BY Kathy Crosett
U.S. advertisers invested $102.9 billion for paid search in 2024. Paid search continues to be where advertisers spend heavily on their digital outreach. The format accounts for around 40% of digital ad spending. With all that spending, marketers should be monitoring their results. For that, they need to pay attention to the best paid search analytics.
An Industry Snapshot
A great paid search campaign requires developing compelling content that includes a FOMO-generating offer. Your accounts must bid on keywords related to their content. If all goes according to plan, the targeted audience members search online and are presented with a list of results. They may click on your account’s ad. At that point, your account pays for the ad, and hopefully gains a customer, either immediately or in the future.
The many steps in this process yield opportunities to track the right paid search analytics. Your account must be aware of the paid search metrics for their industry. In that way, they can benchmark their results. Recently, LocaliQ studied the results of thousands of paid search campaigns and calculated helpful stats for advertisers.
Here are the analytics that marketers should understand.
Cost-Per-Click
The cost-per-click for an advertiser varies widely between industries. LocaliQ’s data, reported through WordStream, shows that attorneys and legal services can expect to pay about $8.58 per click this year. But targeting broader audiences, such as arts and entertainment, will result in an average CPC of around $1.60. The average across industries is $5.26.
Click-Through Rate
CPC isn’t the only metric that your accounts should be worried about. They should also have a good understanding of their click-through rates (CTR).
What kind of CTR should your accounts be expecting? Across all categories in 2025, search advertising is producing a CTR of 6.66%. As with every measurement statistic, there’s wide variation across industries.
The dentists and dental services category yields about a CTR of about 5.44%. This means that for every 100 people who notice a local dentist’s ad online, just over five of them will click through to learn more. On the other hand, the arts and entertainment accounts you’re assisting should expect to experience a 13.1% CTR.
If too few clicks are coming in, that’s a sign that something about the campaign should change. In some cases, the creative aspect of the campaign is not compelling enough. Your accounts may also need to improve any offer contained in the campaign.
In addition, the campaign could be poorly targeted. If not enough people in the target audience are seeing the ads, better targeting is necessary.
Key Performance Indicators
LocaliQ analysts point out that the true measure of success for a paid search ad is checking out what key performance indicators (KPI) look like.
Conversion Rate
For that, your accounts should look into their conversion rate. In the LocaliQ study, that is the number of clicks that turned into leads. They’ll need to know the number of leads they received from their campaign. Before the campaign begins, secure agreement on how a lead is defined and measured. For example, it could be the number of people who filled out a form with the contact info. Divide the number of leads by the number of clicks to get the conversion rate.
On average, the conversion rate is 7.52%.
If your accounts are not experiencing a high enough conversion rate, you might want to help them run an A/B test. With that information, you’ll see which type of offer is working best.
Cost Per Lead
You should also provide your accounts with a cost per lead figure. To get there, divide the total campaign cost by the number of leads. That figure amounts to $70.11. This figure has increased significantly from 2021, when it was $41.40.
But not every industry is experiencing big cost increases in paid search. Career and employment and arts and entertainment have experienced some of the biggest decreases.
This year, automotive repair, service and parts will experience a cost per lead of $28.50. Compared to attorneys/legal services at $131.63, that figure can look like a bargain.
Your accounts should factor in the anticipated revenue they’ll receive from each new customer. And they can consider the comparative cost of leads generated by other media campaigns as they weight the value of paid search.
Summary
You can help your accounts improve their paid search outcomes by running a Digital Audit in AdMall. With this tool, you'll see a list of the top Google ad keywords for them. You'll also learn the search volume and CPC. And you can also show accounts the monthly search volume and clicks for competitor keywords. Don't let your accounts miss the opportunity to get the most from the best paid search analytics.
