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Payment and models

CPC (Cost Per Click)

Also called Cost Per Click, price per click, PPC, pay per click.

Short answer

CPC (Cost Per Click) is the price an advertiser pays for each click, whether or not the click leads to a sale. In affiliate marketing, CPC is usually the affiliate’s own cost of buying traffic, not the way the program pays.

Definition of CPC (Cost Per Click).

CPC measures what a click costs. On ad platforms such as Google Ads and Meta Ads, the price is set in an auction where the bid is combined with a quality assessment, so two advertisers rarely pay the same for the same click. The CPC shown in your report is therefore an average of many auctions, not a price list.

As a payment model in an affiliate program, CPC means the affiliate receives a fixed amount per click, regardless of what happens next. The model puts all the risk on the advertiser: it pays for traffic, not results, and the quality only becomes clear once the traffic has been bought. That is why CPC appears more often in display and media deals than in performance-based programs.

For the affiliate, the maths usually runs the other way. A PPC affiliate buys clicks on an ad platform, sends the traffic on and earns commission on the purchases it generates. The business lives or dies on the relationship between what a click costs to buy and what it earns on average.

How it is calculated

CPC = total ad spend ÷ number of clicks

total ad spend
everything paid to the ad platform in the period, excluding VAT
number of clicks
the clicks the platform invoices for, not necessarily the ones that arrived

Example

Ad spend
DKK 4,500
Clicks
1,800
CPC
DKK 2.50

A CPC of DKK 2.50 only means something next to EPC: if the same clicks earn DKK 3.10 on average, there is DKK 0.60 left per click.

What drives CPC up

Competition for the same keyword is the most obvious factor, but not the only one. A low click-through rate drags the quality assessment down and the price up, broad keywords collect clicks from people with no intention to buy, and a slow or irrelevant landing page is penalised in both price and position.

Time of day and device matter too. The same keywords can cost considerably more in peak season and in the hours when the conversion rate is highest – which are often exactly the hours when bidding still pays off.

The click you pay for is not always the click that gets counted

The ad platform charges when someone taps. The affiliate program only counts once the redirect has completed and the click has been recorded. Traffic disappears between those two points: users who abandon the page load, blockers that stop the redirect, and known bots that are deliberately not recorded.

A gap of a few per cent between the platform’s click count and the program’s is normal. If the difference reaches double digits, the cause is usually technical: one redirect hop too many, a parameter that gets dropped, or a landing page that forwards the visitor and loses the click ID along the way.

CPC vs. EPC

AspectCPCEPC
Directionmoney outmoney in
Measureswhat a click costs to buywhat a click earns on average
Determined bythe auction and competition on the ad platformconversion rate, order value and commission rate
Read inthe ad platform’s reportthe affiliate program’s figures
Used toset bids and budgetsdecide how high the bid can go

EPC is the ceiling on your CPC – if CPC is higher than EPC, you are paying to send traffic away.

How it goes wrong

  • 01

    CPC judged without EPC

    A low CPC is not a good deal in itself. Clicks at DKK 1 that earn DKK 0.40 are more expensive than clicks at DKK 4 that earn DKK 6. Always compare the two figures on the same traffic over the same period.

  • 02

    The average hides loss-making keywords

    An overall CPC of DKK 2.50 can conceal that a quarter of the keywords sit at DKK 8 without a single conversion. Break it down by keyword and ad group before you scale the budget.

  • 03

    Bids raised on too little data

    With 30 clicks and 1 sale, the measured earnings per click are close to noise. Bid decisions need enough conversions that a single sale does not move the number.

At Affilyflow

CPC (Cost Per Click) in practice

The click is the point where everything is locked in Affilyflow. Commission rate, commission type and attribution window are copied to the click row the moment the link is followed, and a later change to the program does not touch clicks that have already been recorded.

Known bots get neither click registration nor attribution, and every tracking event is logged, including those that did not become a sale. That is why the click count in Affilyflow and the click count in your ad account are rarely identical: the two figures count different things.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good CPC?

There is no general level. A CPC is good when it sits far enough below your EPC to cover your working time and the campaigns that miss. The figure must always be judged against the earnings on the same traffic.

What is the difference between CPC and EPC?

CPC is what you pay for a click, EPC is what a click earns on average. CPC comes from the ad platform, EPC from the affiliate program, and the difference between them is your margin per click.

Can you get paid per click in an affiliate program?

Some media and display deals pay per click, but in performance-based programs it is uncommon, because the advertiser then carries all the risk for the quality of the traffic. Sales and leads are the common basis.

Why does Google Ads show more clicks than my affiliate dashboard?

The platform charges at the tap, while the program only counts a completed redirect. Abandoned page loads, blockers and filtered-out bots mean the two figures are never identical. A small gap is normal, a large one points to a technical fault.

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