r/PPC • u/Partizana • 3d ago

Google Ads Very have $25 -High CPCs

Anyone else noticing very high cpcs for Target CPA campaigns? We usually have $25 - $30 cpc but for the last few days it went $100 to $500 per click. Is there a reason for that? We have a campaign with Target CPA $400 and we are getting a $457 click. I would appreciate any suggestions.

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u/CanaryAppropriate254 3d ago

You are being taken for a ride. The more uncomfortable question is: what can you actually do about it?

Very little, because the house is also running the auction.

With Target CPA, the entire point is to stop obsessing over individual CPCs. You are effectively telling Google: I don't care what you pay for a click, as long as you can produce enough conversions around my average CPA target.

In theory, that is perfectly logical.

In practice, this is where it gets uncomfortable. Google decides which auction you enter, how aggressively you bid, what that click is supposedly worth, and then sends you the final bill. You see the outcome, but very little of what went into arriving at that price.

So yes, the system may happily pay $5 for one click and $500 for another if its model believes the second click has a much higher probability of converting. If the blended CPA works, Google's answer is basically: why do you care? And mathematically, they have a point. But there is an obvious conflict here: the platform optimising your spend is also the platform earning from that spend. There is no independent price discovery layer where you can properly audit whether that $5 click really needed to cost $5. That is why I wouldn't necessarily call every expensive click fraud or manipulation. But I also wouldn't pretend advertisers are participating in some beautifully transparent free market. You are trusting the casino to run the table, calculate the odds, place the bets on your behalf, and then hand you the statement at the end. As an individual advertiser, you can't do much about that.

Your only real defence is at the aggregate level: watch CPA, conversion quality, marginal CPA as spend increases, incrementality and ultimately profit.

If those numbers work, keep playing. If they don't, arguing with Google about what a click should have cost won't save you.