Every business asking "what should I pay for ads in Australia" deserves a real answer with a source attached, not a converted Malaysian figure or an agency's confident guess.
The real numbers
| Metric | Range | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search CPC | A$2–4 | General cross-industry range; specific verticals run materially higher (legal ~A$8.67, dental ~A$7.66). |
| Meta CPC (average) | A$1.47 | Single reported average, up 12% year-on-year as of the source's 2026 report. |
| Meta CPM | A$9.63–21.73 | Median ~A$14.38; finance/insurance regularly exceeds A$30, food/beverage sits closer to A$12. |
| GST rate | 10% | Standard Australian GST rate, unchanged since 1999 — relevant when quoting AUD prices to AU businesses. |
Full sourcing and verification dates for every figure above are on our MY, SG & AU ad benchmarks page, alongside our first-party Malaysia and Singapore figures.
Why these are cross-industry, not vertical-specific
shakalakaa's Malaysia and Singapore benchmarks are first-party — aggregated from accounts we actually manage. Our Australian figures are different, and we say so plainly: they're curated from published third-party industry reports, cross-referenced across sources where possible, because we don't yet manage a large enough Australian account sample to publish first-party vertical figures.
We could have taken the single reported aesthetic-clinic or dental-specific data point we found in one source and published it as a confirmed band — we didn't, because it wasn't independently confirmed by a second source.
It stays gated in our data rather than guessed. See the aesthetic clinic and dental clinic Australia pages for what we could confirm about those categories specifically (mostly compliance, not yet cost).
What this means for your budget
If you're planning an Australian campaign, use the cross-industry ranges above as a sanity floor, not a promise — a legal or financial services account will run well above A$4 Google CPC, while food and beverage sits below the Meta CPM median.
Budget conservatively against the high end of your closest comparable category until you have a full quarter of your own account data to benchmark against.
What we do differently
We build Australian campaigns with AUD-native budgeting from day one — never a converted Malaysian or Singapore figure applied to an Australian account, whether that's Google Search and Shopping, Meta, or the two run together as one accountable performance marketing system. See the Australia practice overview and, for regulated clinic categories specifically, our AHPRA cosmetic advertising guide.
Related tools: ballpark a Google Ads spend with the Google Ads cost calculator.
Ready to grow your business with proven digital marketing?
Our team specialises in performance marketing built for the Australian market — AHPRA/TGA-aware compliance, AUD budgeting, and campaigns run for Australian accounts.
Published by shakalakaa team · Editorial standards
