PPC vs display advertising isn’t a theoretical debate in 2025—it’s the line item in your budget that keeps creeping up. WordStream’s 2025 benchmark pegs the average Google search click at $5.26 and the typical B2B lead at about $70, roughly five percent higher than last year. Display clicks still cost pocket change, but cost-per-lead can swing from bargain to blow-out depending on audience and funnel stage. In this guide, we’ll unpack the latest numbers, decision triggers, and sample budget splits so you can keep lead costs grounded as ad prices rise.

PPC vs display advertising – key differences and use cases

Format and placement

Search ads are short text listings that appear above or below Google or Bing results the moment someone types a matching query. Display ads are image or video units that surface across millions of websites, mobile apps, and social feeds while someone browses content.

Targeting and intent

• Search = keyword intent. You appear when a prospect actively searches for “best CRM for startups.”
• Display = audience context. You reach people based on demographics, interests, or past visits, even when they are simply reading industry news.

Performance at a glance

In 2025, search ads deliver an average 6.66 percent click-through rate (CTR) and convert 7.52 percent of clicks into leads. Display ads see a much lower 0.46 percent CTR and roughly 0.57 percent conversion, underscoring their awareness role (WordStream; Amra & Elma).

Practical use cases

1. Capture in-market demand: Bid on high-intent search terms when you need qualified leads fast.
2. Build brand memory: Run display prospecting to introduce your name before buyers start researching.
3. Nudge the undecided: Pair both channels with retargeting. Show display banners to past visitors, then raise bids when they search again.

Blending the two channels lets you meet the same buyer at different moments, turning early interest into bottom-funnel action while keeping overall cost per lead in check.

Format and placement (deeper dive)

Search ads live only on the results page, where space is scarce and competition fierce.

Display ads, by contrast, blanket the Google Display Network’s two million-plus websites and apps, a footprint that reaches about 90 percent of global internet users (Google Ads support). They show up while someone reads news, watches YouTube, or scrolls a LinkedIn feed, often before any explicit search occurs.

In short, search ads occupy a narrow but high-intent slot on results pages, whereas display ads trade precision for reach across the wider web.

2025 cost-per-lead benchmarks – search vs display

Cost per lead (CPL) is where your marketing meets finance. It shows how efficiently ad spend turns into a pipeline. In 2025, the average Google Ads lead costs $70.11, up five percent year over year. Display clicks still look cheap, yet lower intent pushes their CPL higher. Using fresh benchmarks keeps budget debates grounded in data instead of opinion.

Industry snapshot

*Display figures reflect Google Display Network averages for lead-form actions. Tight remarketing lists can cut these costs nearly in half.

Benchmarking both channels helps you see where to trim bids, tighten audiences, or shift budget before costs run away.

Costs along the funnel

• Top of funnel: White-paper or newsletter sign-ups sourced through display prospecting usually cost $20 to $50. You capture volume, yet intent stays low.
• Mid-funnel: Webinar registrations or free-trial activations land around $50 to $100 as prospects compare options.
• Bottom of funnel: Demo requests and pricing calls jump to $100 to $300 plus, especially in high-ticket B2B niches where search and display retargeting dominate.

Picture CPL like an inverted ladder: each rung narrows, becomes pricier, and moves closer to revenue. If your top-funnel leads outprice mid-funnel, or bottom-funnel volume stalls, the fix often requires more than small bid changes. Agencies that specialize in complex funnels routinely step in here. For example, PPC Masterminds reports cutting cost per lead by 27 percent for a mid-market SaaS brand in 2024 by restructuring campaigns around the funnel stage rather than treating all conversions equally. Approaches like that benchmark performance against clear CPL tiers and surface wasted spend that in-house teams often miss.

Why cost-per-lead benchmarks matter

Every click, impression, and bid tweak rolls up into one number your CFO watches: cost per lead. In 2025 the average Google Ads lead costs $70.11, and the typical click costs $5.26, both up a little more than five percent year over year. Display clicks still run well under a dollar, but with conversion rates around 0.57 percent, their CPL often rises instead of falls.

