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Digital Marketing & SEO vocabulary · Paid Search and Advertising

CPC

Meaning in digital marketing & SEO, with examples

/ˌsiː piː ˈsiː/abbreviationCore term

In digital marketing & SEO, CPC means: Short for cost per click: the amount an advertiser pays for one click on an ad, often reported as an average over a campaign.

In Turkish: tıklama başına maliyet, TBM

How it is used

A daily metric in paid search and social ads. CPCs rise in competitive periods such as Black Friday. People talk about average CPC, max CPC (the highest amount you are willing to bid) and lowering the CPC.

Example sentences

  1. Our average CPC doubled in November because every retailer was bidding on the same keywords.

  2. A better quality score can lower your CPC.

Common collocations

  • average CPC
  • max CPC
  • lower the CPC
  • high CPC
  • PPCShort for pay-per-click: an advertising model in which the advertiser pays each time someone clicks an ad, not when the ad is shown.
  • bidThe maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a click, view or other result in an ad auction; the same word is also used as a verb.
  • quality scoreA 1–10 rating that Google Ads gives to keywords, based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.
  • CPMShort for cost per mille: the price an advertiser pays for one thousand impressions of an ad. 'Mille' is Latin for thousand.
  • CPAShort for cost per acquisition (or cost per action): the average amount spent on advertising to get one customer, lead or other conversion.

More terms: Paid Search and Advertising

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