Between June of last year and June of this year, the cost-per-click on Google Ads climbed by 15 percent, pushing average CPC up by 0.06 euros across all campaign types. Over the same twelve-month span, return on ad spend (ROAS) collapsed by more than 40 percent. This stark divergence — advertisers paying significantly more for each click while seeing dramatically less revenue per dollar spent — represents one of the most challenging shifts in the paid search landscape in recent years.
The data comes from the newly published eCommerce Google Ads Benchmark by Channable, a Dutch ecommerce feed management company. The benchmark, which analyzed 1.38 billion euros in verified ad spend across more than 10,000 advertisers in European ecommerce, offers an unusually granular look at how the economics of Google advertising have shifted between June 2025 and June of this year. For brands and retailers trying to navigate this environment, the numbers paint a sobering picture.
What Is Driving the 15 Percent CPC Increase on Google Ads?
The benchmark shows a year-on-year increase of 15 percent in cost-per-click across Google’s Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. This isn’t a localized spike limited to a single campaign type or vertical — it is broad-based inflation in the cost of Google advertising. The 0.06 euro increase per click, while modest in absolute terms, compounds quickly at scale. For an advertiser spending 100,000 euros per month, a 15 percent increase in CPC translates into substantially fewer clicks for the same budget, or a significantly higher budget needed to maintain the same traffic volume.
Several structural factors are likely contributing to this rise. Increased competition for ad placements, particularly in ecommerce categories where margins are already thin, forces bids higher. Google’s continued push toward automation and Performance Max campaigns, which bundle Shopping, Display, YouTube, and Search into a single campaign, reduces advertiser control over individual bid adjustments and can inflate costs. Additionally, changes in user behavior — including shifts in how consumers search and browse — may be reducing the overall pool of commercial intent queries, making the remaining high-intent clicks more expensive to capture.
ROAS Declines Exceed 40 Percent Across Major Campaign Types
The ROAS deterioration is even more striking than the CPC increase. On Standard Shopping campaigns, average ROAS dropped by 43 percent year-on-year. On Performance Max campaigns, the decline was steeper at 46 percent. These are not marginal changes; they represent a near-halving of advertising efficiency for many brands.
The ROAS decline is driven by two compounding factors. The first is straightforward: higher click costs mean the same conversion rate yields a lower return because each visit costs more. The second factor is more concerning: conversion rates themselves are falling. The benchmark reports a 0.11 percent decrease in conversion rates on Performance Max campaigns. While that figure may seem small, in percentage terms it represents a meaningful erosion of campaign effectiveness. When CPC rises and conversion rate drops simultaneously, the impact on ROAS is multiplicative rather than additive.
Performance Max vs. Standard Shopping: Which Is Declining Faster?
Performance Max campaigns underperformed Standard Shopping on both key metrics. The 46 percent ROAS decline on Performance Max compares unfavorably with the 43 percent decline on Standard Shopping. While Performance Max offers broader reach across Google’s inventory, the data suggests this comes at a cost: less efficient spend, particularly during a period of rising CPCs. Advertisers who shifted budget aggressively to Performance Max may have experienced a double penalty — higher costs and lower returns — if their product feeds and audience signals were not fully optimized for the automated campaign structure.
How Did Ad Spend and CPC Shift Across Quarters?
When the data is segmented by quarter, a clear seasonal pattern emerges. Combined Google Ads channels saw CPC rise 9.1 percent higher in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with the first quarter of the same year. Total advertising spend was 47.9 percent higher in Q4 than in Q1. This confirms what many ecommerce advertisers already suspected: the cost of competing during Cyber Week, Black Friday, and the holiday season has escalated sharply. Brands that do not budget adequately for Q4 inflation risk being priced out of key shopping periods entirely.
The Q4-to-Q1 comparison also reveals something about advertiser behavior. Despite higher CPCs and lower ROAS, brands are spending more — nearly 50 percent more — during the peak season. This suggests that many advertisers feel compelled to participate even at unfavorable unit economics, likely because of the strategic importance of capturing market share and customer acquisition during the busiest shopping weeks. The question is whether this strategy remains viable as costs continue to rise and returns continue to fall.
What the Benchmark Data Means for Advertisers in Practice
Stefan Hospes, co-founder and chief product officer at Channable, offered a pointed interpretation of the findings. “The brands feeling this most acutely treated Google Ads as a budget line when they should have approached it as key data infrastructure,” Hospes said. “A 15 percent CPC increase is painful if you are bidding on the same listings as last year. It is manageable if your feed is optimized, your budget is structured for Q4, and your product data is working as hard as your campaigns.”
