Google Ads benchmarks by industry 2026: CPC, CTR and CVR

You want to know if your cost per click is normal. So you search, and you find a table. Then a second table with different numbers. Then a third one with 2026 in the headline that turns out to be from 2019.

This page collects the Google Ads benchmarks we could trace to a source, says who was in each sample, and shows where the sources disagree.

Every number below comes with its sample, its period and its market, because a benchmark without those three is just a number.

The short version

	Search, US, 23 industries	Standard Shopping, European ecommerce
Cost per click	$5.42	€0.36
Click-through rate	6.64%	1.6% to 1.8%
Conversion rate	8.18% (a lead)	about 3.0% to 3.5% (ecommerce)
Source	WordStream by LocaliQ, April 2025 to March 2026, medians	smec Market Observer, median CPC; CTR and conversion rate as smec reports them

The Shopping CPC is smec’s median on its page updated 21 September 2026. The Shopping click-through and conversion rates are the Q1 2026 ranges from smec’s quarterly report.

Do not read across the rows. The two columns are different markets, different currencies and different definitions of a conversion. The rest of this page is about why that matters.

Search benchmarks by industry

The longest-running yearly study we found is WordStream by LocaliQ’s. WordStream says the report turned 10 this year; the first edition was in 2016.

What is in it, in their words: “a sample of 13,474 US-based search advertising campaigns running between Apr 1, 2025, and March 31, 2026.” Each subcategory has at least 52 active campaigns. The “averages” are medians, in US dollars.

Two details are easy to miss. First, the data covers Google Ads and Microsoft Ads together, so these are search benchmarks rather than pure Google ones. Second, a conversion here is a lead. LocaliQ defines conversion rate as “the number of leads you get divided by clicks”, and a lead as someone who contacts you “by phone, chat, form fill, or email”. If you sell online, that is not your conversion.

Industry	Avg CPC	Avg CTR	Avg conversion rate	Avg cost per lead
Animals & Pets	$4.06	7.49%	16.22%	$31.50
Apparel / Fashion & Jewelry	$4.44	6.64%	4.50%	$97.51
Arts & Entertainment	$1.63	12.75%	5.91%	$26.84
Attorneys & Legal Services	$9.87	5.87%	5.55%	$131.63
Automotive (for sale)	$2.27	8.28%	6.01%	$44.26
Automotive (repair, service & parts)	$4.35	5.56%	15.51%	$29.96
Beauty & Personal Care	$4.62	6.75%	10.35%	$39.25
Business Services	$5.87	6.10%	4.85%	$93.69
Career & Employment	$5.81	5.88%	3.05%	$67.36
Dentists & Dental Services	$8.00	5.66%	10.67%	$72.97
Education & Instruction	$4.81	7.56%	13.14%	$77.48
Finance & Insurance	$3.39	9.83%	2.64%	$74.44
Furniture	$3.97	6.57%	2.99%	$106.70
Health & Fitness	$6.17	5.81%	6.94%	$67.36
Home & Home Improvement	$8.33	6.47%	8.05%	$90.92
Industrial & Commercial	$5.87	6.57%	8.20%	$75.19
Personal Services	$7.17	7.16%	12.34%	$54.60
Physicians & Surgeons	$4.76	6.61%	12.43%	$40.04
Real Estate	$3.22	7.61%	3.70%	$102.51
Restaurants & Food	$2.05	6.83%	8.05%	$30.57
Shopping, Collectibles & Gifts	$4.14	8.28%	4.01%	$49.40
Sports & Recreation	$2.77	8.75%	7.69%	$44.26
Travel	$2.14	9.32%	5.83%	$44.70
All industries	$5.42	6.64%	8.18%	$66.69

Source: WordStream, Google Ads Benchmarks 2026, last updated 19 May 2026, and LocaliQ, 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks, last updated 1 June 2026. The two pages publish the same tables.

Two things in the table are exactly as published. WordStream’s own text gives Travel a CTR of 9.82%, while its table says 9.32%. We show the table. And some cells repeat to the cent, such as $44.26 cost per lead for both Automotive (for sale) and Sports & Recreation. We cannot see the underlying data, so we have not “fixed” either.

The spread is the useful part. The most expensive click, Attorneys & Legal Services at $9.87, costs about six times the cheapest, Arts & Entertainment at $1.63. That division is ours, not WordStream’s.

Over ten years the average click in this study more than doubled. WordStream puts the 2016 average CPC at $2.32, against $5.42 in 2026. Cost per lead rose about 13% over the same decade, from $59.18 to $66.69, and in 2026 it fell for the first time in five years.

Ecommerce benchmarks by industry

WordStream’s sample is built around leads. For online shops, Triple Whale publishes figures from “over 21,000 brands for the period of August 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026”, all of them brands using Triple Whale.

