Google Ads costs by industry: Cluj vs Florence, 2026
Florence searches for hotels eleven times more than Cluj — and bids less per click. We pulled the real auction data for both cities out of Google Keyword Planner, put two accounts we manage next to it, and found the assumption most budgets are built on is backwards.
The finding. More demand does not mean a pricier click. Florence has eleven times the search volume Cluj has for hotels, and its bid ceiling is a third lower.
What we measured. Auction ranges and search volumes for five industries in both cities (Google Keyword Planner, July 2025 – June 2026), Google's own budget forecasts, and two accounts we manage — with the dashboards.
The numbers to keep. Our Romanian account pays 0.52 lei a click (about €0.10); the Italian one €0.15. Both sit under the European median of €0.45, and a long way under the $5.42 US average that scares everyone.
- Five industries side by side, with 4–5 real queries and their bid ranges each.
- Why competition, not demand, sets the price of a click.
- Google's forecast against two real invoices.
- What to watch after the click — you have about ten seconds.
Here is the number that made us write this. In Google Keyword Planner, „hotel firenze" averages 40,500 searches a month and a top-of-page bid ceiling of €1.31. „hotel cluj" averages 3,600 searches — eleven times fewer — and a ceiling of 9.05 lei, about €1.81.
A city with a tenth of the demand charges nearly 40% more for the same click. Whatever you assumed about small markets being cheap to advertise in, the auction disagrees.
We have run Google Ads since 2011, back when it was still AdWords, and we manage accounts in both countries. So we did the obvious thing: exported the auction data for five industries in both cities, and put our own invoices next to it. Everything below is that export.
What a bid ceiling actually is
Definition: the „top of page bid" range in Keyword Planner is what advertisers have historically bid to appear above the organic results — the low and high end of what was actually paid for the top slots.
It is not your cost per click. It is the ceiling of the fight. Our own accounts pay well under the ceilings of their industries, because what you actually pay depends on the quality of the ad and the landing page, on targeting, and on the bidding strategy. Read the ceiling as „how expensive can this get", not „what this will cost me".
Two more things Keyword Planner hands you, both used below: the average monthly search volume (a twelve-month mean, rounded into steps by Google) and a competition label — Low, Medium, High — which counts advertisers bidding, not SEO difficulty.
Five industries, Cluj against Florence
We picked the generic query for each industry — no hotel names, no trattoria names, which otherwise dominate the lists — and pulled volume plus auction range for the twelve months to June 2026. Florence is the comparison because it is a local market of comparable size with strong tourism. The queries are not identical between markets: each market types differently, and we let it.
In Cluj, a garage click costs more than a hotel click
The high end of the top-of-page bid range, in euros, across five industries. Press the second button for Italy.
In Cluj, garages bid highest — 13.85 lei a click, about €2.77 — ahead of lodging and restaurants at roughly €1.81. Cabins stay at €0.35.
Google Keyword Planner, July 2025 – June 2026 · benchmark queries listed in the tables below · rate ~5 lei/€
| Industry | Cluj (query · range) | Italy (query · range) |
|---|---|---|
| Lodging | hotel cluj · 1.27–9.05 lei | hotel firenze · €0.35–1.31 |
| Restaurants | restaurante cluj · 0.84–9.06 lei | ristorante firenze · €0.23–1.06 |
| Rural tourism | cabana cluj · 0.26–1.76 lei | agriturismo toscana · €0.10–0.68 |
| Auto & service | service auto cluj · 2.42–13.85 lei | revisione auto firenze · €0.49–1.56 |
| Beauty | coafor cluj · 1.00–2.56 lei | parrucchiere firenze · €0.24–0.77 |
Demand does not raise the price of a click. Competition does. Florence searches for hotels eleven times more than Cluj — and bids lower ceilings.