Hospes’s framing shifts the conversation from cost management to data strategy. In this view, Google Ads is not merely an expense to be minimized — it is a system that converts product data into revenue. When that system becomes more expensive, the response should not be simply to cut spend or lower bids. Instead, advertisers should improve the quality and structure of the data feeding into the system. Optimized product feeds, better categorization, richer titles, accurate pricing, and robust inventory data all improve campaign efficiency. A well-structured feed can improve Quality Score, lower CPC, and lift conversion rates, partially offsetting the macro-level trends the benchmark documents.
Feed Optimization as a Lever Against Rising CPCs
The connection between feed quality and campaign performance is often underestimated. Google’s algorithm rewards well-structured product data with better placement and lower costs. Advertisers who invest in feed optimization — ensuring complete attributes, relevant custom labels, accurate sale prices, and high-quality images — can achieve better results even as the overall market becomes more expensive. The Channable benchmark implicitly suggests that a significant portion of ROAS decline may be concentrated among advertisers who have not kept their product data current and competitive.
Why Advertisers Cannot Treat Google Ads as a Static Budget Line
The 0.11 percentage point decline in conversion rates on Performance Max campaigns deserves closer attention. While small in absolute terms, this decline compounds the effect of higher CPCs. If click costs rise by 15 percent and conversion rates fall by even a small amount, the combined effect on ROAS can easily exceed 40 percent, which is precisely what the benchmark shows.
Several factors may be driving lower conversion rates. Performance Max campaigns often serve ads across a wider range of placements, including YouTube and Display, where user intent is lower than on Search. If the algorithm optimizes for reach rather than conversion quality, ROAS will suffer. Advertisers can counteract this by refining audience signals, excluding low-performing placements, and ensuring that product feeds contain the data necessary for Google to match ads with high-intent users. Additionally, the broader economic environment — inflation, changing consumer spending patterns — may be reducing conversion rates across all channels, not just Google Ads.
What Are the Implications for Q4 2025 and Beyond?
With Q4 ad spend 47.9 percent higher than Q1 and CPC 9.1 percent higher, the seasonal cost inflation in Google Ads is severe and getting worse. For brands planning their Q4 budgets for the current year, the benchmark provides a clear warning: cost increases of this magnitude cannot be absorbed without proactive adjustments. Advertisers who wait until November to optimize their campaigns will find themselves competing for clicks at peak prices with suboptimal data. The time to prepare is before the seasonal ramp begins.
Preparation should include several specific actions. First, audit product feed quality and fill all available attribute fields. Second, structure Q4 budget allocations to account for higher CPC, ensuring sufficient spend to maintain visibility during critical shopping periods. Third, evaluate campaign structure: consider whether Performance Max, Standard Shopping, or a hybrid approach is best suited to the specific products and margins in question. Fourth, set ROAS targets that reflect current market conditions rather than historical performance — expecting last year’s ROAS in a market where CPC is 15 percent higher is unrealistic without corresponding improvements in data and conversion rate.
How Brands Can Adapt to the New Google Ads Economics
Adapting to higher CPC and lower ROAS requires a shift in mindset as well as tactics. The most successful advertisers will be those who treat Google Ads as a data platform rather than a media buy. The feed, not the bid, is the primary lever for efficiency. When product data is complete, accurate, and structured for Google’s algorithms, campaigns perform better at any given CPC level. When the data is weak, even a low CPC will not produce satisfactory ROAS.
The benchmark also underscores the importance of measurement and attribution. Advertisers who track ROAS at the campaign, product, and keyword level can identify which parts of their portfolio are most affected by rising costs and adjust accordingly. Granular measurement enables targeted optimization — improving feeds for underperforming products, reallocating budget to higher-margin categories, or testing new campaign structures. Without this level of data visibility, advertisers are flying blind in an environment where the cost of mistakes is rising.
The Strategic Takeaway from the Channable Benchmark
The 15 percent CPC increase and 40 percent-plus ROAS decline documented in the Channable benchmark are not temporary fluctuations. They represent a structural shift in the cost of Google advertising for European ecommerce brands. The forces driving these changes — increased competition, platform automation, changing consumer behavior, and macroeconomic pressure — are unlikely to reverse in the near term. Advertisers who treat this as a temporary squeeze will continue to see performance erode. Those who respond by investing in data quality, campaign structure, and measurement will be better equipped to maintain advertising efficiency even as the market becomes more expensive.
The benchmark analyzed 1.38 billion euros in verified ad spend and more than 10,000 advertisers, giving it unusual statistical weight. The trends it identifies are not anecdotal; they are market-wide. For any brand using Google Ads to drive ecommerce revenue, the message is clear: the era of steadily improving ROAS on Google is over for now, and the era of data-driven optimization as a competitive necessity has arrived.
