Advergent — A paid-advertising measurement reference

Advergent — A paid-advertising measurement reference | advergent.net

Google Search ads average a 5-7% click-through rate across industries, while Meta feed placements run closer to 1%. A US click can cost fifty cents in retail or fifteen dollars in legal, so raw numbers mean little until they are set against the right range. This reference lays out those ranges and the three calculations — conversion rate, learning budget and break-even ROAS — that decide whether a campaign can ever be profitable.

advergent.netGoogle Ads credits conversions within a 7-day click and 1-day view window by default.Below 15% impression share on generic terms, the budget — not the ad — is usually the constraint.

The benchmark table

Benchmark ranges for CTR, cost and conversion rate by channel — US figures
Channel and placement	Typical click-through rate	Typical cost (US)	Typical conversion rate
Google Search — all industries	5-7%	CPC $0.50-$15 by industry	2-5%
Google Search — brand terms	10-20%	set by the industry band	2-5%
Google Search — non-brand terms	2-4%	set by the industry band	2-5%
Google Search — finance and education	within the non-brand band	CPC $3-$8	2-5%
Google Search — legal, insurance, home services	within the non-brand band	CPC $5-$15	2-5%
Google Search — e-commerce and retail	within the non-brand band	CPC $0.50-$2.00	2-5%
Meta — feed placements	0.8-1.2%	CPM $5-$15	1-3%
Meta — Stories and Reels	1-3%	CPM $5-$15; $5-$20 for video views	1-3%

Benchmark ranges for CTR, cost and conversion rate by channel — US figures

What click-through rate should you expect?

On Google Search the cross-industry average is 5-7%; on Meta, plan around 0.8-1.2% in feed and 1-3% in Stories and Reels.

The Google average hides a wide split. Brand terms — searches that already contain the advertiser's name — return 10-20% CTR, because the intent is navigational. Non-brand terms, where the ad competes for an undecided searcher, return 2-4%. A blended account figure between those bands diagnoses nothing; the comparison has to be made within each campaign type.

Meta's lower figures are structural, not a sign of failure. Feed ads interrupt content the user came to see, so about one click per hundred impressions is the norm, and Stories and Reels roughly double or triple that. A Meta campaign measured against the search average will always look broken; measured against its own placement range, it may be exactly on target.

Use the ranges as a diagnostic band, not a goal. A non-brand search campaign at 3% CTR sits inside its band; the same campaign at 1.5% has a relevance or creative problem worth fixing before any budget is added.

The dossier in three parts

What should a click — or a thousand impressions — cost?

US Google Search CPCs run from $0.50 in e-commerce to $15 in legal and home services; Meta inventory is priced per thousand impressions at roughly $5-15.

Search CPCs are set by the value of the customer being fought over. Finance and education clicks cost $3-8; legal, insurance and home services cost $5-15, because a single signed client can be worth thousands; e-commerce and retail cost $0.50-2.00, because order values are smaller.

Meta sells attention by the thousand: feed, Stories and Reels run at a US CPM of roughly $5-15, and video-view campaigns at about $5-20. An implied cost per click falls out of the arithmetic — at a $10 CPM and a 1% CTR, a thousand impressions yield ten clicks, or $1.00 per click.

The bands exist for sanity-checking. A retailer paying $6 per non-brand click is outside the $0.50-2.00 band and should fix targeting before scaling; a law firm paying $9 is inside its band and should be judging conversion rate instead.

How do you tell whether a campaign can ever be profitable?

Run five checks in order — margin, break-even ROAS, acquisition cost, learning budget, auction headroom — and treat the first failure as the answer.

Each check has a named failure. Failing the margin check is the margin trap: revenue covers ad spend on paper but not the variable cost of fulfilling the orders. Failing the learning check leaves the campaign stuck in learning — Google's label for a campaign that never reaches 50 conversions a week. Failing the headroom check leaves it budget-capped, visible as impression share under 15% on generic terms.

The order matters because later checks cannot rescue earlier ones. No CTR improvement fixes a 10% margin that demands a 10x ROAS the auction cannot deliver, and no creative refresh fixes a budget that cannot buy the 2,500 weekly clicks the learning phase requires at a 2% conversion rate.

Step 1 — Contribution margin: revenue minus variable costs, as a share of the sale price. Typical failure: the margin trap.
Step 2 — Break-even ROAS: divide 1 by the margin. A 30% margin needs 3.3x, a 20% margin needs 5.0x, a 10% margin needs 10x.
Step 3 — Acquisition cost: divide the channel's typical CPC by its typical conversion rate. At a $1.50 CPC and a 2% rate, one conversion costs about $75.
Step 4 — Learning budget: confirm weekly spend can buy roughly 50 conversions — about $3,750 a week, or $535 a day, at a 2% rate and $1.50 CPC. Typical failure: stuck in learning.
Step 5 — Auction headroom: target 70%+ impression share on brand terms and 20-30% on generic terms. Below 15% on generics the campaign is budget-capped.

How much budget does the learning phase demand?

Google's learning phase ends at roughly 50 conversions per campaign per week; below that line the campaign stays in learning and performance stays unstable.

The budget falls out of the conversion arithmetic. Fifty conversions at a 2% conversion rate require 2,500 clicks; at a $1.50 average CPC, that is about $3,750 a week, or roughly $535 a day. Any input can be swapped for the campaign's own figures — a 4% conversion rate halves the click requirement, a $3 CPC doubles the cost.

A campaign below the threshold does not merely learn slowly; it stays in learning indefinitely, and its weekly results swing enough to mislead decisions. The structural fixes are concentration and counting: fewer campaigns so each accumulates conversions faster, and a conversion event that fires often enough to feed the system.

The 50-per-week figure is per campaign, not per account. Ten campaigns spending $400 a week each do not add up to one $4,000 campaign; they add up to ten campaigns all stuck in learning.

Objections advertisers actually raise

My CTR is below the range you list — is the campaign broken?

Not necessarily — first check that the comparison is like-for-like. A non-brand search campaign belongs in the 2-4% band, not the 5-7% blended average, and a Meta feed ad belongs in the 0.8-1.2% band. If it still sits below its own band after that, the problem is usually targeting or creative, not the budget.

Can I run Google Ads on $10 a day?

You can run it, but you should not expect it to stabilise. Exiting the learning phase takes roughly 50 conversions per campaign per week; at a 2% conversion rate and a $1.50 CPC that is about $535 a day. A $10 daily budget keeps the campaign in learning, where results swing too much to judge.

My ROAS is 2x and I am still losing money — how?

Because break-even ROAS depends on your margin, not on a universal threshold. It equals one divided by contribution margin: a 20% margin needs 5.0x and a 10% margin needs 10x. A 2x ROAS only breaks even when the margin is 50%.

My Meta CTR was strong at launch and then slid — did the audience dry up?

That pattern is ad fatigue, and it has a measurable signature. Once frequency passes 3-4 impressions per user per week on prospecting, CTR commonly falls 15-25% from its launch level. Rotating creative or widening the audience resets the clock; raising the budget does not.