CPC
The price of one visitor from an ad, before anyone buys anything.
What it means
CPC is what one click on an Amazon ad costs you: Ad Spend divided by clicks, in euros. Spend €2,000 across 4,000 clicks and each visitor cost you 50 cents.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Ad Spend is everything Amazon charged you for advertising in the period.
Clicks is every click those ads received in the period — the traffic you paid for.
Worked example. You spend €1,600 and get 3,200 clicks, so CPC = 1,600 ÷ 3,200 = €0.50. If 2 in 100 of those clicks become orders, that's 64 orders and a CPA of €25. Let CPC drift to €1 at the same order rate and CPA doubles to €50, with nothing about the listing changed.
Up is bad, with one honest exception: a dearer click on a term that converts twice as well is still the better buy.
It answers the question
What am I paying to get one shopper onto the listing? CPC prices the traffic; whether that traffic was worth buying is a question only the listing can answer.
Why it matters
CPC is rent on the shelf at eye level. You pay for the position whether or not the shopper picks the box up, and the price is set by everyone else who wants that shelf.
It's also the input every other ad cost inherits. CPACPAWhat one order costs you to win through ads. is CPC divided by your order rate, so a 20% rise in the auction price walks straight through to the cost of an order. It moves for reasons that have nothing to do with you — Q4, a competitor's launch, a new brand buying share — which is why it's the first number to check when costs jump and nothing in the account changed.
What good looks like
There's no benchmark, because CPC is a category price. Consumer electronics and supplements bid in a different world from niche craft supplies, so a €1.50 click is cheap in one and outrageous in the other. Judge it against your own trend and against what a click is worth to you: your order rate multiplied by what an order leaves behind is the most a click can cost before it stops paying for itself.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Trim top-of-search premiums | Cut placement bid modifiers where the premium slot converts no better than mid-page | CPC down within days | 3–7 days | You slide down the page and Impressions fall with you. The competitor who takes the slot gets your best traffic, and reclaiming it later can cost more than you saved. |
| Fast Negate the expensive strangers | Add negatives for broad-match terms pulling costly clicks that never fit the product | CPC down and wasted spend gone | 1–2 weeks | Broad match is how the account finds new terms. Cut too hard and discovery stops — you keep what works and never learn what's next. |
| Slow Earn a better price through relevance | Tighter titles and backend keywords, and ad groups built around one intent instead of five | The same position for a lower CPC | 4–8 weeks | Restructuring resets campaign history, so new ad groups bid blind for a few weeks and results get worse before they get better. |
| Slow Shift weight to cheaper inventory | Move budget towards product-page targeting and long-tail terms with less competition | CPC falls across the account | 1 quarter | Cheap clicks usually convert worse. CPC improves while CPA can quietly get worse — the saving shows up first and the cost second. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
CPC is the price of traffic. What it bought is the number next to it.
Cheaper traffic, more orders
You're paying less per visitor and converting more of them. Either the auction eased or your relevance improved. Take the volume while the price holds.
Paying your way in
Growth is real but the auction is charging you for it. Normal in Q4 or when a competitor launches. Set a ceiling before you match them again.
Quieter and cheaper
You bought less traffic and it cost less. That's a budget decision showing up as an efficiency win — make sure rank hasn't slipped with the volume.
Squeezed
The auction price is rising while demand falls, so every euro buys fewer and dearer visits. Bid discipline first, then look at why the listing stopped converting.
Ad Spend is one multiplied by the other, so together they explain any budget change in a glance. Spend up with Clicks flat means the auction got dearer and you bought nothing extra. Spend up with CPC flat means you bought more traffic at the same price.
This pair tells you whether a cheap click is a win or a warning. CPC falling while Impressions hold means the same reach for less. CPC falling while Impressions collapse means you've been outbid off the good placements and you're buying leftovers.
Common misreads
You don't set this price, the auction does. A competitor's launch, a seasonal rush or a new brand buying share all raise CPC with your bids untouched. Check whether your bids actually changed before you cut them.
Cheap clicks are cheap for a reason — bottom-of-page placements and loosely related terms. A 20-cent click that never converts costs more per order than a €1 click that does.
Your bid is the most you'll pay; you're charged roughly what it takes to beat the next bidder. That's why a €2 bid can average 60 cents, and why cutting the bid to 60 cents kills the placement instead of holding it.
Also called
Cost per click · avg. CPC · average cost per click
See yoursYour average cost per click for the last 30 days, next to Clicks and Ad Spend.
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