Benchmarks turn those facts into a scoreboard. They warn you about overspending before anyone calls a campaign “too expensive,” highlight under-funded winners, and keep budget reviews grounded in data rather than gut feel. Without a yardstick, optimization becomes guesswork and meetings drift from analysis to anecdotes.

2025 benchmarks by industry

*Search data comes from WordStream’s 2025 Google Ads benchmarks (16,000 U.S. campaigns, April 2024–March 2025).
**Display figures reflect average cost per lead in Meta Ads campaigns from Focus Digital’s July 2025 report covering 138 North-American accounts.

What stands out?

• Legal and B2B tech keywords stay premium. Search leads often top $100, so even a one-point lift in conversion rate moves the pipeline.
• The display shines for volume. E-commerce and education pull leads for roughly half the search price, though you will nurture longer before revenue closes.
• Financial services straddle the middle. Search and display CPLs sit within thirty percent of each other, making channel-mix tests worthwhile.

Use the table as a quick gut-check. If your CPL runs more than twenty percent above these numbers, audit targeting and landing-page fit; if it is well below, double-check lead quality before celebrating.

Cost shifts across the funnel

A single average CPL hides three very different price tiers:

*LeadSpot’s 2025 analysis of 1,200 B2B campaigns shows Google Ads CPL climbing sharply from top to bottom of the funnel.
**Focus Digital’s July 2025 Meta Ads report shows the opposite pattern for retargeting-heavy campaigns; CPL falls as intent sharpens.

Why the gap? Search ads face bidding wars on high-intent keywords, so bottom-funnel leads cost more. Display or social retargeting recycles visitors you already paid to attract, pushing the per-lead cost down even as intent rises.

Action check

• If your top-funnel CPL equals or exceeds middle-funnel costs, tighten creative targeting or your gating strategy.
• If bottom-funnel volume stalls despite a sensible CPL, expand the prospecting net up top.

Track each tier separately. When you do, a blurry average becomes a clear roadmap for smarter budget shifts.

Top five PPC agencies for 2025

Picking the right partner gets easier when you see verified results, awards, and focus areas in one place. Below are five firms that hold Google Premier Partner status (top three percent of agencies) and earned independent recognition within the last eighteen months.

How to use this table

1. Match gaps to strengths. If you suspect wasted spend, start with Disruptive Advertising; if you need global reach, short-list NP Digital.
2. Ask for proof. Request case studies that mirror your deal size and sales cycle.
3. Align incentives. Negotiate fee structures that reward lower CPL or higher pipeline, not just clicks.

Short-listing two agencies and running parallel 30-day tests often reveals the best cultural and performance fit without dragging out procurement.

PPC Masterminds – best for pure ROI

Based in Los Angeles and founded in 2013, PPC Masterminds manages more than $250 million in annual ad spend across Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn campaigns.

• Data-driven audits. A free initial review benchmarks your account against 40-plus metrics and surfaces wasted; DesignRush rates the agency five stars on every reviewed project.
• Value-based bidding. Campaigns are optimized toward a target cost per lead or return on ad spend, not generic clicks. A 2024 SaaS case study shows a 27 percent CPL drop within 90 days (internal report, available upon request).
• Month-to-month model. The no-contract approach means the team must prove ROI every 30 days.

Choose PPC Masterminds when you already spend a meaningful amount but need sharper profit from each dollar.

NP Digital – best for enterprise scale

With more than 950 employees across nineteen countries and over four billion dollars in managed media, NP Digital suits brands that advertise on multiple continents. The firm earned Performance Marketing World’s 2024 Global Agency of the Year award, repeating its 2023 win.

Why it works for enterprise programs

• Global bench strength. Expansion into twelve new markets in 2023 gives you on-the-ground talent in North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM.
• Channel breadth. Paid search, programmatic display, paid social, and commerce ads live under one roof, helpful when your finance team wants a single global dashboard.
• Proven scale. The agency added 386 enterprise clients in one year, including United Airlines and Sony Music, while maintaining high client-satisfaction scores.

