Every figure wears its tag
Lot provenance
By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Digital Signet. Updated July 2026.
Numbers on this site are treated like auction lots: nothing goes on the block without provenance. Every figure wears an inline vintage tag naming the study it came from and the year the data describes, and the full claim register below backs each tag with a primary URL and a last-checked date.
How the tag works
Wherever a figure appears on this site, a chip like this one rides inline beside it: LocaliQ, 2026 data. The tag names the source and the data year, and clicks through to the primary URL. A lime tick means current-year data; a hollow ring means an older vintage, used only where nothing newer exists and labelled at the point of use. A number that cannot wear a tag does not ship. If a figure on any page is not traceable to a row in the register below, report it and it comes down.
What this site refuses to state
No advertising auction platform publishes a per-click rate card. Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and Amazon all price clicks by auction, so there is no official CPC to quote, only measured benchmark observations from named studies. Where no current-vintage benchmark exists for a platform, the platform page says exactly that instead of borrowing a folklore number.
The claim register
| Claim as used on this site | Primary source | Vintage | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average Google search CPC across industries in 2026 is $5.42 | LocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| 2026 search CPC by industry runs from $1.63 (Arts & Entertainment) to $9.87 (Attorneys & Legal Services) | LocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Per-industry 2026 CPC, CTR, CVR and CPL table (24 industries) used on the benchmarks pages | LocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Average search CTR across industries in 2026 is 6.64% | LocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Average search conversion rate across industries in 2026 is 8.18% | LocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Average search cost per lead in 2026 is $66.69, and CPL fell year on year for the first time in five years | LocaliQ: 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Facebook traffic-campaign link-click CPC averaged $0.70 in 2025, down from $0.77 in 2024 | LocaliQ: Facebook Advertising Benchmarks | 2025 | 2026-07-31 |
| Facebook lead-gen campaign CPC averaged $1.92 in 2025; lead-gen CPL averaged $27.66 | LocaliQ: Facebook Advertising Benchmarks | 2025 | 2026-07-31 |
| Meta ads carry a $5 minimum budget over a minimum 6-day duration. That is a budget floor, not a per-click rate | Meta: Ads pricing | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Google Ads publishes no rate card and no minimum spend; the per-click price is set by auction and the daily budget is advertiser-set | Google Ads Help: Choose your bid and budget | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Microsoft Advertising publishes no rate, minimum spend or deposit; you pay only when someone clicks | Microsoft Advertising: New advertiser FAQs | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Enhanced CPC stopped being available for Search and Display campaigns effective the week of 31 March 2025; unmigrated campaigns fell back to Manual CPC | Google Ads Help: About Enhanced CPC (deprecated) | 2025 | 2026-07-31 |
| A paid YouTube in-stream view is 30 seconds watched, or the full ad if shorter; in-feed and Shorts use a 10-second threshold | Google Ads Help: About YouTube's cost-per-view (CPV) bidding | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Driver CPC requires 35 hours of periodic training every 5 years; driving professionally without it risks a fine of up to £1,000 | GOV.UK: Driver CPC training | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| The UN Central Product Classification's current version is Ver. 2.1, with Ver. 3.0 under development | UN Statistics Division: Central Product Classification | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| CPC (cost per click) definition and the spend-divided-by-clicks formula | Google Ads Help: Cost per click (CPC): Definition | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Actual CPC is the final amount charged for a click, often less than your max bid; you pay the minimum needed to clear the ad rank thresholds and beat the next competitor | Google Ads Help: Actual cost per click: Definition | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Ad Rank components: bid, ad and landing-page quality, ad rank thresholds, auction context, and the expected impact of assets and formats | Google Ads Help: About Ad Rank | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
| Quality Score is a 1-10 diagnostic built from expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience | Google Ads Help: About Quality Score | 2026 | 2026-07-31 |
Lime vintage = current-year data. Older vintages are used only where no current-year primary source exists, and are labelled at the point of use.
Dropped claims
Two figures circulate widely that this site deliberately omits: that 87% of industries saw CPC rise year on year, and that 2026 saw the steepest CPC rise since 2021. Neither traced to the current primary dataset when we checked on 2026-07-31, so neither appears here. The reasoning is on the trends page.
Related: the benchmark board and about this site.