Freshness page · goes stale by design
CPC trends in 2026
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Digital Signet. Updated July 2026.
This page reports only what traced to a primary source when we checked on 31 July 2026, and names what did not. Trend pages rot; the vintage chips are the freshness contract.
What the 2026 dataset shows
Verified movement
The publisher describes the CPC picture as "a bit of an increase over the last year" across the industries measured, while cost per lead decreased overall for the first time in five years LocaliQ, 2026 data. Read together: clicks got slightly dearer, but they converted well enough that leads got cheaper.
On the social side, Facebook traffic-campaign link-click CPC fell from $0.77 in 2024 to $0.70 in 2025 LocaliQ, 2025 data.
What we could not verify, so do not repeat
Two claims circulate in 2026 marketing commentary: that 87% of industries saw CPC rise year on year, and that this is the steepest rise since 2021. When we checked the current primary dataset on 2026-07-31, neither figure appeared in it. They may have described an earlier year's edition. Until they trace, they stay off this site; the policy is on the lot provenance page.
The same discipline applies to AI-search impact. AI answers are visibly changing how often a search produces a click to a website, and plenty of commentary blames them for CPC pressure. We have not found a primary-source study we trust that quantifies the CPC effect, so this page sticks to the measured numbers above.
What a small advertiser should do
Nothing dramatic. A modest market-wide drift is background noise next to the account-level levers: a broad-match leak or a weak Quality Score moves your CPC far more than 2026 does. Judge your number against the current benchmarks, diagnose with the high-CPC checklist, fix with the eight levers, and let break-even make the final call.