How much competitors spend on Google Ads: the Spend Benchmarks report
Google Ads now has a Spend Benchmarks report showing how much “businesses like yours” spend and how many clicks they get per week. A useful reference point, but not a reason to raise your budget. Here is what it shows, what it hides and how to set a budget yourself.
What is this report?
The Spend Benchmarks report has been appearing under Overview in Google Ads accounts since September 2026, not for everyone yet. According to Search Engine Roundtable, it compares your weekly spend and clicks with businesses Google considers similar to yours — by industry and where you advertise. The outlet's example: you spent €284 and got 912 clicks; “competitors” spent €268 and got 765. Google has not published a help article on the report yet.
What does it show and what not?
| Shows | Doesn't show |
|---|---|
| Your weekly spend and clicks | Who these “similar businesses” are |
| Average spend and clicks of the peer group | Their margin, order value and conversion rate |
| A prompt to raise your budget | Whether extra budget pays off for you |
So treat it as a market reference, not a target. Google's official reference point is the Cost Tool: enter your industry and location to see typical daily budgets of similar advertisers.
How to set your budget yourself
- Work out your maximum cost per order: average order value × margin. With a 2,000 order value and 25% margin, an order can't cost more than 500.
- That gives break-even ROAS: 1 ÷ margin. At a 25% margin, ads pay off from 400% ROAS.
- Compare with actuals per campaign: where cost per order is below the maximum, you can scale; where it's above, fix the campaign first.
- Only then look at competitors: spending less than the group while staying profitable is room to grow, not a problem.
How Google spends your budget
- Your daily budget is the average you're comfortable spending per day over a month.
- On any single day most campaigns can spend up to 2× the daily budget.
- Over a month a campaign won't spend more than daily budget × 30.4.
- Google shows an “increase your budget” prompt next to the report — your unit economics should decide.
Metriverra shows spend, revenue and return for every channel on one screen, so your maximum cost per order is easy to check against actuals.
In short
- Spend Benchmarks compares your weekly spend and clicks with “similar businesses”.
- Who is in the group and their margins — not shown.
- Google's official reference: the Cost Tool by industry and location.
- Set budget from your maximum cost per order: order value × margin.
- A campaign can spend up to 2× its daily budget in a day and no more than ×30.4 in a month.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable — Google Ads Spend Benchmarks Report (16.09.2026) · Google Ads — Cost Tool · Google Ads Help — About average daily budgets
