CPC

CPC - Cost Per Click, the cost of one click on an advertisement. In most performance platforms (VK Ads, Ya.Direct, Telegram Ads) you participate in an auction for each click, and CPC is your real bid after all adjustments to the algorithm.

CPC is a superficial metric, I use it for diagnosis, not to evaluate performance. If CPC has increased sharply (by 50%+), it means competition in the auction has increased or my creatives have burned out. If the CPC is low, but the conversion to lead is poor, the problem is in the landing page or targeting, not in the traffic.

CPC benchmarks by niche in Russian performance 2026: gaming - 9 ₽, e-com electronics - 18 ₽, EdTech - 22 ₽, MedTech - 42 ₽, b2b SaaS - 56 ₽.

The main mistake marketers make is optimizing their CPC campaign. This is the path to cheap but garbage traffic. You need to optimize by CPL or CPA, and CPC is simply monitored as an indicator of the health of the auction.