The catch: Triple Whale reports Google Ads as one channel and does not split it by campaign type. So treat this table as blended. It should not be compared with a pure Search or a pure Shopping figure. The page does not say which countries the brands are in, and it does not say which attribution its ROAS uses.

Industry	CTR	Conversion rate	Cost per acquisition	ROAS	Average order value
Apparel & Accessories	1.67%	2.78%	$25.40	3.99	$99.39
Automotive	1.89%	1.90%	$38.14	4.07	$150.42
Baby	1.63%	3.12%	$24.14	3.71	$88.07
Beauty	1.61%	4.33%	$25.39	2.81	$70.24
Books & Music	1.72%	4.30%	$20.97	2.79	$57.99
Business Supplies & Equipment	1.53%	2.58%	$38.39	3.15	$120.69
Electronics	1.59%	2.08%	$39.72	2.91	$127.02
Food & Beverage	1.63%	4.26%	$23.65	3.18	$71.39
Health & Wellness	1.73%	3.41%	$34.76	2.06	$72.34
Home & Garden	1.54%	2.30%	$38.94	3.48	$129.92
Lifestyle & Boutique	1.58%	3.28%	$24.07	3.10	$76.44
Pets & Animals	1.78%	4.40%	$25.05	2.88	$69.08
Sports & Outdoors	1.67%	2.63%	$30.42	4.35	$131.92
Toys, Art & Collectibles	1.62%	3.01%	$25.12	3.22	$80.04
Travel Accessories	1.73%	2.39%	$31.78	4.07	$145.16
All brands	1.65%	3.11%	$28.14	3.27	$87.65

Source: Triple Whale, Google Ads Benchmarks by Industry, last updated 20 August 2026. The industry figures are medians. For the overall row, Triple Whale calls its CPA median and does not label the other figures.

A blended CTR of 1.65% next to a Search CTR of 6.64% is not necessarily a contradiction. Shopping ads are clicked far less often than search text ads, as the Shopping section below shows, so any blend that contains Shopping pulls the average down.

Shopping benchmarks: most sites quote 2019

Search for Google Shopping benchmarks and the same three numbers keep turning up: a CPC of $0.66, a CTR of 0.86% and a conversion rate of 1.91%. Often under a 2026 headline.

We traced them. Store Growers, updated 8 January 2026, lists all three with the source “Wordstream Shopping Benchmarks (Q2 2019)”. WordStream’s page says what that was: “a sample of 671 US-based WordStream client accounts” that advertised on Shopping “between August 2018 and February 2019”. Medians, in dollars.

That is an American number more than seven years old, wearing a 2026 headline.

Newer Shopping data with a stated method is rare. The best we found is European. smec’s Market Observer reports on ecommerce and retail advertisers across Europe, split by campaign type: a split that some reports, Triple Whale’s among them, skip. smec calls its CPC and ROAS figures medians. It does not say how CTR and conversion rate are aggregated.

Metric and period	Standard Shopping	Performance Max	Search
CPC, median, page updated 21 Sep 2026	€0.36	€0.41	€0.43
CPC, Q1 2026, lowest and highest month smec names	€0.31 to €0.35	€0.37 to €0.40	€0.39 to €0.41
CTR, Q1 2026	1.6% to 1.8%	1.5% to 1.6%	13.5% to 15%
Conversion rate, Q1 2026	about 3.0% to 3.5%	about 3.0% to 3.5%	about 4.5%
August 2026	CPC €0.35	not given	CTR 12.5%, conversion rate 5.28%

Sources: smec, CPC benchmarks, Q1 2026 report and August 2026 market pulse. The Search CPC range covers Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 together, as smec reports it. The Shopping and Performance Max CPC ranges are ours: smec names monthly values, €0.31 in January and €0.35 in March for Shopping, and €0.37 in January and February and €0.40 in March for Performance Max.

Three things to know about this source. smec describes its sample as “€450M+ annual retail ad spend across Europe” in its FAQ and as “€650M in European ad spend” on its CPC page, and it does not say how its sample splits by country. smec gives several of these values as approximate (“~”, “roughly”), so we write “about”. And smec also sells a CSS. Its pages do not say which CSS the shops in the sample use, which matters, because the CSS changes the price inside the auction.

Put the two Shopping sources side by side and every number has moved:

Shopping	WordStream, US, Aug 2018 to Feb 2019	smec, Europe, Q1 2026
CPC	$0.66	€0.31 to €0.35
CTR	0.86%	1.6% to 1.8%
Conversion rate	1.91%	about 3.0% to 3.5%

More than seven years, two continents, two currencies and two different samples. Any one of those could make the numbers differ. You cannot tell from the outside which of them did it, and neither can we.

