Performance Max: How to Keep Control of Your Campaign
Automation removes manual levers. We show you which signals are still under your control.
A low CPC looks great in a report, but by itself it says nothing about the profitability of the campaign. A campaign can have the cheapest clicks in the account — and still produce zero sales.
Why CPC Is an Intermediate Metric
Cost-per-click measures auction efficiency, not business efficiency. Cheap traffic from an irrelevant audience ends up costing more than pricier but targeted traffic.
What to Look at Instead
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) directly shows how much revenue each dollar of budget generates. It's the metric to optimise first for e-commerce and any business with measurable sales.
For businesses with long sales cycles, add the cost of a qualified lead — not just any application, but one that actually reaches the sales team.
What Changes in Practice
Optimising purely for CPC often produces cheap but irrelevant traffic. Optimising for ROAS forces the system to find the audience that actually buys — even if the click costs more.
The transition between these approaches almost always looks like a temporary worsening of "pretty" metrics and a simultaneous increase in real profit.