Digital marketing term
CPC
Cost per click: what you pay when someone clicks, not when the ad is only shown. The auction and Quality Score — or the platform equivalent — move that price as much as your bid does.
Detailed explanation
Spend divided by clicks, or the actual price of a click in an auction. Search and many social auctions charge on click, unlike CPM (per thousand impressions) or CPA (per conversion). A cheap click on the wrong query still wastes money.
You do not simply set the price. Bid, expected click-through, landing-page quality, and competitor demand set Ad Rank; a higher Quality Score can beat a higher bid. Click fraud and accidental clicks also pollute the average.
Read it with CTR, conversion rate, and CPA. Falling cost with collapsing conversion is not a win. If the price rises, check query mix, Quality Score, and whether you drifted into broader, more expensive terms.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this the same as your max bid?
- No. The bid is a ceiling. Actual cost comes from the auction, rank, and quality. You often pay less than the max.
- Why does the price jump overnight?
- New competitors, a weaker Quality Score, a broader query mix, or lost impression share on cheap terms. Check search terms and quality before raising bids blindly.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- CPMCPM (Cost Per Mille) is the cost of 1,000 ad impressions; it is one of the most common media buying units.
- CPACPA (Cost Per Action) is a pricing and performance model based on completed actions such as a sale or form submission.
- Quality ScoreQuality Score is Google Ads' 1–10 rating of a keyword's expected relevance, based on expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
- Ad RankAd Rank is the ranking score that determines the position an ad appears in on platforms like Google Ads for a given search, combining bid amount, ad quality, and expected impact.
- ROASROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is the revenue generated for every unit of advertising spend; it is used to measure profitability in performance marketing.
- CTRCTR (Click-Through Rate) is the percentage of impressions that result in a click on an ad or link.
Content featuring this term
Practical Guides
- AdsGoogle Ads Daily Budget: 4 Clear Answers on $10 and $20“Is $10 a day enough?”, “Is $20 good?”, and “What do you pay per 1,000 views?” come up often on new accounts. These four answers help you read daily budget through goals, conversions, and learning—not a round number alone.
- Ads5 Signs You’re Hitting Creative FatigueShowing the same ad too long quietly hurts budget. These five signs help you catch creative fatigue early in frequency, CTR, and cost.