Search Advertising Benchmarks by Industry 2026 (LocaliQ)

Summary:

This report from LocaliQ, a USA TODAY Co. marketing company that sells search advertising services, covers search ad benchmarks by industry for 2026. It gives benchmark figures for click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate and cost per lead across 23 industries, plus year-over-year changes, and closes with tips for improving Google Ads campaigns.

The data comes from 13,474 LocaliQ customer search campaigns that ran from April 2025 to March 2026, all of them US campaigns, with at least 52 unique active campaigns in every industry subcategory. It is measured performance data, not a survey. LocaliQ’s platform moves budget between search channels, and overall about 80–85% went to Google and 15–20% to Microsoft.

The figures are medians, not means, calculated that way to limit the effect of outliers — even though the report calls them averages throughout.

Key findings:
• Costs held steady after years of sharp rises. Overall medians were 6.64% CTR, $5.42 CPC, 8.18% CVR and $66.69 CPL. CTR barely moved (−0.3%), CPC rose 3.04% and CVR rose 8.78%.
• Cost per lead fell for the first time in five years, down 4.88% from $70.11 in 2025.
• Conversion rate went up in 87% of industries. Beauty and Personal Care gained the most (+32.34%). Career and Employment fell the most (−29.42%), its second drop in a row.
• The cost gap between industries is wide. Attorneys and Legal Services had the highest CPC ($9.87) and the highest CPL ($131.63). Arts and Entertainment had the lowest of both ($1.63 CPC, $26.84 CPL) and the highest CTR (12.75%).
• CPL fell most in Travel (−39.35%), Beauty and Personal Care (−34.95%) and Physicians and Surgeons. It rose most in Automotive – For Sale (+13.90%), Health and Fitness and Career and Employment (both +7.26%).
• Over ten years, clicks cost much more but leads only a little more. CPC rose from $2.32 in 2016 to $5.42, while CPL rose about 13%, from $59.18 to $66.69.

Margin notes:
This is a vendor report built on LocaliQ’s own client campaigns, so the numbers reflect its client mix and its optimization platform, not the whole market. LocaliQ itself credits its platform for its clients’ stable CTR. The methodology blends Google and Microsoft spend, but many headlines and charts say “Google Ads”. The LocaliQ page itself does not say which countries the campaigns ran in; the same dataset published under the WordStream brand states it is US campaigns only, and that is where the geography and the median wording come from. A few numbers don’t match between text and charts. Travel’s CTR is 9.82% in the text and 9.32% in the chart. Physicians and Surgeons’ CPL drop is −29.54% on page 8 and −29.64% on page 18. The CPL-by-year chart also shows the same $66.69 for both 2024 and 2026.