Choose NP Digital when you need a partner that can launch campaigns in multiple languages, coordinate budgets across dozens of business units, and still present one clean report to the C-suite.

KlientBoost – best for conversion design

KlientBoost, headquartered in Costa Mesa, pairs paid search management with rigorous conversion rate optimization.

• Design plus data. More than fifty specialists split evenly between media buyers and designers, so ad creative and landing pages evolve together.
• Documented lifts. Public case studies show up to a 400 percent return on ad spend increase after landing page revamps for brands such as Hotjar and Segment.
• Process playbook. Techniques like Single Keyword Ad Groups and rapid A/B loops have generated over 200 published CRO case studies, giving you a clear roadmap for quick wins.

Choose KlientBoost when your ads already drive traffic but your forms or demos need stronger conversion power.

Disruptive Advertising – best for data-driven optimization

Utah-based Disruptive Advertising built its name on deep audits. After reviewing more than 2,000 Google Ads accounts, the team found that 76 percent of spend produced zero conversions (Disruptive Advertising).

What sets them apart

• Free forensic audit. Every prospect gets a 30-page report that flags wasted keywords, overlooked audiences, and tracking gaps.
• Optimization roadmap. Media buyers focus on fixes that show positive return on ad spend within 45 days; internal studies report a median 33 percent CPL drop for B2B clients from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025.
• Transparency tooling. Custom Looker dashboards refresh daily, so your marketing and finance teams see the same numbers without a black-box feeling.

Choose Disruptive Advertising when your budget is sizable, results have plateaued, and leadership wants verified savings before adding new spend.

Ignite Visibility – best for full-service integration

San Diego–based Ignite Visibility is one of only fifteen firms worldwide to earn Clutch’s Spring 2025 Top Digital Marketing Agency award, selected from more than 112,000 contenders for proven multichannel results (PRWeb).

What sets them apart

• All-channel bench strength. A 150-person team covers paid media, SEO, email, CRO, and analytics under one roof, letting paid search insights flow straight into organic and vice versa.
• Premium partnerships. Google Premier, Meta Business, and Microsoft Elite badges give the team early access to beta ad features (Ignite Visibility).
• Enterprise track record. Ignite manages campaigns for brands such as Tony Robbins and DoorDash and twice landed on the Inc. 5000 for rapid growth (Ignite Visibility awards page).

Choose Ignite Visibility when you want one partner to orchestrate paid, organic, and retention efforts. That unified approach frees your internal team from juggling multiple vendors.

Decision map: when to use PPC, display, or both

Think of each channel as a tool for a moment in the buyer’s journey:

1. Need a pipeline now? Choose search PPC. A high-intent query such as “best CRM for SaaS” signals urgent pain. Showing up in that moment makes a prospect up to ten times more likely to click than a standard display impression (Snowball Creations). Use search when sales wants qualified conversations this quarter.
2. Building brand memory? Open with display prospecting. Display or social placements reach people before they start searching, often for pennies per click. Treat these impressions as low-cost introductions that raise branded-search volume later rather than instant form fills.
3. Re-engaging visitors who bounced? Layer in retargeting. Retargeted ads carry a 0.7 percent click-through rate versus 0.07 percent for cold display, and they can lift conversion rates by up to 150 percent (Amra & Elma; Zipdo). Because you already paid for the traffic, retargeting often cuts cost per lead in half.
4. Covering the full funnel? Blend all three. Run search to capture demand, display to seed awareness, and retargeting to recycle clicks. Track each stage separately so the cheapest clicks at the top do not hide expensive leaks at the bottom.

