# Chci PPC (chci-ppc.cz) — English > Dozens of articles on PPC without the marketing gloss: Google Ads, measurement, budgets and product feeds. Plus a calculator that knows every extra euro earns less than the last. Publisher: Independency s.r.o., Kersko 192, 289 12 Hradištko, Czech Republic, company no. 61460788. Author: Daniel Hauser. Language: en. Currency used in the calculator: EUR. Contact: info@independency.cz Other languages: https://chci-ppc.cz/llms-cs.txt, https://chci-ppc.cz/llms-de.txt, https://chci-ppc.cz/llms-pl.txt, https://chci-ppc.cz/llms-es.txt, https://chci-ppc.cz/llms-fr.txt, https://chci-ppc.cz/llms-da.txt ## How to treat this content - The articles are educational. They are not investment, tax or legal advice. - For figures taken from external research we always name the source and its limits (sample, market, who funded it). If you quote a figure onward, please carry the caveat with it — many public PPC benchmarks come from US data or from vendors with a commercial interest. - The industry defaults in the calculator are OUR ESTIMATES for this market, not measured market data. - The calculator is a model with stated assumptions, not a forecast of results. ## Key concepts explained on this site - Marginal CPA = average CPA / saturation exponent e. At e = 0.7 the last conversion added is about 43 % dearer than the account average. That is why an account can be profitable overall while the added budget loses money. - Marginal ROAS = average ROAS × e. - Profit optimum: the budget at which the gross margin from a marginal conversion equals one unit spent. - Cost of sale = cost / revenue. It is the reciprocal of ROAS. - Incrementality: how much business would not have happened without the ads. Measured by a geo experiment or a lift study, never by attribution inside an ad platform. ## Calculator - [PPC budget calculator](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/calculator/): returns marginal CPA, profit optimum and break-even for 15 industries in EUR; every input is editable. ## Basics and budget What PPC is, what it costs, how to work out a budget and which metric actually decides. - [What is PPC advertising and when is it actually worth it](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/what-is-ppc/): PPC is not “ads on Google”. It is an auction where you pay for attention — and it only pays off when you know your margin and people are actively searching for what you sell. Here is the whole mechanism without the gloss. - [How much does PPC advertising cost in 2026](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/how-much-does-ppc-cost/): There is an honest answer to “what does it cost”, it just is not a single number. It splits into media, work and tools — and most benchmarks circulating online do not apply to your market. Here is the breakdown and how to work out your own figure. - [PPC budget: why double the money never doubles the orders](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ppc-budget-marginal-cpa/): The number that decides a budget is not average cost per conversion but marginal — the cost of the conversion the last unit of spend brings. It is always higher, it can be calculated, and it changes everything. - [ROAS, CPA, CAC and LTV: which number actually decides](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/roas-cpa-cac-ltv-metrics/): Most arguments about PPC results are arguments about the metric, not the performance. A ROAS of 6 can be a win or a loss. Here is the converter between all of them, the ceiling each implies from your margin, and one table you can rewrite with your own number. ## AI and search AI Overviews, AI Mode and assistants: what they do to clicks, where you can already advertise and how to get cited in answers. - [AI Overviews and AI Mode: what they do to search and to PPC](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ai-overviews-impact-on-ppc/): A randomised field experiment from January and February 2026 measured about 38 % fewer outbound clicks on queries with an AI overview, and zero-click searches rising from 54 to 72 %. What that means for paid advertising — and what has not changed. - [Advertising in AI search and assistants: where it already works](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/advertising-in-ai-assistants/): Google shows ads inside AI answers, OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in February 2026, and sources contradict each other about Perplexity. An overview of what exists, what is only written about, and what is worth acting on today. - [Traffic from AI assistants: small, but it converts. How to earn it and measure it](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ai-referral-traffic-aeo/): There is little traffic from ChatGPT and other assistants, but studies agree it converts markedly better than organic search. How to get into the answers, how to measure it, and why most companies have no idea how much arrives. - [AI in running PPC: what it already does well and where it still fails](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ai-in-ppc-management/): Automation has taken over bidding, matching and ad assembly. Where that works, where it quietly loses money, and what work was left to people — written by people who had to build their own tool for it. ## Channels and