PPC Pricing: How Much Does PPC Cost in 2024?

Methodology

We asked 350 marketers to share how much their companies spend on PPC advertising. Keep reading to uncover their answers!

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an extremely effective digital marketing strategy that can help you drive quick results, including web traffic, leads, and sales.

If you’re curious about how much it costs to implement a PPC campaign, this page is for you. Keep reading to learn more about PPC pricing!

PPC pricing basics

Wondering how much PPC advertising costs at a glance? We asked 350 marketers how much they spend on PPC ads. Check out this summary of their answers:

Key takeaways

• 61% of businesses pay $0.11 – $0.50 per click on Google Ads
• 56% of businesses pay $0.51 – $1.00 per 1000 impressions on Google Ads
• 45% of businesses spend $100 – $10,000 per month on PPC advertising
• 43% of startup companies pay $100 – $5000 per month on PPC advertising
• 37% of businesses pay $0.11 – $0.50 per click on the Google Search Network
• 36% of businesses pay $501 – $3000 per month for PPC management from an agency
• 33% of small businesses pay $100 – $5000 per month on PPC advertising
• 26% of businesses pay $1001 – $3000 per month for PPC management from a freelancer
• 25% of businesses pay $0.51 – $1.00 per 1000 impressions on the Google Search Network
• 24% of mid-sized businesses pay $10,001 – $50,000 per month on PPC advertising
• 24% of businesses pay $0.11 – $0.50 per click on Microsoft Ads
• 20% of businesses pay $0.51 – $1.00 per 1000 impressions on Microsoft Ads
• 19% of enterprises pay $100 – $5000 per month on PPC advertising

How much does PPC cost per month?

PPC costs depend on factors unique to your business, like your company size, industry, strategy, and ad network. Companies will invest anywhere from $300 to $100 million (or more) per month into PPC management, which includes ad spend, PPC tools, and PPC services. Outside of PPC management, businesses can expect average PPC costs of $2.59 per click and $3.12 per 1000 impressions.

How much does by PPC cost by company size?

Company size is one of the most influential factors when it comes to PPC costs. That’s because marketing spend typically stems from a business’s size and revenue — 7-10% of an organization’s revenue, for example, goes into marketing.

That’s why we’ve summarized average PPC costs by company size:

Keep in mind, the above are averages — not recommendations or standards for your organization. How much your business invests in PPC advertising will depend on your size, industry, and even ROI of other strategies, like SEO.

How much should I pay for PPC?

How much you pay for PPC depends on several factors, including:

• Your company size
• Your industry
• Your PPC strategy
• Your PPC budget
• Your PPC goals

Just because the average business invests a certain amount into PPC each month doesn’t mean your company should. Depending on your marketing strategy, for example, you might have plenty of traffic (and sales) coming from other channels, like search.

Evaluate your company’s budget, goals, and industry to determine what spend makes the most sense.

PPC pricing: Google Ads

Google Ads is one of the most popular ad networks for PPC marketing. If you’re looking to advertise on the Google Search Network, you can expect PPC costs of $1 to $2 per click. Typically, the Google Display Network is cheaper, with an average CPC of less than $1.

How does PPC pricing work on Google Ads?

With Google Ads, you choose the keywords you want to trigger your ads. Then, you set a maximum bid for how much you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks your ad.

If your bid is among the highest for a keyword or phrase, it will appear at the top of search results with a small tag that shows it’s a paid ad.

One of the best parts of using Google Ads is that you only pay when people click your ads. In other words, you won’t waste money trying to market to people who aren’t interested in your products or services.

While industries like legal and rehab should expect to pay upwards of $30-$40 per click for PPC, less competitive industries may only pay a few cents per click.

Since PPC targets people who are already searching terms related to your business, it will help you reach more qualified leads — people who are most likely to purchase your products or services.

