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CPC Inflation Tracker
US benchmarks in US dollars, from published sources
Australia and Global: no verified data yet. US figures are never relabelled.
All figures are US dollars. Australian-specific verified data is not available yet; we do not relabel currency-converted US data as Australian data.
Biggest risers
Where costs jumped hardest.
The chart
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The data
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Methodology
How it’s compiled. What it isn’t.
What this is. A compilation of benchmark tables that other organisations have published. Firestarter did not collect this data from ad accounts. Figures are medians or averages exactly as the publisher reports them; the publisher's sample, period and region apply.
Google Ads. WordStream's annual benchmark editions (2024, 2025 and 2026), all US-based search campaigns, in USD. Each edition covers 12 months to the end of March of its year (for example the 2026 edition covers 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026). The year-on-year change shown here is calculated by us as (later edition minus earlier edition) divided by earlier edition. Sample size and industry mix change between editions, so treat changes as directional, not exact.
Meta Ads. CTR, CPC, conversion rate and CPL by industry come from WordStream's 2025 Facebook Ads Benchmarks (US-based campaigns, 1 April 2024 to 30 June 2025), split by Traffic and Leads objectives. Year-on-year percentages for Meta are the publisher's own, not ours. CPM comes from Triple Whale (median CPM, 40,000+ ecommerce brands, 1 Aug 2025 to 31 Jul 2026, region not stated), which uses a different, ecommerce-focused industry list.
Not verified / gaps. There is no verified Australian benchmark table in this release. Some publishers list identical values for different industries (for example Google CPL for Finance & Insurance and Dentists in the 2025 edition); we reproduce values as published. The overall 2026 Google CPL average is left out because our extraction of it could not be confirmed. Blank cells mean the source did not publish the figure. Australia and Global: no verified data yet. US figures are never relabelled.
Refreshing. Updated monthly, or when a publisher releases a new edition. Every figure keeps its named source, edition and period. Data last updated .