CPC (cost per click) is the price you pay for one click on an ad. Average CPC is ad spend divided by the number of clicks. On Google Search you usually pay less per click than your maximum bid. A CPC of €0.32 means a hundred visits from ads cost €32.
CPC (cost per click) is the price you pay for one click on an ad. Average CPC is ad spend divided by the number of clicks. On Google Search you usually pay less per click than your maximum bid. A CPC of €0.32 means a hundred visits from ads cost €32.
CPC is the lowest floor of the metrics stack. It tells you what a visit costs, not what it earns. On its own it judges nothing: a cheap click from someone who won’t buy costs more than an expensive click from a customer. It only means something next to conversion rate and order value.
Average CPC is simply spend divided by clicks for a period. The actual price of a single click is set in the auction. Google describes it as the minimum needed to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the Ad Rank of the competitor just below you. Ad Rank depends on your bid, the quality of the ad and landing page, the thresholds and the search context. That is why a better ad pointing to a better page can pay less for the same position.
| Average CPC | spend ÷ clicks | Example: €960 spend ÷ 3,000 clicks = €0.32 |
| Maximum CPC | order value × margin × conversion rate | Example: €50 × 30% × 2% = €0.30 |
The second row is the ceiling. Pay more per click and the average order can’t cover the ads out of gross margin. It is the same line as break-even ROAS, translated into a single click. With automated bidding to a return or cost-per-conversion target you don’t set a maximum CPC by hand; the system bids in every auction. You still need to know the ceiling to tell when a campaign isn’t paying off.
Move the sliders to match your account. You will see how much you can afford per click, what an order costs at your CPC (CPA), and what a thousand clicks leave you.
One that sits below your ceiling. Industry CPC tables show what others pay, not what you can afford. At the same conversion rate, a store with a €120 average order and a 40% margin can carry a click four times as expensive as a store with a €60 order and a 20% margin.
A lower CPC isn’t the goal either; it is a by-product of better ads and a better site. At CarDetailer, a car detailing studio, CPC fell 32% after the new website launched, the click-to-enquiry rate rose from 0.32% to 0.49% and cost per enquiry fell 55% (Google Ads, Jan–Jun vs 1 Aug–13 Sep 2026, case study). At Vše pro pejska in winter 2025/26, clicks from ads fell 4% while orders from ads grew 46% (9 Oct 2025–28 Feb 2026 vs the previous winter, case study). What mattered was who clicked, not how many clicks there were.
CPC is the price of a visit, CPM the price of a thousand impressions. On Google Search you pay per click. On Meta you mostly pay for impressions and CPC is a derived number. Click-through rate (CTR) links the two: CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 1,000).
| Metric | Formula | What it answers | When to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPC | spend ÷ clicks | What one visit costs | Auction, competition, checking the ceiling |
| CPM | spend ÷ impressions × 1,000 | What a thousand impressions cost | Meta, video, brand awareness |
| CTR | clicks ÷ impressions × 100 | How many impressions become clicks | Whether the ad matches the query |
| CPA | CPC ÷ conversion rate | What one order costs | The result that actually matters |
| Conversion rate | conversions ÷ visits × 100 | How many visits buy | Quality of site and traffic |
Metrics that show up in the same sentence as CPC.
Cheap clicks are always for sale: on broader queries, on lower-quality placements, from people who are only comparing. CPC drops, and so do orders. Always judge CPC next to cost per order and the ceiling from your margin.
A brand campaign gets cheap clicks because nobody competes for your name. A prospecting campaign on generic queries will always cost more. Performance Max also blends clicks from Search, Shopping, YouTube and Display into one average. Compare only campaigns with the same job.
A manual bid of “€0.40 because that’s what people do”, with no calculation from order value, margin and conversion rate, means you don’t know whether a click makes money. Work out the ceiling in the calculator above and redo it whenever price or margin changes.
Cost per click: the amount an advertiser pays for one click on an ad. An average CPC of €0.32 means a hundred clicks cost €32.
Ad spend divided by clicks for the same period. The maximum CPC that still pays off is average order value excluding VAT × gross margin × conversion rate.
Google Ads charges only what is needed to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the Ad Rank of the competitor just below you. Your maximum bid is a cap, not a price. Exceptions can occur with bid adjustments.
There is no price list. The price comes out of the auction and depends on industry, competition, ad quality and the query. More useful than an industry average is your own ceiling: average order value × margin × conversion rate.
CPC is the price per click, CPM the price per thousand impressions. Click-through rate links them: CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 1,000). At a €2 CPM and a 1% CTR, a click costs €0.20.
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