical, or square video, and carousels of 2 to 10 cards, with up to 5 headlines, up to 5 descriptions, and a required business logo.

Meta Ads provides visually engaging formats like carousel ads, video ads, and stories, which can showcase company culture, testimonials, or a day in the life of an employee, making the job opening more appealing. The same carousel formats, fed from a product catalog, power the data-driven feed campaigns we run for online shops.

Playing with A/B testing can guarantee that only the best-performing ad will run.

5. Remarketing Capabilities

Both platforms allow for remarketing, which means you can re-engage individuals who have previously interacted with your website or ads. This is crucial for keeping your job openings top-of-mind for potential candidates who showed initial interest.

6. Synergy in Advertising

Using both Google and Meta ads in tandem can create a synergistic effect. A candidate might first see a job ad on Instagram (Meta) and later perform a Google search for more information, where your Google ad reinforces the opportunity. This multi-touch approach increases the likelihood of application.

Google Display campaigns are moving to Demand Gen

Since June 2026, Google has been rolling out a tool that moves existing Display campaigns into Demand Gen. Later, new Display campaigns can only be created in Demand Gen, and any remaining eligible campaigns will be migrated automatically. For recruitment ads, this means one campaign can reach candidates on YouTube, including Shorts, on Discover, in Gmail, and across the Display Network, with video and carousel ads next to image ads. If you only want the Display Network, Demand Gen’s channel controls can still limit the campaign to it.

Works best at scale, especially with low-skilled workers

Working with ASURA Group in North Macedonia, we helped hire and retain over 120 low-skilled workers in less than two months at 20% of the advertising cost (compared to traditional methods). Using Meta platforms, we created ads that reached older workers on Facebook and younger workers on Instagram. This led to an explosion in hiring and allowed ASURA Group to scale the new business very quickly.

Works wonders on hard-to-reach professionals

High-end professionals are notoriously hard to reach. Even on LinkedIn, “the professional network”, only some members log in on any given day. Managers, because of their busy schedules, limit their access to media and must be targeted during off-peak hours when they are winding down from their day, usually 9 to 10 PM when they are catching up on messages, reviewing social media or shopping online. IT job advertising is a class unto itself and IT professionals are even harder to access because they carefully guard their privacy. The vast majority of IT professionals (especially those in high demand) avoid regularly checking LinkedIn because of constant outreach from recruiting companies. Google, however, is hard to evade, and advanced targeting through audience selection can best reach your potential employees even if they are not actively looking for opportunities.

Stay ahead of the competition

While traditional recruitment tactics may still yield some results, it’s only a matter of time before competitors surpass you if they have access to a much larger talent pool. With advanced targeting analytics, lower costs, and more engaging ad formats, businesses that embrace digital advertising will inevitably gain a competitive edge. The question is: how long can you afford to wait before they leave you behind? Our Google Ads and Meta advertising service runs these recruitment campaigns end to end.

Ready to start?

Are you ready to start with a new digital recruiting tactic that works, and do you need a reliable partner who will help you implement it in your company? Contact us today and tell us about the positions you need to fill.