Paid search advertising conversion rates have decreased across nearly all industries year over year. Meanwhile, the cost of generating leads through search ads continues to increase, although not as drastically as in prior years. That’s according to a new 2023 search advertising benchmark report from LocalIQ’s WordStream. It features data on the average conversion rate, cost per lead (CPL), click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC), compared to 2022. Why we care. It’s good to understand whether you doing better or worse than your competitors in paid search so you can optimize for better results, at a lower cost. As always, in PPC, you want to always strive to be than average. Conversion rate: 7.04%. Only two industries (Beauty and Personal Care, Education and Instruction) avoided a decrease in conversion rate from search ads. Some of the decreases were significant, WordStream reported (e.g., Arts & Entertainment was down 36.2% YoY and Apparel, Fashion and Jewelry was d...