Cost Per Click (CPC)

What is Cost Per Click (CPC)?

Cost Per Click is the price you pay for each individual click on your paid advertisement. In Google Ads (and most PPC platforms), you do not pay for impressions — you only pay when someone actually clicks. CPC is calculated as total ad spend divided by total clicks. If you spent Rs 10,000 and received 200 clicks, your average CPC is Rs 50. CPC varies enormously by industry, keyword competition, location, and quality of your ad. Highly competitive keywords in legal, finance, or real estate can cost Rs 200-500+ per click in India or $20-50 in Australia. Long-tail, less competitive keywords can cost Rs 5-20 per click. In Google Ads, actual CPC is determined by an auction. Your Maximum CPC bid is the ceiling you set, but Google uses a Quality Score system so advertisers with better quality ads pay less per click. The formula is: Actual CPC = (Ad Rank of competitor below you / Your Quality Score) + Rs 0.01. A Quality Score of 8/10 versus 4/10 on the same keyword can mean paying half the CPC. Strategies to reduce CPC include improving ad relevance, optimising landing page experience, adding negative keywords to filter out irrelevant clicks, using ad scheduling to run ads only when your audience is active, and targeting more specific, lower-competition long-tail keywords.