Lodging
The headline pair, and the one worth staring at: 3,600 searches and a 9.05 lei ceiling in Cluj, against 40,500 searches and €1.31 in Florence. Keyword Planner gives us the fact, not the reason. What we see in the market: in Cluj a handful of ad slots are contested by hotels, booking platforms and aggregators all at once; in Florence the inventory is enormous and the auction thins out.
| Market | Query | Searches/mo | Bid range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cluj | cazare cluj napoca | 5,400 | 1.09–12.47 lei |
| Cluj | cazare cluj | 6,600 | 0.93–9.66 lei |
| Cluj | hotel cluj | 3,600 | 1.27–9.05 lei |
| Cluj | pensiuni cluj | 2,900 | 0.87–5.08 lei |
| Cluj | cazare ieftina cluj („cheap") | 390 | 0.59–7.72 lei |
| Florence | hotel firenze | 40,500 | €0.35–1.31 |
| Florence | albergo firenze | 12,100 | €0.35–1.54 |
| Florence | hotel firenze economici | 1,900 | €0.26–0.91 |
Note the pattern in that table, because it repeats everywhere: the query with the most precise intent bids highest, and the word „cheap" in a query does not buy a cheap click — 7.72 lei at the ceiling for „cazare ieftina cluj". People hunting for a bargain are still customers, and advertisers know it.
Restaurants
The largest local demand in our set — „restaurante cluj", 12,100 searches a month, competition marked Low — and yet the ceiling reaches 9.06 lei. Plenty of demand, few bidders, but the ones bidding do it hard. For a restaurant starting out with ads that is good news: you enter cheap and have room to climb.
| Market | Query | Searches/mo | Bid range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cluj | restaurant cluj | 6,600 | 0.93–12.51 lei |
| Cluj | restaurante cluj | 12,100 | 0.84–9.06 lei |
| Cluj | pizzerii cluj napoca | 170 | 1.85–6.14 lei |
| Cluj | terasa cluj (terrace) | 880 | 0.69–1.19 lei |
| Florence | ristorante firenze | 18,100 | €0.23–1.06 |
| Florence | pizzeria firenze | 8,100 | €0.24–0.80 |
| Florence | trattoria firenze | 5,400 | €0.23–0.61 |
Rural tourism
The cheapest clicks in both countries. Everything cabin-related in Cluj sits under 2 lei, and Tuscan agritourism stays under €0.70 — even though „agriturismo toscana" pulls 12,100 searches a month at High competition. Best ratio of interest to cost in the whole set.
| Market | Query | Searches/mo | Bid range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cluj | cabana cluj | 1,000 | 0.26–1.76 lei |
| Cluj | cabane de inchiriat cluj | 720 | 0.23–1.34 lei |
| Cluj | cabane apuseni | 480 | 0.49–1.85 lei |
| Tuscany | agriturismo toscana | 12,100 | €0.10–0.68 |
| Tuscany | agriturismo toscana con piscina | 6,600 | €0.15–0.62 |
| Tuscany | agriturismo arezzo | 3,600 | €0.19–2.83 |
Auto & service — the expensive chapter
„service auto cluj" — 1,600 searches a month, ceiling 13.85 lei, above hotels. And when urgency meets a legal obligation, the auction detonates: „statii itp cluj" (vehicle inspection stations) runs 8.27 to 77.60 lei a click — the most expensive click in this entire article — and mobile tyre service open around the clock reaches 24.89 lei. „Non stop" is, literally, a price multiplier.
The perfect control sits in the same industry: „spalatorie auto cluj" (car wash) has exactly the same volume as the garage query — 1,600 searches — and a ceiling of just 3.05 lei. Same car, different wallet: a wash costs 30 lei, a repair costs thousands. A click is expensive in proportion to the customer behind it.
| Market | Query | Searches/mo | Bid range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cluj | statii itp cluj (inspection) | 170 | 8.27–77.60 lei |
| Cluj | vulcanizare mobila cluj non stop | 110 | 1.59–24.89 lei |
| Cluj | service auto cluj | 1,600 | 2.42–13.85 lei |
| Cluj | spalatorie auto cluj (car wash) | 1,600 | 1.16–3.05 lei |
| Florence | centro revisione firenze | 210 | €0.49–1.76 |
| Florence | revisione auto firenze | 390 | €0.49–1.56 |
Why is the Italian inspection so calm at €1.56? It is a periodic, regulated service at a price fixed by the state — nobody makes much from one inspection, so nobody bids hard. Romanian vehicle inspection lives in another auction universe because garages orbit it, selling the repairs the inspection uncovers.