However, there’s one catch. In addition to your max bid, Google considers your quality score (QS) when determining ad placement. Essentially, your quality score is a combination of your ad’s relevance to the keyword that triggered it, click through rate, and the quality of the landing page visitors see after clicking your ad.

In short, the Ad Rank formula = (your max cost per click (CPC) bid) x (your ad’s QS). For example, if your maximum bid for a keyword is $2, and you have an ad QS of 10, your Ad Rank is 20.

For a single auction, the advertiser with the top Ad Rank will win the top advertising spot.

It’s also important to note that you can end up spending less while earning a top position if your ad has a high QS. To determine the amount you pay per click, Google uses a simple formula: (Ad Rank of the ad below yours) / (Your QS) + $0.01.

In this example, you end up paying about 40 cents less per click than your max bid.

What determines PPC costs on Google Ads?

Now, it’s easy to see that the PPC rates of a Google Ads campaign depends on a number of factors.

While there are certain aspects you can control — your max bid and quality of your ads — there are also elements you can’t control, like your competitors’ max bids and ad quality.

In addition, your industry and the level of competition for the keywords you want to trigger your ads will impact the average pay per click cost. While your business may pay a few cents per click on your PPC ads, businesses in more competitive fields, like the legal realm, can pay hundreds of dollars per ad click.

On average, businesses should expect to pay $1-$2 per click to advertise on the Google Search Network. On a monthly basis, the average small and medium-sized businesses spend between $9,000 and $10,000 on PPC. This equates to approximately $108,000 to $120,000 per year.

Typically, the most competitive PPC keywords relate to insurance, financial services, and legal industries.

Combined, business in the financial and insurance industries spend the most on PPC advertising each year — a cool $1.2 billion. Retail companies come in second, with Amazon speeding more than $50 million each year on PPC advertising.

For a more in-depth look at some of Google’s most expensive keyword, check out this blog post.

How is my Google Ads budget spent?

One pro of PPC advertising is that you control your budget. However, it’s important to understand how your Google Ads budget is spent so you can get the most from your campaigns.

In Google Ads, every campaign has its own unique settings where you can control its daily budget.

When you run multiple campaigns at the same time, it’s helpful to think about which campaigns you want to have more priority. For example, campaigns related to your top-selling products or services are likely more important than campaigns designed to target top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) customers.

Then, you can break down your monthly PPC budget into daily budgets for each campaign, assigning more spend to higher priority campaigns.

If you set the max bid for an ad to $0.50 and want to earn 500 clicks per day, you would set an average daily budget of $250. It’s important to note that you’ll never pay more than your max bid for an ad click. However, you may end up paying less depending on the competition and your ad’s quality score.

It’s important to note that your daily budget is an approximation of how much you want to spend. On some days, you may spend more, and on some days, you may pay less. However, you’ll never pay more than your daily spending limit, which is two times your average daily budget for most campaigns. Over the course of a month, you’ll never spend more than your monthly spending limit, which is typically 30.4 times your average daily budget.

With Google Ads, you can specify when you want your ads to appear. For example, a local restaurant that closes at 9 p.m. might use PPC ads to encourage people to visit their location. While they can set their ads to all day, they can also increase bids for certain hours of the week.

Similarly, you can use geotargeting to allocate more of your budget to reach people in specific geographic areas. If you’re targeting customers in a specific city or neighborhood, geotargeting is a great way to maximize your ad spend and reach more qualified leads.

In addition, if mobile traffic is particularly valuable to your business, you can use device targeting to use more of your daily budget to reach mobile users. You can even take this a step further by targeting people using specific types of mobile devices.

How can I lower my PPC costs on Google Ads?

As a Google Ads agency, we’ve refined our Google Ads management services to offer the very best in PPC.

Our specialists also have years of experience among all of them that makes them some of the best in the industry when it comes to PPC campaign management. And because you can see our PPC costs list above, you’ll know exactly what to expect in terms of PPC rates.

