"How much does online advertising cost?" has no single answer — pricing swings wildly by industry, competition and season — but these are realistic, widely-observed ranges to plan a budget against rather than guess blind. Treat every figure here as a starting benchmark, not a quote: your actual numbers will move based on your specific niche, geography and how well-built your targeting and creative are.
Google Search Ads
Average CPC: $1–$4 for most consumer categories, but competitive niches like legal services, insurance and finance routinely see $20–$70+ per click. Quality Score improvements can cut effective cost per click by 20-30% without touching your bid.CPC-based
Google Display Network
Average CPM: $2–$10. Among the cheapest ways to buy raw reach, which is exactly why it's suited to awareness goals rather than direct conversion.CPM-based
Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads
Average CPC: $0.50–$3.50; average CPM: $7–$14, though both swing heavily with the holiday-season auction crunch in Q4. Cost per lead in B2C typically lands between $5–$30 depending on offer strength.CPC/CPM
TikTok Ads
Average CPC: $0.50–$2; average CPM: $4–$10 — still generally cheaper than Meta, though the gap has been narrowing fast as advertiser demand grows.Growing demand
LinkedIn Ads
Average CPC: $5–$15, and B2B lead costs of $40–$150+ are common — the premium reflects genuinely hard-to-reach professional targeting, not inefficiency.Premium B2B
YouTube (Skippable In-Stream)
Average CPV: $0.05–$0.30 per view — inexpensive per exposure, though total spend adds up fast at scale since views (not clicks) are what you're buying.CPV-based
Amazon Sponsored Products
Average CPC: $0.80–$3, varying enormously by product category — but paired with genuinely high buy-intent traffic, which is why ACOS (advertising cost of sale), not raw CPC, is the metric that actually matters here.Category-dependent
Connected TV (CTV)
Average CPM: $25–$50+ — priced like premium video because it functionally is, but reaching an audience no banner or feed ad can put in front of a living-room-sized screen.Premium video
Podcast Host-Read Ads
Typically priced on CPM equivalent of $15–$50, often sold as flat per-episode sponsorship packages instead — reflects the trust premium of a genuine host endorsement.Trust premium
Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH)
Average CPM: $5–$20 depending on screen location and footfall — a single premium urban placement can still run into thousands per week regardless of the CPM math.Location-dependent
A useful rule when comparing across formats: awareness formats (Display, DOOH, CTV) should be judged on cost per thousand reached and on measured lift in brand awareness or search interest — not forced into a direct-response ROAS calculation they were never designed to win.