05/11/2022

How Much does it Cost to Advertise on Google Ads?

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Small-to-mid-sized businesses will spend $9000-10000 per month on Google Ads (previously Google AdWords). The average cost-per-click (CPC) for Google Search Network is $1 to $2 and for Google Display Network it’s less than $1.

Do you want to know more about the cost of Google Ads and how to optimize your advertising spend? Continue reading this Google Ads pricing guide. Contact us online if you need professional assistance managing your Google Ads ad spend.

Google Ads Pricing Guide

Are you in a hurry? For a quick overview of Google Ads pricing, check out our cheat sheet:

What is the cost of advertising on Google?

The average cost of advertising on Google is dependent on factors such as your industry, campaign targeting, and ad network. The average CPC of the Google Search Network is between $1 and $2, while the average CPC of the Google Display Network ad network is around $1.

SMBs spend $9000- $10,000 per month on PPC ads.

What is the cost of Google Ads?

These are the factors that determine Google Ads’ cost:

  • Qualitative Score
  • Ad Rank
  • Campaign and ad settings such as budget, bid, keywords, and targeting
  • Industry
  • Google Ad network
  • PPC tools and services

What are the costs of Google Ads?

Google Ads can typically be expected to cost businesses the following:

PRICING FACTORCOST PERCENT
Ad Spend$9000 to $10,000 per Month
CPC (Google Search Network).Clicks from $1 to $2
CPC (Google Display Network).Click for $1 or Less
Google Ads Management ProfessionalSpend $350-$5000, or 12-30% per month on ad spend
PPC Management Tools$15-$800 per month

What is the pricing process for Google Ads?

Google Ads pricing, or how much Google charges you directly for your company’s advertising, depends on:

  • Campaign settings include your budget and bid
  • Your performance in the Google ad auction, which includes Ad Rank and Quality Score

The Google ad auction uses both your Quality Score (which measures the relevance of your ad, landing page, and performance in the past) and your bid to generate its Ad Rank. Your Ad Rank is used to determine your ad’s placement and cost-per-click.

How much do you budget, bid, and spend on Google Ads?

You’ll find several terms that relate to Google Ads costs when you advertise on Google.

  • Budget How much you are willing to spend on a campaign per day for more than 30.4 days?
  • Bid How much you are willing to pay for a click on an ad?
  • Spend This is the amount that Google takes from your budget when you win an ad auction.
  • Cost: What you pay for each click on your ad.

A few other terms are:

  • Average daily spending: This is your average daily spending per ad campaign. It’s the average number of days per month.
  • Daily spending limit This is the maximum amount Google will charge you daily for an ad campaign.
  • Google’s monthly spending limit: This is the maximum amount Google will charge you for a campaign each month.
  • Served Costs: The cost for an ad campaign’s impressions or clicks.
  • Billed Cost: This is the cost you pay for impressions or clicks in an ad campaign.

Our PPC glossary contains more information about terms related to Google Ads.

How much does Google Ads cost?

Businesses spend on average $9000 to $10,000 per month on paid advertisement. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, “How much does Google Ads cost?” Google Ads is a highly customizable ad platform.

You can control how much and when you spend your money. In real-time, you can adjust or decrease your ad spending as you wish. Google Ads’ pricing flexibility is one of its greatest benefits.

What industry does Google Ads cost?

Although most companies spend between $9000 and $10,000 per month on Google Ads they still use it in different ways. Google Ads costs are affected by factors such as their industry, products, and services, as well as their competitors.

This breakdown of CPC rates for Google Ads will give you an idea of the industry.

INDUSTRYAVERAGE CPC (SEARCH NETWORK)AVERAGE CPC (DISPLAY NETWORK)
Advocacy$1.43$0.62
Auto$2.46$0.58
B2B$3.33$0.79
Consumer Services$6.40$0.81
Dating and personals$2.78$1.49
Ecommerce$1.16$0.45
Education$2.40$0.47
Employment Services$2.04$0.78
Finance and Insurance$3.44$0.86
Health and Medical$2.62$0.63
Home Goods$2.94$0.60
Industrial Services$2.56$0.54
Legal$6.75$0.72
Real Estate$2.37$0.75
Technology$3.80$0.51
Travel and Hospitality$1.53$0.44

Most industries with higher CPC spend more money on Google Ads.

