Every campaign AdPlus launches or syncs reports its impressions, clicks, spend and conversions back into one place. That gives us something most benchmark posts do not have: the same measurement, applied the same way, across eight ad networks at once, including ChatGPT Ads, which almost nobody has published numbers for yet.
This report covers the 90 days ending October 20, 2026. It is small-business money: the campaigns below are run by founders, small teams and a handful of agencies, with daily budgets mostly between $5 and $100. Read it as “what a small advertiser actually paid this quarter”, not as a market average.
How we counted
- Source: weekly performance snapshots of every campaign AdPlus manages, deduplicated per campaign and week.
- Filter: campaigns with at least 1,000 impressions and non-zero spend in the window. Networks with fewer than two qualifying campaigns are shown but flagged.
- Totals vs medians: CPM, CPC and CTR in the first table are pooled totals (all spend divided by all impressions or clicks). The median columns are per-campaign medians, which tell you what a typical campaign saw rather than what the biggest spender saw.
- No account is identifiable. Figures are aggregated across accounts; the smallest group here still spans several advertisers except where noted.
What ads cost per network, July to October 2026
| Network | Campaigns | Spend | CPM | CPC | CTR | Median CPC | Median CTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Ads (OpenAI) | 10 | $25,794 | $21.51 | $1.48 | 1.46% | $7.34 | 0.41% |
| Meta (Facebook, Instagram) | 11 | $7,752 | $17.04 | $0.70 | 2.45% | $0.49 | 2.24% |
| Google Ads, all formats | 43 | $16,521 | $24.99 | $0.98 | 2.54% | $1.07 | 1.93% |
| Reddit Ads | 9 | $1,359 | $4.86 | $0.23 | 2.11% | $0.74 | 1.21% |
| Apple Search Ads | 3 | $1,400 | $19.95 | $1.56 | 1.28% | $1.37 | 1.38% |
| Microsoft Advertising | 6 | $1,613 | $21.69 | $0.51 | 4.27% | $0.90 | 3.96% |
| TikTok Ads | 2 | $236 | $10.74 | $0.45 | 2.38% | $0.39 | 2.79% |
| Snapchat Ads (1 campaign) | 1 | $256 | $2.40 | $0.25 | 0.97% | $0.25 | 0.97% |
Google Ads is split out below because “Google” is five different auctions.
Google Ads by campaign type
| Campaign type | Campaigns | Spend | CPM | CPC | CTR | Median CPC | Median CTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | 10 | $6,489 | $245.72 | $3.37 | 7.29% | $2.90 | 5.75% |
| Shopping | 2 | $6,329 | $55.79 | $1.86 | 3.00% | $1.90 | 4.59% |
| Demand Gen (YouTube, Discover, Gmail) | 23 | $2,340 | $7.15 | $0.52 | 1.37% | $0.87 | 0.72% |
| App campaigns | 4 | $735 | $16.13 | $0.30 | 5.43% | $0.27 | 5.93% |
| Video (in-stream) | 1 | $186 | $1.39 | $0.04 | 3.13% | — | — |
| Performance Max (1 campaign) | 1 | $41 | $16.52 | $0.49 | 3.35% | — | — |
What stands out
ChatGPT Ads is the most expensive click in the set, by a wide margin at the campaign level. The pooled CPC of $1.48 hides the spread: the median campaign paid $7.34 per click at a 0.41% click-through rate. One large, well-optimised account pulls the pooled average down; a typical first campaign there should budget for several dollars per click. It is also where the most money went this quarter, which says something about how much curiosity there is for the new inventory.
Meta remains the cheapest reliable traffic for small budgets. A median CPC of $0.49 and a 2.2% CTR, with conversions reported on most campaigns. Nothing else in the table combines that price with that volume.
Google Search is expensive per click and still worth it for intent. $2.90 median CPC is six times Meta, but Search campaigns carried a 5.75% median CTR, meaning the clicks are from people looking for exactly the thing. Shopping sat in between at $1.90.
Demand Gen is the cheapest way onto YouTube. $7 CPM and $0.52 CPC pooled, from 23 campaigns, most of them running a single pinned YouTube video. Clicks are a side effect there; the view rate is the metric to manage.
Reddit is cheap reach, hard conversion. $4.86 CPM and $0.23 pooled CPC across nine campaigns, with no conversions attributed in the window. It works as a top-of-funnel channel for niche communities and should not be judged on last-click conversions.
Microsoft Advertising had the best pooled click-through rate of any network at 4.3% (a 4.0% median), on a $0.90 median CPC. Volume is the limit, not price.
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Get started →Small samples: TikTok (2 campaigns), Snapchat (1), Apple Search Ads (3) and Performance Max (1) are included for completeness. Treat those rows as single data points, not benchmarks.
How to use these numbers
If you are planning a first campaign, take the median CPC for the network, multiply by the number of clicks you need to make one sale at your conversion rate, and that is your real cost per sale on that network. For a product that converts 2% of clicks, Meta at $0.49 gives roughly a $25 cost per sale; Google Search at $2.90 gives roughly $145 but on far warmer traffic. AdPlus runs this arithmetic for you when it allocates a budget across networks, using the live version of this table.
We will refresh this report every quarter as the fleet grows. Network-level pages with industry splits live under the ad benchmarks hub.
FAQ
Where does the data come from?
From the campaigns AdPlus manages for its customers: the platform collects impressions, clicks, spend and conversions from each ad network’s reporting API and stores weekly snapshots. This report aggregates those snapshots across accounts.
Why are ChatGPT Ads clicks so much more expensive at the median than in the pooled figure?
Because spend is concentrated: a couple of large accounts bought most of the clicks at a low CPC, while the typical campaign paid several dollars per click. The median is the better planning number for a new advertiser.
Are these numbers comparable to WordStream or other industry benchmarks?
Partly. Industry benchmarks usually pool large enterprise spend. These figures come from small-business campaigns with budgets between $5 and $100 a day, so they describe what a small advertiser pays, which is usually higher per click and lower in volume.
How often is this updated?
Quarterly. The underlying tables that power AdPlus’s budget allocator update continuously.