CPC (short for cost per click) is a metric that shows the price people pay for each click on their ad run through Google Ads, Bing Ads, and similar advertising platforms.

Oftentimes, CPC is associated with the same concept as the PPC (pay per click). However, PPC is an advertising model, where the ad publisher chargers the advertiser each time their ad is clicked.

Worth noting, the majority of advertising platforms operate in a form similar to an auction, where people have a minimum price, and then they have to place bids, and the highest bid wins. Yet, while there’s only one lot in auctions, on Google and other platforms, there are usually several available ad placements. Higher bid helps advertisers to get a higher position (rank) for their ad, for example, on the Google Search results page.

So, for example, when you consider adding a keyword to your ad campaign, the Average CPC metric in GKP will help you to understand the price you’ll need to pay for clicks on your ad.

In Google Ads, you can choose manual or automatic bidding when setting up a campaign. If you go with automatic bidding, Google will try to maximize the number of clicks you get by automatically adjusting your “max. CPC” bids within the daily budget you set. With manual bidding, you’ll have to specify the maximum CPC (for all keywords or per each keyword individually, that’s up to you). By Google’s definition, the maximum CPC bid or “max. CPC” is:

“A bid that you set to determine the highest amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad.”

Ultimately, CPC is the decisive factor for the final profitability of your ad campaigns. For that reason, you need to know the CPC historically paid for the ad clicks that a particular keyword can drive before you decide to target it. When doing keyword research for PPC campaigns, you should focus on the CPC metric to cherry-pick the terms with higher search volume yet lower CPC.

With DataForSEO Google Ads API, you can get CPC, Competition, and 12-months wide search volume distribution for up to 700 keywords in one call. What’s more, using DataForSEO Labs API, you can obtain the same data plus impressions info, including maximum, minimum, and average values for CPC, ad position, daily clicks, and cost. DataForSEO Bing Ads API can also supply you with CPC, Competition and search volume data.

Learn more about collecting data for PPC keyword research with our API in this article.

Related articles:

What is Search Volume?
What is Competition?