Markets also differ in who bids. The landing page for Tinuiti’s Q2 2026 benchmark report gives Amazon’s US Google Shopping impression share against the median retailer as 0%, and Karooya’s summary of the report speaks of Amazon’s “continued absence from most Google Shopping auctions”. In smec’s European data, Amazon held a median impression share between 34% and 37% from late December 2025 through February 2026, the highest of the four marketplaces smec tracks. So a 2026 US Shopping benchmark and a European one describe different auctions: in one, Amazon is largely absent, and in the other it has the biggest share. This is a 2026 difference, so it says nothing about the 2019 column above.

Are clicks getting more expensive?

Year-over-year change is where the reports are most comparable, because each one compares its own sample with itself.

Source	Sample	Period	Campaign type	CPC change
Optmyzr	21,425 accounts, countries not stated	year over year, Q1 2026 report	Shopping	+10.64%
Optmyzr	same	same	Performance Max	+5.66%
Optmyzr	same	same	Search	+1.36%
smec	European ecommerce	Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025	Shopping	about +11%
smec	same	same	Performance Max	about +6.5%
smec	same	same	Search	0%
smec	same	Q3 2026, page updated 21 Sep	Shopping	about +2%
Tinuiti, via Karooya	US, Tinuiti’s clients	Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025	Shopping	-1%
Tinuiti, via Karooya	same	same	Google search	+1%
Skai	Skai platform, countries not stated	Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025	Paid search	+14%

Sources: Optmyzr, 13 May 2026. smec. Karooya’s summary of Tinuiti’s report, 11 August 2026; the report itself is behind a form and we have not read it. Skai, Q2 2026 report page for the +14%, and press release of 28 July 2026 for the method.

For Q1 2026, two independent sources agree on Shopping: Optmyzr at +10.64% and smec at about +11%. That is as close as benchmarks get.

For Q2 2026 search, they do not agree at all: +1% at Tinuiti and +14% at Skai. Some possible reasons, none of which we can confirm from outside. Skai’s release says “paid search” and does not say it means Google only, while Tinuiti reports Google separately and, according to Karooya, saw Microsoft Ads CPCs rise 19% in the same quarter. Tinuiti’s “Google search” also appears to include Shopping: Karooya gives its spend growth as 14%, between text ads at 11% and Shopping at 18%. For Google text ads alone, the CPC rose 3%. That narrows the gap to Skai, but does not close it. Skai counts only “advertisers active on the Kenshoo Skai platform for the full duration of both periods”. And the two companies have different clients.

Same quarter, same metric: plus 1% in one report and plus 14% in the other. That is why a single benchmark should never settle an argument.

Most benchmarks are American, and many come from big accounts

Look at who is in the samples above. WordStream is US-based. The 2019 Shopping numbers are US-based. Tinuiti reports on “five of the largest digital ad segments in the US” and says it draws on more than $4 billion in annual ad spend under management. Skai says its data includes “many of the world’s leading consumer brands and agencies”. Optmyzr and Triple Whale do not state countries at all. smec is the one European exception we found.

Size changes the answer. Optmyzr split its Q1 2026 ROAS by monthly spend:

Monthly spend	ROAS, Q1 2026
Under $10K	387.8%
$10K to $50K	565.8%
$50K and more	377.3%

Source: Optmyzr, 21,425 accounts.

The small accounts and the largest ones land close together, and the middle tier beats both. So ROAS does not rise or fall in a straight line with size, and a benchmark from another spend tier is a poor guide to yours. Even one from your own tier can mislead, if the accounts in it sell something different.

Using these numbers as a small European shop

Your own trend beats an industry average. A benchmark tells you what is normal for someone else. Your account from last year tells you what is normal for you: same products, same margins, same country, same tracking.

Compare with yourself first. This quarter against the same quarter last year, not against a US median. Then use the benchmarks to sanity-check the direction, not the level.

Averages hide the spread. Every median above says only that half the sample sits below it. None of the pages above publish percentiles, so you cannot see how wide the spread is. Google does publish one, for your own market. In Keyword Planner, the top of page bid low range is “an approximation of the 20th percentile” and the high range an approximation of the 80th percentile, “based on your location and Search Network settings” (Google Ads Help). And in a Standard Shopping campaign the product groups page can show columns for “Benchmark clickthrough rate (CTR)” and “Benchmark maximum cost-per-click (max. CPC)” (Google Ads Help). Google’s API reference describes them as an indication of how other advertisers’ “Shopping ads for similar products are performing” and how other advertisers “are bidding on similar products”. The second is a bid, not a price paid.

