New benchmarks: Google AdWords cost per acquisition across 20 industries [study]

Are you getting the biggest bang for your AdWords buck?

It’s hard to gauge if you’re only looking at your own performance and competing against yourself. In the live auction, you’re competing against thousands of other advertisers in your industry — so how do you know where you stand?

One of your major KPIs is going to be your cost per action, or cost per acquisition (CPA), which is related to both your cost per click (CPC) and conversion rates (CVRs) for those clicks. The range on cost per action rates varies greatly, with the top 10 percent of advertisers boasting CPAs up to 5x better than the average.

You know what we call those advertisers? They’re the magical, amazing unicorns you want to be. And I’m sorry, friends, but there are only two types of advertisers: those special, magical unicorns and the donkeys who pay too much, don’t get the impressions and generally suck at PPC.

You don’t want to be a donkey.

Let’s see where you stand and how you can avoid that.

Average AdWords CPAs for search and display

We just did an extensive analysis of more than 2,000 client accounts in all verticals, representing more than $34 million in AdWords spend, to establish current, accurate average conversion rate (CVR) benchmarks for both search and display ads across 20 different industries: Advocacy, Auto, B2B, Consumer Services, Dating & Personals, Ecommerce, Education, Employment Services, Finance & Insurance, Health & Medical, Home Goods, Industrial Services, Legal, Real Estate, Technology and Travel & Hospitality.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]