How Much Do Google Ads Cost in 2025

Key Takeaways

• Click costs for your sector (competition)
• The search volume for your product or service
• Which channels you choose to run campaigns on
• How well your ads are set up
• Your conversion rate
• Your average order value or deal size

How much do Google Ads cost? It’s a valid question when you’re looking to promote your business.

Many business owners have heard horror stories about fellow brands who have spent large sums and not seen a return.

The short answer is that you don’t always need to spend the earth to see results.

There is no minimum spend or requirement to spend a certain amount on the channel so it is possible to dip your toe into the water and have a go before spending the big bucks.

That being said, it’s purely a numbers game. You will need to spend enough, to generate enough clicks to generate results.

As a super simplistic example, if the average click cost in your sector is £1 and you have a website conversion rate of 5%, you would need at least 20 clicks, which would cost £20, to expect to see a result.

If your conversion rate is lower, then you will need more, if the terms aren’t relevant or you have campaign setup issues then this is where we get into the detail.

Purely from a statistical significance view though, this is a starting point.

If you wanted 100 sales, with the example figures above, you would need to spend £2,000 to achieve the 100 sales at an overall price of £20 per sale.

Let’s look into the factors that go into Google Ads overall price in a little more detail.

Click costs for your sector (competition)

One of the biggest impacts on your Google Ads costs is the average click cost rates in your sector. This will be dictated by how much competition there is in the ad auction.

This can vary hugely, in many eCommerce auctions £0.90 clicks are standard, in a highly competitive sector where there is a high deal size such as asset finance, it’s not uncommon to see clicks that cost £20-30.

Whilst this can be jaw dropping to see in the account, the deal size and recursive revenue element can still mean this is worthwhile paying for - providing that you have your ducks in a row to convert clicks into enquiries and know what you can spend to get the lead, in context of what you can afford to spend to acquire a customer.

In order to get an estimate of this, you can use an amazing free tool in Google Ads called Keyword Planner.

Simply enter terms for your product and service and it will show you click cost estimates in that particular region so you can get an idea of what you will be looking at.

The search volume for your product or service

So we’ve talked a lot about click cost. The second biggest factor will be how much search volume there is.

Google Ads works on a pay per click basis.

This means that the more searches there are, the more clicks you get, which means the higher your total cost could be (as well as more potential customers).

For some products and services there are literally hundreds of thousands of searches per month. For others there are far less.

Seasonality is also a factor here, in seasonal sectors, you will see higher volume and as such cost at certain times of the year.

You can find out what the approximate search volume is by using Keyword Planner as mentioned in the click cost section.

This will vary from country to country so can often highlight the size of the market you are in.

Which channels you choose to run campaigns on

Google Ads offers the opportunity to run high-quality ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, and the Display network, which includes many placements.

What we have to be careful about is that while click cost is a huge factor in what your high-quality ads will cost in 2025, lower-cost clicks in isolation don’t necessarily mean better.

YouTube and display placements have much cheaper clicks since they are far less competitive ad inventory.

However, they don’t have the same intent as a user coming to Google and actively looking for your product or service, so these placements are usually more aligned with brand awareness objectives than performance.

Start with search—you might pay more, but the intent is there with the user to drive business impact.

How well your ads are set up

Google Ad campaigns work on an auction basis, so, you are trying to outbid your competitors.

It’s not just a case of who has the deepest pockets (thankfully!), there is a system in place called Quality Score to ensure that ad quality is also considered.

Quality Score looks at three key areas:

• Ad relevance
• Engagement rate ranking
• Landing page experience

With well-managed Google Ads, the better you are in each of these areas, the more you will be preferenced with better positioning and lower costs.

This doesn’t mean we can optimise click costs below the sector average, however, you can ensure that you aren’t being penalised for poor quality ads at least.

Ad relevance is there to ensure that your copy and messaging relates to the keywords that you are targeting.

Engagement rate ranking is there to encourage your copy to highlight USPs and differentiators so that the user has a better experience seeing unique search results.

Landing page experience is there to make sure that targeting and messaging matches the page someone is sent to. This also includes technical factors such as site speed.

In short, these components are here to stop people from giving Google users a poor experience as ultimately they would stop using the search engine.

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and check your targeting, messaging and landing page experience.

Your conversion rate

Moving onto some of the more important factors, not in what the price of ads cost but in terms of what you actually get out of your spend with top-tier online advertising!

Conversion rate is the number of clicks that convert into leads or customers.

This is a key metric in ads performance as you can use it forecast and model if you’re actually returning profit from your investment.

The higher your conversion rate is, the more you will get out of your ad spend.

It’s the only optimisation you can make that both increases the volume of leads or sales and simultaneously decreases the cost-per-acquisition and increases return-on-ad-spend.

All other optimisations either increase volume or decrease acquisition cost.

If you’re tight on time, this is where you want to spend time analysing.

90% of the time issues or opportunities to optimise here come from the website experience and landing page not the ads campaign itself.

Add Microsoft Clarity to your website and watch actual screen recordings of users coming to your site, find the issues, fix them and watch your performance scale.

Getting a viable conversion rate will enable you to invest further, knowing you are generating profit.

Your average order value or deal size

Another key factor in if you should run ads and how much you should spend in 2025 is your AOV or deal size in your google ads strategy.

The more you get from converting an ads click into a customer, the more viable it is to spend on ads to get more, based on your pricing.

We often see with clients, tactical changes to nudge average order value up or to focus on the highest deal size leads, can make it much more profitable to invest into Google Ads while benefiting from cost savings.

This is something to consider when looking at which keywords to target.

Click costs might be higher on terms where you have a higher AOV or deal size, however, it’s about NET profit not marketing metrics.

Summary

We hope this has provided valuable insight into what Google Ads, video ads, and other ad formats could cost you in 2025!

As a summary, we recommend using Google Ads Keyword Planner to get estimates on click costs for your sector, as well as approximate monthly search volumes.

You can use this along with your website conversion rate to model what you could potentially spend and the returns that it may bring.

A business can’t be run off of a spreadsheet, sometimes giving it a go and finding out what happens is faster and more agile. The data is a useful guide, though, to see how likely or unlikely it is to yield results that meet expectations.