Low conversion volume makes week-to-week comparisons noisy. Say you get 400 clicks and 10 orders in a week. That is a 2.5% conversion rate. One order more and it is 2.75%. One order less and it is 2.25%. A single customer moved your rate by a tenth. At that volume, a weekly comparison with any benchmark mostly measures luck. Compare months or quarters instead.

Match the definition before you compare. WordStream’s conversion is a lead. Yours is probably a purchase. Triple Whale’s figures are not split by campaign type. A Shopping figure should be compared with your Shopping campaigns, not with the whole account. And if your Shopping runs inside Performance Max, it is sharing a number with Search, YouTube and Display. Our comparison of Performance Max and Standard Shopping covers what you can and cannot see in each.

A converted dollar is still an American dollar. Turning $5.42 into euros does not make it a European benchmark. It is still the US auction, at a different exchange rate.

What benchmarks cannot tell you

Whether you make money. A CPC can be below average in an account that loses money on every sale. Amy Bishop, quoted in the LocaliQ report, put it well: “I generally advise that CPC and CTR are health metrics. They’re important to keep a pulse on and to use as levers to achieve your goals. However, they aren’t KPIs.” Your break-even point depends on your margin, which no benchmark knows. That is what setting a target ROAS for Shopping is really about.

Why you are different. A benchmark can say your CTR is low. It cannot say whether the cause is the price, the product image, the title or the competition. In Shopping, the product title and image are what the shopper sees before the click, so the feed is the first place to look.

Whether your tracking works. A conversion rate half the benchmark can be a broken tag rather than a bad campaign. Check that the measurement works before you explain the number.

What would have happened otherwise. Benchmarks describe other people’s past. They do not tell you what a change in your account will do.

What is inside a blended number. Optmyzr notes that Performance Max distributes spend across channels “including the ones that historically convert at lower rates”. A PMax conversion rate below a Shopping benchmark can simply be a different channel mix.

The margin inside a European Shopping CPC

For the EEA, Google’s help page on comparison shopping services says that Google Shopping “currently ensures profitability by deducting a fixed percentage margin from each merchant bid before entering it into the auction”, and that the margin “is included in the CPC paid by the merchant”. Google does not publish the size. Around 20% is the industry estimate. So a Shopping CPC benchmark built on shops that use Google’s own CSS already has that margin inside the CPC those shops paid. If you want to see what that means for your own clicks, here is how an independent CSS works.

Sources and method

Every figure on this page was fetched on 25 September 2026 from the pages linked on this page, and copied as published. Where we divided two numbers ourselves, we say so. Where a source gives a range or writes “about”, so do we, and where we built a range from a source’s monthly values, we say that too. We left out figures we could not trace to a sample and a period, and where a source does not state its market, we say so. That removed a lot of what is published under “Google Ads benchmarks 2026”.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average CPC on Google Ads in 2026?

For search in the US, the median is $5.42 across 23 industries, in WordStream by LocaliQ’s study of 13,474 campaigns from April 2025 to March 2026, Google Ads and Microsoft Ads combined. For ecommerce in Europe, smec’s median is €0.43 for Search, €0.36 for Standard Shopping and €0.41 for Performance Max (page updated 21 September 2026).

What is a good CTR for Google Ads?

The US search median in WordStream’s 2026 study is 6.64%. Standard Shopping in European ecommerce ran at 1.6% to 1.8% in Q1 2026, according to smec. A good CTR is one that beats your own, for the same campaign type, the same products and the same months last year.

What is the average conversion rate for Google Ads?

It depends on what counts as a conversion. For search leads in the US it is 8.18% (WordStream, 2026). For ecommerce brands on Google Ads as a whole, not split by campaign type, it is 3.11% (Triple Whale, August 2025 to July 2026). For Standard Shopping in Europe it was about 3.0% to 3.5% in Q1 2026 (smec).

What is the average CPC for Google Shopping?

In European ecommerce the median Standard Shopping CPC is €0.36 (smec, page updated 21 September 2026), and it went from €0.31 in January to €0.35 in March 2026. The widely quoted $0.66 comes from 671 US accounts between August 2018 and February 2019.

Which industry has the highest cost per click on Google Ads?

In WordStream’s 2026 search study, Attorneys & Legal Services has the highest median CPC at $9.87, followed by Home & Home Improvement at $8.33 and Dentists & Dental Services at $8.00. The lowest is Arts & Entertainment at $1.63.

What is a good ROAS for Google Ads?

Triple Whale’s overall figure across more than 21,000 ecommerce brands is 3.27 (August 2025 to July 2026), and smec’s most recent weekly European median is 6. Neither page says which attribution model is behind its ROAS, so neither is a target. A good ROAS is one above your own break-even, which is set by your margin, not by an industry table.