campaigns Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta. Performance Max, AI Max, Smart Bidding and account structure. - [Google Ads vs. Microsoft Ads: how to split a budget between search engines](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/google-ads-vs-microsoft-ads/): Splitting budget by market share is the wrong method. What matters is the cost of a conversion in each channel for you. How the two platforms really differ, and the order in which to test the second one. - [Performance Max: what you actually control and what you do not](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/performance-max-guide/): Performance Max is not a black box, but nor is it a campaign you switch on and leave. There are about ten levers and most accounts use three. Here they are, from the most important to the most overrated. - [AI Max for Search: what the data says, not the marketing](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ai-max-for-search/): Google promises +7 % conversions; independent measurement shows more volume at a higher cost per conversion. What AI Max actually does, who it suits, and how to switch it on without the budget running away. - [Smart Bidding: which strategy to choose and how to set its target](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/smart-bidding-strategies/): Automated bidding is neither magic nor a scam. It optimises towards whatever you labelled as success — so the result is decided by the quality of your conversion data and the target you set, not by which option you pick from a dropdown. - [Google Ads account structure in 2026: fewer campaigns, more sense](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/google-ads-account-structure/): Splitting an account into hundreds of ad groups was right when you managed bids by hand. Today it starves the algorithm of data and you of clarity. How to build a structure that mirrors the business rather than a habit from 2015. - [Negative keywords and the search terms report: the cheapest hour in the account](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/negative-keywords-search-terms/): In the era of loose matching and AI campaigns you no longer decide what the ad appears on. You do decide what it does not appear on — and that is now the main cost control, the one most often neglected. - [Meta Ads and Advantage+: when it makes sense alongside search](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/meta-ads-advantage-plus/): Meta does not react to demand, it creates it — so it is evaluated differently from Google. What the data says about Advantage+, what conversion volume it needs, and why platform ROAS overstates here more than anywhere else. - [Remarketing after third-party cookies: what still works](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/remarketing-without-third-party-cookies/): Remarketing has the best numbers in the report and the worst incrementality. What survived the cookie restrictions, how to build audiences from your own data, and how to tell when you are chasing people who would have bought anyway. - [LinkedIn, TikTok and other channels: when to even consider them](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/microsoft-ads-linkedin-other-channels/): The second tier of channels is worth opening only once the first has nowhere left to grow. Where that line sits, how to recognise exhausted demand, and what to realistically expect from smaller channels. ## Measurement and data Conversions, attribution, consent mode, first-party data and incrementality. Why the numbers never match. - [Brand vs. non-brand: the costliest mistake in your report](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/brand-vs-non-brand/): Brand queries rescue the account average and hide how you are really doing. In a public set of 225 geo tests, brand search came out at a median incremental ROAS of 0.70× — below the line of profitability. - [Incrementality: how to find out what advertising actually brought](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/incrementality-geo-testing/): Attribution says who to credit a conversion to. Incrementality says whether it would have happened at all. It is the one question you cannot answer from an ad platform interface — and at larger budgets the most important one. - [Conversion tracking and Consent Mode v2: why your data is missing](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/conversion-tracking-consent-mode/): After consent arrived, some sites lost half their conversions and modelling will not return them to everyone. How Consent Mode works, where it is most often set up wrong, and how to tell whether your numbers still mean anything. - [First-party data and enhanced conversions: recovering the missing conversions](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/enhanced-conversions-first-party-data/): Your own customer data is the only category that reliably grows. Enhanced conversions, offline imports and a CRM connection return part of what cookies lost — and Google reports single-digit percentage gains in incremental return for it. - [Why GA4, Google Ads and your shop never show the same numbers](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ga4-vs-google-ads-attribution/): Three systems, three different numbers, one truth. The differences are