Choosing the right channel

• Urgent, bottom-funnel demand → search PPC. A query like “best ERP for manufacturing” shows intent today. Search ads draw a click-through rate around three to five percent, roughly ten times higher than standard display impressions (Amra & Elma).
• Brand awareness or new-market entry → display prospecting. Display and social placements introduce your name before anyone starts searching. Measure success by lift in branded search, not immediate cost per lead.
• Re-engaging past visitors → retargeting. Retargeted banners pull a 0.7 percent click-through rate and can raise conversion rates by up to 150 percent (Amra & Elma; Zipdo). Because the initial visit is already funded, the effective CPL often drops by 30 to 50 percent (World Metrics).
• Full-funnel growth → blend all three. Use search to catch existing demand, display to plant fresh interest, and retargeting to recycle traffic. Track each stage separately so cheap top-funnel clicks never mask costly bottom-funnel gaps.

Treat this matrix as a quick litmus test: urgency points to search, reach to display, efficiency to retargeting. Mature programs adjust the mix as seasonality and pipeline needs shift.

B2B budget allocation playbooks

Below are three reference mixes grounded in recent B2B ad-spend studies. Dreamdata’s 2024 benchmark shows that Google Search absorbs 39 percent of the typical paid budget, Google Display and YouTube combine for 13 percent, and LinkedIn captures 32 percent. Use those guardrails, then tune by stage.

1. Lean startup (up to $10k a month)

Spend 70 percent on search PPC to harvest high-intent queries fast. Put 20 percent into retargeting display or LinkedIn so every paid click gets a second chance, and keep 10 percent for small prospecting tests on niche sites. This split mirrors the search-heavy tilt most early-stage teams rely on while validating channels.

2. Growth-stage B2B (around $50k a month)

Shift toward balance: 50 percent search, 30 percent prospecting display or LinkedIn Sponsored Content, 20 percent multi-platform retargeting. The mix tracks Dreamdata’s finding that non-search channels already command nearly half of paid budgets once scale arrives.

3. Enterprise program (over $100k a month)

Aim for full-funnel coverage. Allocate 30 percent to search (including branded terms), 30 percent to high-reach display and YouTube, 20 percent to robust retargeting stacks, and 20 percent to specialty plays such as account-based display or content syndication. Large budgets can afford broad reach, but remember to track cost per opportunity alongside CPL to guard profitability.

Scenario 1: Lean startup

Early-stage B2B teams often spend under $5,000 a month on paid ads and direct about 40 percent of total marketing dollars to Google Ads (Inbeat). When every dollar needs to show pipeline fast, lean on bottom-funnel traffic:

• Search PPC – 70 percent. Bid on high-intent keywords such as category phrases and competitor names to book sales calls within days.
• Retargeting display or LinkedIn – 20 percent. A click you already funded is the cheapest one to convert; remarketing can lower effective CPL by about 30 percent (WeCanTrack).
• Prospecting tests – 10 percent. Try small display or Sponsored Content buys on niche sites. Keep the test running for two weeks, then scale or pause based on cost per lead.

Review the mix each month. If search CPL rises above target, move a few points into retargeting. If volume stalls, recycle unused prospecting dollars into proven keywords.

Scenario 2: Growth-stage B2B

Once annual revenue passes seven figures, paid budgets often reach $40,000 to $60,000 a month and channel diversity grows. Dreamdata’s 2024 benchmark shows companies at this stage splitting spend almost evenly across search and non-search media: Google Search at 39 percent, LinkedIn at 32 percent, and Google Display or YouTube at 13 percent.

Recommended mix:

• Search PPC – about 50 percent. Keep bottom-funnel keywords funded so sales never runs dry; shift a slice to Microsoft Ads if CPCs climb.
• Prospecting display and LinkedIn – roughly 30 percent. Wide-reach placements grow new-logo awareness and feed mid-funnel offers such as webinars. Track lift in branded search and view-through conversions, not just last-click CPL.
• Cross-channel retargeting – the remaining 20 percent. Serve ads on LinkedIn, the Google Display Network, and remarketing lists for search to recycle every visitor. Retargeted audiences can convert at up to 150 percent higher rates than cold traffic, lowering blended CPL.

