Prox vs Facebook Ads

If you run a local shop, the goal isn't impressions. It's people walking in today. Facebook and Instagram ads can help with that, and so can Prox, but they work very differently.

Prox is a go-now search engine for local businesses. It's real-time advertising for people who want to be advertised to: people nearby open it when they're deciding where to go and see live posts ranked by distance and recency. Nobody can pay to rank higher. Free through Jan 31, 2027. Save a card, $0 today.

Nobody beats Meta on reach. Meta reported 3.60 billion daily active people across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp in Q2 2026. Ads run through an auction that weighs your bid, relevance, and expected results. Targeting is detailed: location, age, interests, behaviors, plus custom and lookalike audiences. And clicks are cheap. A 2026 WordStream benchmark put the average cost per click for Facebook traffic campaigns at $0.60, down 14% from the year before.

The tradeoffs are about time and timing. Facebook ads are built around campaigns: an audience, a budget, creative, a schedule. You can edit a live ad, but edits can send it back through review, and the system is built for steady campaigns more than hour-by-hour changes. Your ad also shows up while people are scrolling, not while they're looking for somewhere to go. Even the WordStream report notes that search tends to catch people with stronger buying intent.

Then there's the skill. Audiences, creative testing, pixel setup, budgets. Done well, Facebook ads can work for a local shop. Done casually, it's easy to spend a few hundred dollars learning what doesn't work. Agencies will run it for you, for a fee on top of the ad spend.

Prox asks none of that. No ad manager, no bidding, no pixel. With live updates, it's this simple: you notice the room is quiet at 2pm, you change your post to "Slow afternoon, no wait, patio open," and people within a mile see the update.

Where Meta is honestly better: reach, targeting, and cheap clicks. Product launches, events, holiday pushes, and retargeting past customers are all jobs Meta does well. If you need scale this week and you'll put in the time, Meta wins on reach, easily.

Where Prox fits: the moment someone nearby is deciding where to go right now, with no expertise needed. The honest catch is that Prox is new and growing city by city. Where you are, the audience may be small at first, and the shops on it now are among the first. We won't pretend otherwise, and we won't promise you a traffic number.

Getting started is simple. Prox is free through Jan 31, 2027 (save a card, $0 today), the printable QR for your counter is free, and shoppers never pay.

Different tools for different moments. Meta reaches people at huge scale while they scroll. Prox shows up when someone nearby is already looking. Plenty of shops will use both. Just know which job each one does.