UK ad spend reference tables: CPM, CPC and channel benchmarks in one place

These tables gather cost benchmarks for the main UK advertising channels, so you can see roughly what a campaign in each one tends to cost before speaking to a platform rep or an agency. They are a starting point for a budget conversation, not a quote, and no single figure in them will match exactly what your own campaign ends up paying.

Why the figures move about

Pricing on most digital channels is set by an auction, so the amount you pay depends on how many other advertisers want the same audience at the same moment. A retailer bidding for shoppers in the run-up to Christmas will see higher costs than the same business advertising in February, and a niche B2B audience prices differently from a mass consumer one. The tables give a range, because a single number would flatter the format and mislead anyone using it to plan.

What each model actually measures

• CPM (cost per thousand impressions): what you pay for every thousand times your ad is shown, regardless of whether anyone clicks it.
• CPC (cost per click): what you pay only when someone clicks through, more common on search and paid social.
• CTR (click-through rate): the share of people shown an ad who go on to click it, useful for judging whether a channel's audience is actually paying attention.

Two channels with the same CPM can cost very different amounts per customer once CTR and conversion rate are taken into account, so a benchmark on its own only tells part of the story.

Using a benchmark without being misled by it

A benchmark tells you the range other advertisers are paying. Before treating any figure here as a planning number, it's worth checking a few things:

• whether the benchmark covers your sector, since costs in finance or insurance sit well above costs in something like home and garden
• whether it reflects UK audiences specifically, since figures published for US markets on the same platforms often run at different levels
• how recently the figure was published, because auction-based pricing shifts with the season and with changes the platforms make to their own systems

Where to take it from here

The tables answer the question of what a channel normally costs. For a working budget shaped around your own goals, the Ad Budget Calculator turns these ranges into a monthly figure by channel, though its output depends on the numbers you put in and can be wrong for your specific market, so treat it as a draft to refine rather than a final answer. If you're weighing two channels against each other directly, the CPM & CPC Benchmark Comparator sits alongside these tables for that purpose.