Cost-per-click increased by 15% in 1 year

Between June last year and this year, cost-per-click on Google Ads increased by 15 percent. This equals an increase of 0.06 euros across all campaign types. At the same time, return on ad spend (ROAS) decreased by more than 40 percent.

These data come from the newly published ‘eCommerce Google Ads Benchmark’ from Channable, a Dutch ecommerce feed manager. With the benchmark, brands can compare their performance on Google Ads against the wider online retail market. Google Ads is a paid advertising service on Google’s search engine. Retailers and brands pay to increase their visibility in the search results.

1.38 billion euros analyzed

The benchmark analyzed 1.38 billion euros in verified ad spend across more than 10,000 advertisers in European ecommerce. Between June 2025 and June this year, the analysis shows a year-on-year increase of 15 percent on CPC across Google’s Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

‘The average ROAS decreased by 46% on Google Performance Max campaigns’

In that same period, on Standard Shopping, the average ROAS decreased by 43 percent. At the same time, the average ROAS on Performance Max campaigns decreased by 46 percent. This indicates that brands are paying more, while getting less returns. This decrease in returns is caused by the rising click costs, as well as lower conversion rates on Performance Max campaigns (a decrease of 0.11 percent).

‘Google Ads should be seen as key data infrastructure’

Stefan Hospes, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Channable commented: “The brands feeling this most acutely treated Google Ads as a budget line when they should have approached it as key data infrastructure. A 15 percent CPC increase is painful if you are bidding on the same listings as last year. It is manageable if your feed is optimized, your budget is structured for Q4, and your product data is working as hard as your campaigns.”

Ad spend almost 50% higher in Q4

When looking at combined Google Ads channels, the CPC was 9.1 percent higher in the fourth quarter than in the first quarter of 2025. This is reflected in the total advertising spend, which was 47.9 percent higher in the fourth quarter than in the first one of last year. This indicates that brands need bigger budgets to compete during the busiest period for online stores (Cyber Week, Black Friday and the holidays).