Advergent Ads Benchmarks
On Google Search, expect a 5-7% CTR on average — 10-20% on brand terms and 2-4% on non-brand terms — and a US CPC between $0.50 and $15 depending on industry.
The first split to make is brand against non-brand. Searches that already contain the advertiser's name convert intent into clicks at 10-20%, because the user was already looking for that advertiser. Non-brand terms, where the ad competes for an undecided searcher, return 2-4%. A single blended CTR for the account mixes these two auctions and diagnoses nothing.
Cost per click is set by the industry, not by the platform. In the US, finance and education clicks run $3-8; legal, insurance and home services run $5-15, because one signed client can repay thousands in fees; e-commerce and retail run $0.50-2.00, because order values are smaller. A CPC is only high or low relative to its industry band.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Conversion rate completes the picture. Search traffic converts at 2-5% on typical benchmarks, so a $1.50 retail click implies a $30-75 acquisition cost, and a $10 legal click implies a $200-500 one. Whether either is acceptable is a margin question — the break-even ROAS page on this site walks through that arithmetic step by step.
Impression share names the real constraint when results disappoint. Healthy targets are 70% or more on brand terms and 20-30% on generic terms; below 15% on generics, the budget — not the ad — is usually what limits delivery. Raising bids into a budget-capped campaign changes nothing.
Judged properly, an underperforming search campaign fails one of three checks: CTR below its brand or non-brand band, CPC above its industry band, or conversion rate below 2%. Each failure has a different fix, and confusing them is how budgets get raised to solve creative problems. For the social side of the comparison, the Meta benchmarks page covers feed, Stories and Reels.
Further reading