For example, the average click cost for consumer services is $7. This can be a motivator for businesses to increase their Google Ads spending. Additional Google Ads costs can be added by companies, such as:

Management of professional PPC

It’s not unusual for businesses to partner with a PPC company when they invest in PPC.

Kobe Digital is a PPC agency that launches and manages paid advertising campaigns across platforms such as Google Ads, and Microsoft Advertising.

Your PPC agency will require a monthly management fee to manage your PPC campaigns. The monthly management fee ranges between $350 and $5000 and does not include your monthly advertising spend.

In certain cases, the management fee of an agency will be a percentage of your ad spending. For example, the average agency management fee is between 12 and 30 percent of a company’s monthly ad spend. If you have a $5000 ad budget and your agency asks for 12 percent, you will pay $600 to your agency each month. You also spend $5000 on ads.

Software for managing PPC

With paid and free PPC software like Shape or Acquisio, businesses can streamline their internal PPC management. These tools are optional but can be used to optimize bids and evaluate ads.

Prices for paid PPC management tools range from $15 to $800 per month. You have now a basic understanding of the costs of Google Ads. Are you ready to find out more about the platform’s ad auction and how it affects the cost of Google Ads for your business? Keep reading to learn more!

What is the cost of advertising on Google?

Google advertising costs are affected by several factors.

  • Industry
  • Customer lifecycle
  • Market trends
  • Budget
  • Bid
  • Keywords
  • Targeting settings
  • Ad schedule
  • Ad Rank
  • Qualitative Score

Although you cannot change the industry you are in, you can affect other factors such as your targeting settings, ad scheduling, and Quality Score.

You could, for example, improve your landing page to increase your Quality Score. Or change the time your ad runs through your ad schedule settings. Check out our summary of Google Ads pricing according to industry for an exact price.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads was previously known as Google AdWords. It is Google’s PPC advertising platform.

It can be used to create ads, bid for specific keywords, and decide how much you are willing to pay per click. Google Ads works on an auction system.

If your bid is greater than that of other advertisers for the keyword, you will be able to show your advertisement at the top search results. A small tag beside it will indicate that it is a paid result.

Google PPC is cost-effective because you only pay for users who click on your ads. It doesn’t matter how often your ad is displayed, or how many people view it. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website.

On a campaign-by–campaign basis, you can also set daily or monthly budgets. After you have chosen a winning keyword and created an ad, you can allow your campaign to run with the assurance that it won’t exceed a budget.

What is the working principle of Google Ads?

It is important to understand the workings of Google Ads before you calculate how much it costs. Because Google’s auction system design plays a part in the cost of Google Ads. Understanding this system will help you create a realistic budget.

Google Ads uses an auction model to determine ad placement as well as cost. When a user searches for something on Google, an ad auction starts. Eligible ads are those that match keywords that advertisers are actively bidding for.

The Ad rank of an advertisement determines the cost per click and ad placement within the auction. Your ad rank for your ad is determined by two factors: your maximum bid for the keyword and your quality score.

This page won’t go into the Quality score (QS) in depth, but we recommend reading the recommended reading below to find out more about this metric.

Your ad’s quality score is determined by its relevance to the keyword it was triggered, its click-through rates (how many people click on it vs how many times it has been shown), as well as the quality of any pages users visit after clicking your ad. This is the Ad Rank formula.

(Your maximum CPC bid) + (Your ad’s QS).

If you have a maximum bid of $4 for a keyword and your ad has QS 8, your Ad rank is 32. The top spot in advertising is awarded to the person with the highest Ad Rank within a single auction. Google uses Ad Rank to determine how much you will end up paying per Click. This is the formula they use for calculating your actual CPC

(Ad Rank for the ad under yours/ (Your QS + $0.01)

If your ad has excellent QS, you can spend less while maintaining a higher position.

