Your cheat sheet to Google Ads pricing
In a rush? Use our cheat sheet to Google Ads pricing for a quick summary of Google Ads’ costs:
| Google Ads Pricing | |
|---|---|
| Pricing Factor | Average Cost |
| Ad Spend | $9000 to $10,000 per month |
| CPC (Google Search Network) | $1 to $2 per click |
| CPC (Google Display Network) | $1 or less per click |
| Professional Google Ads Management | $350 to $5000 or 12-30% of ad spend per month |
| PPC Management Tools | $15 to $800 per month |
How much does Google Ads cost?
While businesses spend an average of $9000 to $10,000 per month on paid advertising, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to the common question of, “How much does Google Ads cost?” That’s because Google Ads is a truly customizable ad platform.
You have extreme control over how much you spend and when you spend it, and you can increase or reduce your ad spend in real time as you see fit. That’s why the pricing flexibility of Google Ads is one of its biggest benefits.
How much do businesses spend on Google Ads?
Even though most companies spend $9000 to $10,000 per month on Google Ads, they use their ad spend in different ways. Factors like their industry, products, services, and competitors all influence their advertising costs on Google Ads.
In most cases, industries with a higher CPC spend more on Google Ads. The consumer services sector, for example, pays an average of almost $7 per click, which can move businesses in the industry to increase their monthly Google Ads spend.
Companies can also have additional Google Ads costs, including:
PROFESSIONAL PPC MANAGEMENT
When businesses invest in PPC, it’s not uncommon for them to partner with a PPC agency. A PPC agency, like WebFX, develops, launches, and manages your paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising.
As a part of leading and managing your PPC campaigns, your PPC agency will charge a monthly management fee. This rate ranges from $350 to $5000 per month and does not include your monthly ad spend.In some cases, your agency’s management fee will be a percentage of your ad spend.
The average, for example, is 12 to 30 percent of a company’s ad spend. So, if you have an ad spend of $5000 and your agency requires 12 percent of your monthly ad spend as payment, you would pay your agency $600 per month, in addition to spending $5000 on ads.
PPC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Businesses can also streamline internal PPC management with free and paid PPC software, like WordStream, Shape, or Acquisio. While optional, these tools can help your company optimize bids, evaluate ads, and more.
If you opt for a paid PPC management tool, prices range from $15 to $800 per month.
Now that you have a background in the basics of Google Ads’ costs, are you ready to learn more about the platform and the ad auction that influences how much Google Ads costs your business? Just keep reading to get started!
How can I set a realistic budget and bid for Google Ads?
Now that we’ve dug into exactly how Google Ads works, you can see why, “it depends” is a practical answer to the question, “How much does Google Ads cost?” When you advertise on Google Ads, you have (mostly) full control over your ad spend.
There are certain variables you have direct control over, like your maximum CPC bid and the quality of your ads, but there are also factors you can’t really control, like your competitors’ max CPC bids and the quality of their ads.
That’s all within the Ad Auction, though. Before you even get to that point, you have to consider how competitive your niche is and how competitive individual keywords within your niche are. This is where you can get creative to keep your costs down.
Let’s say you work in insurance, and you’re bidding on the keyword “car insurance.” This is a broad, highly competitive term that gets searched millions of times per month, so your CPC bid is probably going to be high.
Why advertise on Google Ads?
While Google Ads pricing varies and depends heavily on your business, industry, strategy, and competitors, the platform offers an immense amount of advantages. If you’re thinking about getting started with Google Ads, but on are on the fence, this breakdown of Google Ads benefits can help.
Three reasons companies invest in Google Ads include:
1. Budget control
Google Ads blows most other advertising channels clear out of the water when it comes to budget control. There is absolutely no minimum investment required to create a Google Ads account or run a Google Ads campaign.
You could launch a test campaign on a $5/day budget if you really wanted.
Your results will depend, again, on how competitive the niche and keywords you select are, but the point is that you can then increase your budget as necessary. This leads right into the next advantage of Google Ads…
2. Scalability
Everything you do with Google Ads happens in real-time.
That means you can scale up as soon as you’ve identified a successful campaign, or you can scale down as soon as you see a campaign underperforming. You’re not locked into any contract, required monthly spend, or anything like that.
The potential to scale really is unlimited with Google Ads. If you have a certain campaign that’s bringing you great results with a spend of $500/month, you can instantly increase that $500 to $5,000 or beyond!
3. Analytics
You have access to every last bit of data related to your campaign performance with Google Ads.
You can see exactly how many times your ad got served, how many people clicked on it, how many people converted after clicking on it, what time of day the ad is most successful, information about what sorts of users click on your ad, and more.
The amount of data available through your Google Ads dashboard is truly staggering.
This stands in stark contrast to the ambiguity of other advertising channels.
Most forms of traditional advertising — TV, radio, newspaper — come with extremely limited analytics. You don’t actually know how successful your campaigns are, because you don’t know how many people see your ads or take action because of them.