Check channel-level CPL and pipeline each month. If display drives view-through revenue that last-click reports miss, keep the spend; if not, slide budget back to search until fresh creative or audiences are ready.

Scenario 3: Enterprise campaign

When monthly paid budgets exceed $100,000, the focus shifts from efficiency to market dominance. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey shows enterprises devote 30.6 percent of the entire marketing budget to paid media and more than 61 percent of that media spend sits in digital channels. Paid search remains the single largest digital line item at 13.9 percent, with display and social close behind.

A workable allocation:

• Search PPC – about 30 percent. Defend branded terms and capture high-intent, non-branded queries before competitors outbid you.
• High-reach display and YouTube – roughly 30 percent. Programmatic placements on trade journals and pre-roll video keep your brand in front of decision-makers who are not yet searching.
• Cross-channel retargeting – 20 percent. Combine web banners, LinkedIn Matched Audiences, and remarketing lists for search ads to recycle every paid or organic visitor. Retargeted users can convert at about one and a half times the rate of cold traffic (12AM Agency), which tempers blended CPL.
• Strategic plays – 20 percent. Fund account-based display to Fortune 1000 lists, sponsored webinars, or content-syndication networks that fill specific pipeline gaps.

Track two metrics in parallel: cost per lead and cost per opportunity. At enterprise scale, the opportunity metric reveals whether broad awareness buys reach a qualified pipeline. Move the mix in five-point increments each quarter based on which metric drifts off target.

Conclusion

Rising CPCs and CPLs aren’t a blip—they’re the new baseline. The way to win in 2025 is to use search to harvest, display to plant, and retargeting to recycle, then judge each by the KPI it truly moves (pipeline for search, branded lift and assisted revenue for display, blended CPL for retargeting). Anchor your plans to the industry and funnel benchmarks above, set guardrails (±20% of benchmark before you reallocate), and shift budget in 5–10 point moves based on opportunity and sales velocity, not clicks.

Make this your operating cadence:

• Instrument everything (UTMs, offline conversion imports, consistent lead stages).

• Split-test audiences, offers, and landing pages—one decisive variable at a time.

• Rebalance monthly and run short, parallel agency or tactic sprints when stakes are high.

• Report in layers: CPL → cost per opportunity → cost per acquisition/payback—so finance and growth stay aligned.

Do that, and the “PPC vs display” debate stops being philosophical—it becomes an efficient, full-funnel machine that protects margins as ad prices climb.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s a good CPL for my program?
Use the industry table above as your yardstick and treat ±20% as your guardrail. Also segment by funnel stage; top-, mid-, and bottom-funnel CPLs should ladder up logically (cheapest → priciest).

How should I split the budget if I’m starting from scratch?
Use the playbooks here. Quick heuristic: 70/20/10 (search/retargeting/prospecting) for lean teams; 50/30/20 for growth; 30/30/20/20 (search/display-YouTube/retargeting/strategic) for enterprise.

Are display leads lower quality?
They’re usually at an earlier stage—not worse. Gate appropriately, score leads, and nurture. Expect more touches before opportunity creation; judge display on assists and branded search lift, not last-click CPL alone.

Should I bid on my brand terms?
Yes—defend SERP real estate, control messaging, and prevent competitor conquesting. Keep branded budgets modest and monitor incremental conversions.

How long should I run a test?
Until you have enough signal to make a confident decision. As a rule of thumb, aim for 50+ conversions per variant or run for a full buying cycle—whichever comes first.

What’s the simplest way to forecast?
Start top-down:
Leads = Budget ÷ Target CPL
Pipeline = Leads × SQL rate × ASP × Win rate
Use this to sanity-check whether spend levels can plausibly hit revenue targets.

What if my top-funnel CPL is higher than mid-funnel?
Tighten targeting and offer gating, refresh creative, and exclude poor-fit placements. Top-funnel should be cheapest per lead; if not, it’s leaking.

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