How much does Google Ads cost in Australia?
Here’s what Google Ads cost across the Australian eCommerce accounts we manage: 16 brands and about $685,000 of Australian spend between August and early November 2026, across Search, Shopping and Performance Max.
| Measure | Typical brand | Middle half of brands |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per click (CPC) | $1.15 | $0.90 to $1.75 |
| Cost per sale | $27 | $14 to $54 |
| Return on ad spend (ROAS) | 4.8 | 2.1 to 6.9 |
| Daily Google spend | $270 | $160 to $425 |
“Typical” is the brand in the middle. “Middle half” leaves out the cheapest and dearest quarter of accounts. Sales and ROAS are as Google Ads reports them.
That account-wide number hides a lot, because each campaign type costs something very different.
Google Ads cost by campaign type
| Campaign | Cost per click | Cost per sale | ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand search | $0.40 ($0.30 to $1.05) | $8.50 ($1.35 to $14) | 19 (4 to 56) |
| Shopping | $1.45 ($1.15 to $2.45) | $23 ($21 to $57) | 3.2 (2.8 to 3.7) |
| Performance Max | $1.85 ($0.55 to $2.30) | $27 ($18 to $47) | 4.7 (2.6 to 5.5) |
| Non-brand search | $2.90 ($1.70 to $3.80) | $27 ($26 to $57) | 2.8 (1.0 to 3.5) |
Typical brand first, middle half in brackets. Non-brand search is a smaller sample, because not every store we run uses it.
- Brand search
- People searching your name. Cheap, with a huge ROAS, because most of them were already coming to you. It protects sales more than it creates them, so report it on its own.
- Shopping
- Product ads with a photo and price. The steadiest earner for most stores, with the tightest range of results.
- Performance Max
- Shopping plus YouTube, Display and more in one campaign. Its ROAS can look better than Shopping’s partly because it also picks up brand searches. Exclude your brand so you can see what it really adds.
- Non-brand search
- Searches for what you sell, from people who don’t know you yet. The dearest clicks and the lowest ROAS, but it’s where Google finds new customers.
So a Google account that’s mostly brand search will look cheap and very profitable, and one that’s mostly non-brand will look expensive. Neither tells you much until you split them.
How Google charges for ads
Google runs an auction every time someone searches. You pay when someone clicks, and usually less than your maximum bid, because you only pay enough to beat the next advertiser. Most accounts let Smart Bidding set the bid for each auction.
- No minimum spend. You set an average daily budget for each campaign.
- Days can run over. Google can spend up to twice your daily budget on a busy day, but over a month it won’t charge more than about 30.4 times the daily budget.
- GST. Australian accounts are billed in Australian dollars, with 10% GST on top of ad spend.
Cost per sale is then cost per click divided by how many clickers buy. The click price comes from the auction; the conversion rate comes from your product page, price and offer.
Do Google Ads cost more at Black Friday?
Not in our accounts. Meta gets much dearer in November, but Google’s click costs went down over Black Friday last year, and sales got far cheaper:
| 2025 | Cost per click | Cost per sale |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 19 Nov | $0.62 | $12.50 |
| 20 to 27 Nov, the lead-up | $0.45 | $7.00 (−44%) |
| 28 Nov to 1 Dec, Black Friday to Cyber Monday | $0.36 | $5.40 (−57%) |
| 3 to 10 Dec | $0.34 | $8.80 |
These figures are lower than the table in chapter 01 because they’re pooled across every account, and brand and Shopping clicks, which are cheap, make up more of the spend in sale weeks. The point is the direction: more people search for your brand and products during a sale, and more of them buy.
What that means for this Black Friday
- Don’t let budgets cap you on the big days. A campaign limited by budget on Black Friday misses the cheapest sales of the year.
- Raise targets or budgets from the lead-up week, not on the Friday.
- Update your ads and promotion assets with the offer, and make sure the product feed carries sale prices.
Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday is 30 November.
What makes Google Ads cost more or less
- Your mix of campaigns. The biggest one (chapter 02). More non-brand search means dearer clicks.
- Your category. Crowded categories with big advertisers, like supplements, skincare and fashion, have dearer clicks than niche products.
- Your keywords and match types. Loose broad match on a new account pays for searches that don’t buy. Our Google Ads guide covers how to start.
- Your product feed. In Shopping and Performance Max, the titles, images and prices in your feed decide which searches you show for. The Google Shopping guide covers the feed.
- Your landing page. A slow page or one that doesn’t match the search lowers Quality Score and conversion rate.
- Your price against competitors. Shopping ads show prices side by side, so being dearer costs you clicks and sales.
- Your tracking. Smart Bidding spends based on the sales you report. Counting sales twice, or not at all, makes it bid badly.
How much should you spend on Google Ads?
How we set Google budgets
We set Google budgets campaign by campaign from the target cost per sale: each Shopping, Performance Max and non-brand campaign gets enough to buy three to five sales a day, brand gets just enough to cover searches for your name, and we raise budgets 15–20% at a time, a week or two apart, while the cost per sale holds.
The reason is data. Smart Bidding learns from sales, and a campaign that buys one sale a day learns very slowly. Google asks for at least 15 conversions in 30 days before using target ROAS; we’d rather see 30 or more.
- Set a target cost per sale from your margin (chapter 07).
- Multiply by three to five for each main campaign’s daily budget. At a $27 target, that’s about $80 to $135 a day. Whatever you can afford, don’t let a campaign drop below about 30 sales a month.
- Start with fewer campaigns. Shopping or Performance Max plus brand search is enough for most stores. Every extra campaign splits the sales Smart Bidding learns from. Across our accounts, Shopping and Performance Max take a little over half of all Google spend.
- Give brand a small budget of its own, sized to the searches for your name. In our accounts that’s usually $20 to $40 a day.
- Judge changes over two weeks or two buying cycles, whichever is longer, and give a new Performance Max campaign at least six weeks, as Google recommends. Then raise the budget in steps.
- Keep 10–20% for testing once the account is profitable: a new campaign type, a product range, or AI Max against your keywords.
What if you can’t spend that much yet?
Put what you have into one Shopping or Performance Max campaign and brand search, and start bidding on maximise conversion value without a target. Add a ROAS target once the campaign has a month of steady sales. The ad budget calculator works backwards from a revenue goal if you’d rather start there.
Is your Google cost per sale profitable?
A $27 sale is cheap for some stores and a loss for others. What matters is what each sale leaves after the product, shipping and fees.
| Step | Example |
|---|---|
| Average order | $90 |
| Margin after product, shipping and fees | 50%, so $45 a sale |
| Break-even cost per sale | $45 |
| Break-even ROAS | $90 ÷ $45 = 2.0 |
| At a $27 cost per sale | $18 profit a sale, before overheads |
Check this with brand search taken out. Brand’s cheap sales can make the whole account look profitable while non-brand loses money. The CPA calculator and break-even ROAS calculator do the maths from your own figures.
How Google compares with Meta
Google catches people already searching; Meta finds people who weren’t looking yet. Our Meta ads cost guide has the same numbers for Facebook and Instagram, including what happened to Meta costs last Black Friday.
Thanks for reading, and I hope that helps. If you’d rather hand it over, this is how we run Google Ads for eCommerce brands. And if you just want a second pair of eyes on what you’re paying, that’s what the call is for.
Sam Despo
Founder & Director, Pulp Digital
