Online advertising: where a Norwegian business should advertise

Where should a Norwegian business advertise online?

The table below shows the channels a Norwegian business can realistically choose between. The “What we have seen” column contains numbers from accounts we run, with the period. Where we don’t run a channel, it says so, and then we have no numbers to show either.

We run Google, Meta and Snapchat because that is where we can measure what every krone returns, and where our clients have made money. That we don’t run TikTok, LinkedIn, programmatic or Finn doesn’t mean they never work. It means we have no numbers that could tell you anything about them.

Three things the numbers show

A cheap click is not the same as a cheap customer

It is tempting to choose a channel by cost per click. The search numbers from our accounts (July 1–September 30, 2026) show why that is a mistake:

The leasing account paid almost seven times as much per click as the sauna account, but only a little over half as much per inquiry. What decides it is how many of the clicks turn into something. So compare channels on cost per sale or inquiry, never on cost per click alone.

Shopping is cheap per click but converts lower

In the two online stores we have numbers for, a Shopping click cost NOK 4–7, while 1.9–2.0% of clicks became sales. The search campaigns in the same stores converted at 8.6 and 12.4%. Part of the difference is that search includes people typing the store’s name. Shopping is still where new customers find your products, so the two campaign types do different jobs. More on Google Shopping.

Mobile and desktop behave differently

For business leasing, 18.8% got in touch from desktop and 7.8% from mobile. For an online store selling tattoo supplies it was 12.5% against 8.0%. Local services were the exception: for roof and facade cleaning, 4,258 of 5,490 clicks came from mobile, and mobile converted slightly better (11.0% against 10.0%). Where your customers are decides where your page has to be at its best.

What does online advertising cost?

There is no minimum price. On Google you pay per click, and the price is set in an auction against everyone else who wants the same search. On Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat you are in practice paying for impressions, and the price per customer depends on how well the ad stops people. Three things decide what it costs you: the industry, the city and how well your page turns clicks into customers.

Cost per click varies by industry and city

Google’s Keyword Planner estimates what it costs to appear at the top of the page. Some examples (Google Keyword Planner, Norway, Oct 2026):

The same service can cost three times as much in Oslo as in Bergen. That is why we split campaigns by city or region, so the budget can move to where customers are cheapest. The planner’s numbers are estimates. What you actually pay, you only see once the campaign is running.

Cost per inquiry in the accounts we run

Facade cleaning NOK 163, end-of-tenancy cleaning in Oslo NOK 202, a moving company in Oslo NOK 413, business leasing NOK 406 and saunas around NOK 940 (2026). Caveats and more detail in what a lead costs in Norway. For Google alone: what Google Ads costs.

How much budget does a channel need?

The platforms learn from conversions. Google needs around 15–30 conversions in 30 days in a campaign for smart bidding to work well. Meta needs around 50 a week per ad set to exit the learning phase. Multiply that by what a conversion costs and you see how differently the channels demand budget:

• Google search, end-of-tenancy cleaning in Oslo: 15–30 inquiries × NOK 202 = around NOK 3,000–6,000 a month for one campaign.
• Meta, Mokki: 50 purchases × NOK 214 = around NOK 10,700 a week for one ad set to learn fully.

You can advertise on Meta with less, but the campaign learns more slowly, and that is one argument for starting on Google when people search for what you sell.

On top of that comes management. Search terms, negative keywords, budgets and new ads need reviewing every week. We take a share of what we earn you, not a fixed monthly fee. If you don’t earn more, you pay us nothing. For it to work for both sides, the ads need to generate enough that our share comes to around NOK 20–30,000 a month. That is why we work with established businesses with a monthly ad budget of at least NOK 30,000. How it is calculated.

The order to start in

Which channel comes first depends on whether people are already looking for what you sell. This is how we would start for four common types of business:

Whatever the type, two things apply before the first krone: tracking that counts sales and inquiries (Google Ads conversions, the Meta pixel and GA4), and a landing page about what the ad promises. Wondering about Google or Meta for your business specifically? We go through it in Google Ads or Meta Ads.

Common mistakes with online advertising

The boost button instead of a campaign

“Boost post” on Facebook and Instagram is built to spread a post, and it optimises for likes and reactions. If you want inquiries or sales, the campaign has to be set up in Ads Manager with that as the goal, so Meta looks for people who actually buy. How to set up Facebook advertising.

No tracking, or tracking that counts wrong

Without tracking, the platform optimises for clicks and you can’t tell which channel brings customers. Tracking that over-counts is almost worse, because you think something works when it doesn’t. When we took over Leid.no’s ads, the tracking counted far more purchases than actually happened. After it was fixed, the account ended at 4.73x ROAS across channels. That is why we set up tracking before anything else.

Traffic to the home page

Someone searching “takvask trondheim” (roof cleaning Trondheim) wants to see roof cleaning in Trondheim, not a home page about everything the business does. For Utvendig Renhold we built 18 local landing pages, one per branch, and switched 102 ads over to them on Aug 28, 2026. A new landing page for a leasing client delivered a 16.1% conversion rate in its first 30 days.

Too few ads

Ads wear out, especially on Meta and Snapchat. Run the same two images for six months and every customer gets more expensive. We make more than 10 new ads a week per client, so there is always something new to test. In total we have made more than 5,000 ads. See what we make under creative production.

For the full picture of digital marketing, including email and organic visibility, see digital marketing. If the question is how to get more customers out of what you already do: how to get more customers.