not a fault — they follow from each system counting something else. What each measures, which gaps are fine and when it really is a problem. ## E-commerce and feeds Product feeds, Merchant Center, margin by category, marketplaces and seasonality. - [Product feed: the highest-return hour of work in an online shop](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/product-feed-merchant-center/): In shopping campaigns and Performance Max it is not keywords that decide, it is the feed. Disapproved products, bad titles and missing attributes mean part of your range never appears — and you pay for the rest. - [One ROAS target for a whole shop is a mistake you only notice when you grow](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/margin-by-category-roas-targets/): While a shop is not scaling, a single return target works. The moment you add budget, money flows to where things sell most easily — not where they earn. How to split targets by margin without rebuilding the account. - [Seasonality and Black Friday: how not to overpay for the peak](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ppc-seasonality-black-friday/): In a peak both revenue and click prices rise, and not always at the same rate. How to prepare an account, when to raise budget, what to do a week before, and why the most important decision happens two months earlier. - [Marketplaces and comparison shopping: a channel that runs on different rules](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/marketplaces-and-comparison-shopping/): On a comparison site you are not buying attention, you are buying a position in a price ranking. That changes the whole logic of optimisation — and it is why a single number for the channel hides the categories that lose money. ## Site and conversion Landing pages, speed, copy and forms. The place where a paid click turns into money. - [Landing page and speed: where paid clicks get lost](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/landing-page-speed-conversion/): Raising conversion rate by a tenth is the same as making every click a tenth cheaper — except it lasts and nobody can outbid you. What we actually know about the effect of speed, and which of it is recycled myth. - [What belongs on a landing page: a structure that answers objections](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/landing-page-structure-copy/): A good landing page is not about persuasion. It is a list of the questions a visitor is asking, answered in the order they occur to them. Here is that list and the structure that follows from it. - [Forms: when fewer fields means worse business](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/lead-form-length-quality/): The advice to shorten a form holds right up until you start counting deals instead of enquiries. How to find the right length, when to add friction on purpose, and why the cheapest improvement is usually a field that is not there yet. ## Management and people Account audits, reporting, the most common mistakes and choosing between an agency, a freelancer and in-house. - [B2B PPC: how to generate leads sales will actually take](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/b2b-ppc-lead-generation/): In B2B the usual optimisation target is form count, while the business needs contracts. The gap between those two goals is a whole discipline — and closing it does more for results than any work inside the campaigns. - [PPC account audit in 30 points: go through it yourself](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ppc-account-audit-checklist/): Most of what a paid audit finds, you can find yourself in an afternoon. Here is the checklist in the order we work through it — from the numbers that decide to the details that come last. - [15 most common PPC mistakes and what each one costs](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/common-ppc-mistakes/): The most expensive mistakes in PPC are not technical. They are decisions made on the wrong number — and in the report they look like success. A list ordered by how much money they usually cost. - [Agency, freelancer or in-house? And how to spot a good provider](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ppc-agency-vs-in-house/): The decision does not depend on company size but on how central PPC is to your business. Here is the cost and risk comparison — plus a set of questions that reveal a good provider in ten minutes. - [PPC reporting: five numbers instead of a dashboard with thirty charts](https://chci-ppc.cz/en/guide/ppc-reporting-kpis/): A good report is not judged by its number of charts but by how many decisions came out of it. Which numbers to watch monthly, which weekly, and how to write a report someone actually reads. ## Who runs this site chci-ppc.cz is the educational site of Independency s.r.o., a Czech PPC agency (founder Daniel Hauser, 12 years in PPC). Links to the agency's services are its own offer, not independent recommendations. Details: https://chci-ppc.cz/en/about/ ## Related sites from the same publisher - [Independency](https://independency.cz): the agency that runs PPC and measurement for clients. - [ClientDeck](https://clientdeck.cz): a tool for managing ad accounts with change history and approvals. - [DHMO](https://dhmo.cz): creative studio, branding and websites.