How do I determine a budget and bid for Google Ads?

Do you want the easy answer to your budget query? You can also visit our other posts on Google Ads.

We’ve now looked at exactly how Google Ads works. You can see why “it depends” is an answer to the question “How much do Google Ads cost?”

You have almost complete control over the amount of your Google Ads advertising spend. You can control certain variables, such as your maximum CPC bid or the quality and quantity of your ads. However, there are other factors that you cannot control. For example, the max CPC bids of your competitors and the quality and quantity of their ads.

This is all possible with the Ad Auction. Before you can even reach that point, consider the competitiveness of your niche and how many keywords are within it.

Here’s where you can be creative and keep your Google PPC costs low. Imagine that you are an insurance professional and you bid on the keyword “car insurance” for your CPC bid. This broad term is highly competitive and is searched millions of times each month.

You can do keyword research to find less-competitive, more expensive keywords that you can bid on if you want to keep Google advertising costs low.

You can bid on long-tail keywords such as “van insurance for senior citizens” or something similar. These keywords may have a lower search volume, which could result in fewer clicks overall. However, they are often much cheaper than broad, more competitive keywords such as “car insurance.”

You can also be connected with people looking for your services.

Google Ads is a great place to advertise.

Google Ads pricing is variable and will depend on your industry, strategy, and competitors. However, there are many benefits to the platform.

This breakdown of Google Ads benefits may help you decide if getting started using Google Ads. There are three reasons why companies invest in Google Ads:

1. Budget control

Google Ads is the best advertising channel for budget control. To create a Google Ads account and run a campaign, there is no minimum investment. If you wanted, you could launch a trial campaign with a $5/day budget.

Again, your results will depend on the competition of the keywords and niche you choose, but the important thing is that you can increase your budget as needed. This is the next benefit of Google Ads…

2. Scalability

Google Ads is real-time. This means that you can either scale up immediately after you identify a winning campaign or scale down when you notice a campaign is underperforming. There are no contracts, minimum monthly spends, or other restrictions.

Google Ads has the potential to scale in an infinite number of ways. You can instantly scale up a campaign that is delivering great results from $500 per month to $500,000.

3. Analytics

Google Ads gives you access to all data related to the performance of your campaigns.

It is possible to see how often your ad was served, how many people clicked it, how many people converted after clicking it, the time it was most successful, as well as information about which users clicked on your ad.

Your Google Ads dashboard has a staggering amount of data.

This contrasts sharply with the ambiguity of other advertising channels. The analytics available for traditional advertising, such as TV, radio, and newspaper, are very limited. Because you don’t know how many people are exposed to your ads, or whether they take any action, you can’t know how successful your campaigns have been.

Google Ads: Is it worth the investment?

Google Ads’ value depends on several factors.

  • Industry
  • Campaign optimization
  • PPC strategy
  • Target audience
  • More

Google Ads is a popular choice for businesses because of the following:

  • Targeting capabilities
  • Average cost per click
  • Return on Ad Spend
  • Flexibility in turning ads on or off

Audit your PPC campaigns if you notice a higher cost per click on Google Ads. A PPC audit can be done in-house using our simple-to-use PPC checklist. Request a PPC agency for a review of your account.

Need help creating your Google Ads budget?

Google Ads are a popular way for companies to spend between $9000 and $10,000 per month. However, it’s not possible to give a definitive answer to the question “How much do Google Ads cost?”.

It is up to you how much you spend on Google Ads. Your business’s Google Ads budget will depend on many factors such as ad performance and your industry. You also need to consider your goals and the tools you choose.

Google Ads is a fantastic advertising tool that can be used for any type of business, no matter what approach you choose. In the worst case, you could lose some of your budget due to an unsuccessful test campaign.

You’ll wonder why you didn’t try it sooner when you see the benefits of a successful Google Ads Campaign. Our PPC management services can assist you in building your Google Ads budget and developing your campaign.

About the author

Kobe Digital is a unified team of performance marketing, design, and video production experts. Our mastery of these disciplines is what makes us effective. Our ability to integrate them seamlessly is what makes us unique.