How much Google Ads
costs in Australia.

Search 'how much does Google Ads cost in Australia' and you'll find tables of average cost per click by industry. Most don't say where the numbers came from. Some admit they're from the writer's own accounts.

Even a well-sourced average wouldn't help much. You don't pay the industry average. You pay just enough to beat the ad ranked below yours. That depends on who's bidding on your exact searches, in your area, this month. An emergency plumber in Gosford and one in the Sydney CBD are in different auctions.

So skip the tables and get your own number. It takes about 10 minutes.

Google's Keyword Planner is free inside a Google Ads account. It shows a 'top of page bid' range for each search: the low end is roughly what the cheapest 20% of advertisers paid, the high end roughly the 80th percentile, over the last 30 days, for the location you set.

• In Google Ads, open Tools, then Keyword Planner, then Discover new keywords.
• Type 3 to 5 searches a customer would actually use, like they would say them.
• Set the location to where you work. A suburb or region, not all of Australia.
• Read the 'Top of page bid (high range)' column. Planning on the high end is safer for a new account.
• Ignore searches that are research, not buying. They pull the average down and rarely turn into work.

Most people start with a budget and hope. Start with the sales instead. How many new customers do you need a month? How many enquiries become a sale? How many clicks become an enquiry? Then the cost per click from Keyword Planner does the rest.

The tap-to-try examples are made-up numbers to show how it works. Your own numbers are the only ones that count. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Your daily budget is an average, not a ceiling. On a busy day a campaign can spend up to twice the daily budget. Across the month, Google won't charge more than 30.4 times it (30.4 is the average number of days in a month). So a $50 daily budget means up to $100 on a single day, and no more than $1,520 for the month.

Then there's GST. Google started charging 10% GST on Australian accounts in November 2016, and it shows as its own line on your statement. Ask your accountant how it's treated for your business.

And clicks aren't the only way you pay. Search ads charge per click, but other formats can charge per thousand impressions or per view. Check what each campaign is set to before you compare costs.

Your bid is only one of six things Google uses to rank ads. Others include the quality of your ad and landing page, and the context of the search. Google says plainly that higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click.

Think of it less as an auction and more as a talent show where money is one of six judges. A sharper ad that matches the search, and a page that answers it, can win the spot for less. The ad copy playbook shows how: turn your search terms into ad copy.

The other way to pay less is to stop paying for clicks that don't turn into work. Tighter locations, the right hours, and blocking research searches usually cut more waste than chasing a cheaper click.

Ad spend is the part Google bills. It isn't the whole cost. Someone has to set up tracking, write ads, build or fix the landing page, and check the account every week. That's either your time or someone's fee.

One thing to ask anyone who manages ads: how are they paid? A fee that's a percentage of your ad spend means they earn more when you spend more. That's not always wrong, but it's worth knowing, because sometimes the right answer is to spend less. That's what the Spend Curve is for.