Monthly market pulse
August 2026 Google Ads Market Benchmarks:
Highlighting the biggest KPI shift in the market.
The biggest movers
Highlighting the biggest KPI shift in the market last month.
Metric & Trend | Context |
|---|---|
Shopping CPC: 0.35€ | The summer lull holds. After June's €0.38 peak, Standard Shopping CPC has eased to a €0.35 median in August, with PMax and Search cooling alongside it. Enjoy it while it lasts — peak season is about to reverse the trend. |
Search | The slide finds a floor. After peaking near 16.8% in January, Search CTR stepped down hard in mid-July and has flatlined at ~12% through August — its lowest level of the year. Still ahead of last year, but the lead has thinned from roughly +3pp to +2pp, and last year's curve is rising into September while this year's isn't. |
Search Conversion Rate: 5.28% | The trend just flipped — but not for the reason you'd want. Search conversion rate has sat in a narrow 5–5.5% band all year while last year ran at 6–7.3%. This month it finally edges ahead, purely because last year's rate collapsed in July, not because this year improved. Higher CTR, lower CVR: the clearest sign in the dataset that Search is matching broader, not converting better. |
European Google Shopping data: smec Market Observer
Temu is creeping back: after bottoming out near 21% in mid-July, advertisers facing Temu climbed back to ~36% through August — while AliExpress kept sliding to a record-low ~6%. The tariff effect may be wearing off for one of them, not both.
Industry watch
August 2026 Cost-per-click (CPC) trends per industry (Median data, Month-over-Month)
Electronics: -3.7% Health / Beauty: -5.4% Apparel / Accessories: -5.0%