Monthly market pulse

July 2026 Google Ads Market Benchmarks:
Highlighting the biggest KPI shift in the market.

Illustration of smec Market Observer - the Google Ads Benchmarks

undefinedundefinedThe biggest movers

Highlighting the biggest KPI shift in the market last month.

Metric & Trend

Context

Search CPC: 0.44€
-4% MoM
 

After popping to 0.46€ in June, Search CPC has eased back to 0.44€. The "Search picks up the slack" story we flagged in June hasn't hardened into a trend: one month up, one month back down. 

Standard Shopping CPC: 0.36€
-5% MoM

The cooldown continues. Standard Shopping CPC is down from 0.38€ to 0.36€, extending the calming trend we've been tracking as last year's PMax and Shopping surge unwinds. At 0.36€, Shopping is the cheapest click of the bunch.

Shopping Conversion Rate: 3.03%

-30% YoY 2-week downturn

The trend just flipped. After running roughly +40% YoY for many months, Standard Shopping conversion rates flattened to roughly 0% YoY in April and May, before tipping negative in late June—down 25% YoY in Week 25 and 35% in Week 26. Because these are like-for-like weekly YoY comparisons, this isn't just summer seasonality; it's a genuine step down versus 2025, and it's steepening. (Note on timing: we're reading late June even though it's August, since conversions need weeks to fully attribute—this is our most recent stable window.) Two weeks isn't a verdict, but a swing from +40% to −35% is too sharp to ignore—and it echoes the sub-prior-year weakness we've already flagged in Search.


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European Google Shopping data: smec Market Observer


The reckoning, in one chart. Once the EU's €3 levy hit on July 1, AliExpress went from flooring the accelerator (~42% in early June) to near-exit (~6%), and Temu more than halved (58% → ~21%) before a small bounce back toward 29%. Amazon and eBay—both unaffected by the tariff—didn't flinch. Turns out nobody wants to be the last advertiser holding a pile of border fees.

 

 undefined Industry watch

July 2026 Cost-per-click (CPC) trends per industry (Median data, Month-over-Month)

undefined Electronics: -5.3%

undefined Health / Beauty: +3.1%

undefined Apparel / Accessories: -3.6%

Want to see how these trends impacted your specific industry?

Check out the live data in the smec Market Observer.