Because they know how to set up a PPC campaign, how to run a PPC campaign, and how to get the best possible results, our team will also optimize your Google Ads and adCenter campaigns so you receive the most relevant and quality clicks possible.

Additionally, we’re a Google Premier Partner with five Google Partner agency specializations. Our team members’ PPC manager certifications from Google and Microsoft demonstrate the knowledge and ability they possess in using the latest Google Ads and adCenter tools available.

This expertise works together with our awareness of the most up-to-date best practices to provide you with a successful and lucrative PPC campaign from one of the top PPC companies in the industry.

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PPC pricing: Microsoft Advertising

Besides Google Ads, your business can advertise with Microsoft Advertising (formerly known as Bing Ads). Microsoft Advertising follows a similar bidding and auction model as Google Ads. A bonus, however, is that Microsoft Advertising is usually lower than Google Ads in pay-per-click costs.

On average, Microsoft Advertising costs $1.54 per click.

PPC pricing: Retargeting

With PPC, you can also use retargeting to show your ads to people who have demonstrated interest in your business and they browse other websites. Since 96% of people leave a website without making a purchase, retargeting is a great way to remind them of your business and earn more conversions.

But how much should you expect to pay for retargeting?

Just like traditional PPC ads, the cost of remarketing ads varies depending on your industry. On average, you can expect to pay $0.66-$1.23 per click on remarketing ads — slightly less than PPC costs. And it’s estimated that companies spend roughly 10 percent of their ad budgets on remarketing.

What do PPC management services include?

In addition to your ad spend, you may also opt to work with a PPC management company.

These agencies use their expertise, resources, and tools to maximize your campaigns’ results and help you meet your goals. While hiring an agency increases your costs, you’ll get a team of experts to manage your campaigns, saving you time, improving your results, and increasing your return on investment.

So, what do you get when working with a PPC management agency? PPC management services often include:

• Strategy creation and campaign planning
• Competitor and industry analysis
• Ad copywriting
• Ad and landing page design
• Bid management
• Campaign performance testing
• PPC management software
• Tracking and reporting

PPC management companies may charge a flat fee or a percentage of your ad spend. The cost of PPC services may vary based on:

• The company you work with
• The specific services included in the package you choose
• The size of your campaigns and ad spend
• The number of networks on which you advertise
• The types of ads you use

If you’d like to learn more about the cost of working with the PPC experts at WebFX, take a look at our deliverables chart below.

Why choose WebFX to optimize your PPC costs?

When you work with WebFX on your PPC campaigns, you’ll have a team of 500+ experts and over 25 years of experience on your side. We manage more than $120+ million in ad spend for our clients, and our team includes 300+ Google Ads Certified individuals and many Microsoft Advertising Professionals.

As such, our team of PPC managers is more than qualified to manage your PPC account, as we continually stay up to date with changes to ad platforms, the current best practices, and how to best optimize your campaigns.

Each of our Internet marketers possesses the knowledge and experience necessary to increase your business’s ROI by getting the best value from your overall PPC budget and ad spend.

Whether we are starting from scratch and setting up your very first campaign, or if we are overhauling your existing campaigns, our innovative approach to optimizing each campaign ensures you will receive the best return on your investment.

As the best PPC managers will know, it’s dangerous to neglect data that could provide you with key insights on how to continually improve upon your website. The last thing you want to do after setting up optimized search engine marketing ad campaigns is allow them to run without ever paying attention to how they are performing. You could either pay a full-time employee to manage this, or you could take advantage of our professional PPC management team that has extensive experience in running a broad array of PPC campaigns.

In addition to our experienced team, you’ll get access to MarketingCloudFX — our proprietary digital marketing platform. This revenue acceleration tool uses artificial intelligence to help you make the most of your data and ad spend, improve your targeting, and increase your ROI.

Whether you need ecommerce PPC management or if you want to generate new leads for your B2B company, our team of marketers can help. Our Google Ads PPC management is second to none, and we’d love to show you why.