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CPC is a traffic acquisition metric, not a profit metric
Cost per click measures how expensive it is to buy traffic. It is one of the most common paid media metrics because platforms like Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and many retail media systems bill or benchmark performance around clicks. But CPC only measures traffic acquisition cost. It does not tell you whether the traffic converted or whether the campaign was profitable.
To understand the true efficiency of your paid traffic, you must combine CPC with downstream funnel metrics. Use our CPM calculator to analyze impressions-based buying, and monitor return on ad spend with the ROAS to ROI calculator.