Paid Media Benchmarks
Monthly CPM, CTR, conversion rate, ROAS, and CPA benchmarks, aggregated across QRY's managed paid media spend. Updated every month so you can pressure-test your numbers against the real market.
Aggregated by Athena, QRY's measurement stack.
CPMs held steady as post-holiday inventory stabilized, while Facebook CTR bounced back sharply after a soft February. Conversion rate pulled back from last month's high — is yours following the same seasonal pattern?
Wondering how your numbers stack up? Get your CPM, CTR, ROAS, and CPA scored against the QRY portfolio.
Request your benchmarkWhat are paid media benchmarks?
Paid media benchmarks are aggregated performance metrics from real ad accounts, used to calibrate what a healthy campaign looks like. They help marketing leaders answer the question: are my CPMs, CTR, and ROAS in line with the market, or is something off? QRY's monthly benchmarks draw from the full client portfolio, aggregated by channel and rolled up to protect individual brand performance.
The five metrics most paid media operators rely on:
- CPM (cost per thousand impressions), what you pay for reach
- CTR (click-through rate), how often your ad earns attention
- Conversion rate, how often that attention turns into action
- ROAS (return on ad spend), revenue per dollar spent
- CPA (cost per acquisition), what it costs to acquire one customer
Benchmarks are most useful as a calibration tool, not a target. Every business has its own margin, LTV, and competitive dynamics. A good CPM for a $50 AOV DTC brand is a bad one for an enterprise SaaS company. Use these numbers to pressure-test your own, not to chase parity.
How these benchmarks are calculated
The numbers on this page aggregate performance data from the QRY client portfolio over the most recent complete month. Data is anonymized and rolled up to protect individual brand performance while preserving statistical signal.
- Portfolio scope
- QRY's managed spend across ecommerce, retail, CPG, pharma, and financial services.
- Update cadence
- Monthly, within 7 days of the prior month close.
- Data sources
- Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, programmatic and CTV platforms, and client-side measurement.
- Averaging approach
- Channel-weighted portfolio averages. Outlier campaigns more than 3 standard deviations from the portfolio mean are excluded to prevent one account's spike from skewing the median.
Every benchmark comes with a “this month” context note from our analytics team, surfacing what moved and why. If you want the full methodology document, get in touch.
What counts as a good number for your business?
Benchmarks are calibration, not targets. Here is how to read each metric in context of your specific business.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions)
A good CPM depends on channel, audience, and competitive pressure. Meta prospecting CPMs in CPG typically sit $10 to $25; retail media peaks at $30 to $45 during Q4. Rising CPM with flat CTR usually means audience fatigue. Rising CPM with rising CTR often means you are in the right auction with better creative.
CTR (click-through rate)
CTR varies more by creative than channel. Prospecting CTR under 0.5% usually indicates a mismatch between audience and message. Retargeting CTR under 2% suggests the creative is not resurfacing the right buying moment. Watch CTR trends over time, not point-in-time values.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is an on-site metric more than a media metric. It correlates with landing page quality, offer clarity, and trust signals. If conversion rate dropped while CTR stayed flat, look at the landing page first. Healthy DTC conversion rates usually sit in the 2 to 5% range depending on price point.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
ROAS tells you payback, not profit. A ROAS of 3.0 can be great or terrible depending on margin, LTV, and fixed costs. Healthy DTC brands usually need 2.5 to 4x blended ROAS. Enterprise B2B often operates at 0.5 to 1.5x blended ROAS with longer sales cycles and higher LTV.
CPA (cost per acquisition)
CPA tells you channel efficiency in isolation. For most consumer brands, blended CPA under one-third of LTV is a healthy ratio. Watch the direction, not the absolute value. Rising CPA with stable LTV is the early signal of a broken funnel. Compare payback windows, not just CPA snapshots.
Frequently asked questions
- What are paid media benchmarks?
- Paid media benchmarks are aggregated performance metrics from real ad accounts, used to calibrate what a healthy campaign looks like. They help brands answer the question: are my CPMs, CTR, and ROAS in line with the market, or is something off? Common paid media benchmarks include CPM, CTR, conversion rate, ROAS, and CPA.
- How often are these paid media benchmarks updated?
- QRY publishes an updated set of portfolio benchmarks every month, typically within 7 days of the prior month close. Each update reflects the most recent complete month of campaign performance across the QRY client portfolio.
- Where does the benchmark data come from?
- The benchmarks aggregate anonymized performance data from QRY's managed spend across ecommerce, retail, CPG, pharma, and financial services. Data sources include Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, programmatic and CTV platforms, and client-side measurement infrastructure.
- Why are my paid media numbers different from the benchmark?
- Benchmarks are portfolio averages. Your business has its own product margins, customer LTV, audience, channel mix, and competitive pressure, so your numbers will diverge. The right way to use benchmarks is as a sanity check: if you are far outside the portfolio range, investigate why. If you are roughly in range, your attention is better spent on profitability drivers than chasing benchmark parity.
- What counts as a good CPM in paid media?
- A good CPM varies by channel, audience, and season. For Meta prospecting in CPG, CPMs typically fall between $10 and $25. Retail media inventories can exceed $30 to $45 during Q4. CTV and premium OLV are priced higher still, often $30 to $60 CPM. Compare your CPM to the relevant channel and vertical, not a blended industry average.
- What counts as a good ROAS in paid media?
- Healthy ROAS depends on product margin, LTV, and payback window, not the advertising metric alone. DTC brands with 60 to 80% gross margin often target 2.5 to 4x blended ROAS. Enterprise B2B with high LTV but long sales cycles can operate at 0.5 to 1.5x and still be profitable. A blended ROAS below 1.5x on a 20%-margin business is a red flag; a blended ROAS of 3x on a 10%-margin business may still be losing money.
- How should I use these benchmarks as a marketing leader?
- Use benchmarks as calibration, not as targets. Compare your portfolio-weighted averages to the channel and vertical slices that match your business. If a channel is significantly underperforming the benchmark, dig into audience, creative, and measurement. If you are outperforming the benchmark, use it to pressure-test whether the gains are repeatable or an artifact of a favorable moment.
- Do you offer paid media benchmarks by industry or vertical?
- Vertical slicing is on the roadmap. Today's report covers portfolio-level benchmarks across all managed verticals. Deeper vertical cuts, specifically pharma, financial services, CPG, and retail, will land in subsequent monthly updates. Subscribe to the newsletter below to get notified when vertical benchmarks ship.
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