Beauty
A volume business, not an auction business, in both cities: everything under 4 lei and under €0.80. Worth noting that „frizerii cluj" (barbershops) has nearly double the searches of „coafor cluj" (hairdressers) — the vocabulary of the market has moved, and ads bidding on the older word miss half the demand.
| Market | Query | Searches/mo | Bid range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cluj | salon cosmetica cluj | 90 | 1.00–3.63 lei |
| Cluj | coafor cluj (hairdresser) | 880 | 1.00–2.56 lei |
| Cluj | frizerii cluj (barbershops) | 1,600 | 0.99–2.15 lei |
| Florence | parrucchiere firenze | 2,900 | €0.24–0.77 |
| Florence | barbiere firenze | 880 | €0.17–0.38 |
Two footnotes for collectors. „dentista firenze" bids €1.18–5.70 — the priciest Italian query in our set; expensive medical services bid expensively everywhere. And our favourite: „google ads firenze", with all of 30 searches a month, carries a ceiling of €8.40. The click about clicks is among the dearest of all.
The whole ladder, for scale
The left-hand bar is what you find first when you search in English: $5.42 per click, the average in WordStream's May 2026 report across 13,474 search campaigns. Serious numbers, and exclusively American — the report says so itself: „US-based search advertising campaigns".
For Europe there is a running measurement at Smarter Ecommerce, an Austrian campaign-software vendor: across €650 million in spend, the median as of 3 August 2026 was €0.45 per click in Search. Against the American figure, our Romanian account pays roughly a fiftieth; the Italian one, roughly a thirtieth.
Google's forecast against two invoices
On 3 August we ran the Keyword Planner forecast on our own account for September 2026, on a small budget: 50 lei a day in Romania, €10 a day in Italy. Google's projection: an average click of 0.92 lei (~€0.18) and €0.13 respectively.
And here is what actually got paid, in two accounts we manage — one in Romania, one in Italy, completely different industries, same month: June 2026. We do not publish client names; the aggregate figures, exactly as Google's dashboard rounds them, say enough.
Romania paid 43% below Google's forecast
Same two markets, two sources: the Keyword Planner forecast for September, and two managed accounts in June. Press the second button for the accounts.
On a budget of 50 lei a day in Romania and €10 a day in Italy, Google forecasts an average click of 0.92 lei and €0.13 respectively, for September 2026.
Forecast: Google Keyword Planner, Cittago account, exported 3 August 2026 · Actual: two managed accounts, June 2026 · rate ~5 lei/€
| Source | Market | CPC | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keyword Planner, Sept 2026 forecast | Romania | 0.92 lei (~€0.18) | 50 lei/day, 31,832 forecast impressions |
| Keyword Planner, Sept 2026 forecast | Italy | €0.13 | €10/day, 49,355 forecast impressions |
| Managed account, June 2026 | Romania | 0.52 lei (~€0.10) | 5,230 real clicks |
| Managed account, June 2026 | Italy | €0.15 shown (€0.148 exact) | 4,530 real clicks |
Two honest caveats. The forecast is for September and the accounts are from June — this is a lineup of reference points, not a controlled test. And the conversions in those two accounts are not comparable: each counts something different, a WhatsApp message in one, a submitted form in the other. Cost per click compares cleanly; conversions do not.
One more number out of the forecast, the one everybody skips: of the impressions projected for Romania, 81% are on a phone. In Italy, 84%.
After the click: the first ten seconds
The click you paid for is only half the journey. The other half plays out on your page, in a window shorter than most people assume.
Nielsen Norman Group measured it back in 2011: users leave pages in 10–20 seconds, and to hold them longer the page must communicate its value proposition within 10 seconds. Your headline and subhead carry that proposition. Survive the first ten seconds and the curve flattens — anyone past 30 seconds often stays for minutes.
Now lay page speed over that window. Google and SOASTA measured in 2017, across hundreds of thousands of landing pages: as load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a bounce rises 32%; at 5 seconds, 90%; at 10 seconds, 123%. And more than half of mobile visits abandon pages that take over 3 seconds (Google, 2016).
If your page loads in 5 seconds on a phone, you have burned half of the ~10-second window in which the visitor decides — and the probability they leave has already risen 90%. Your headline no longer has 10 seconds to convince. It has 5.
Which is why behaviour metrics deserve the same attention as CPC:
- Bounce rate. In GA4 a bounce is an unengaged session: under 10 seconds, no conversion, no second page. A high bounce on paid traffic rarely means „uninterested people" — more often it means a slow page, a technical fault, or a page promising something the ad did not.
- Time on page, as a trend. Rising month over month means the content genuinely improved. Falling means something broke: the copy, the speed, or the relevance of the ad bringing people in. The direction matters more than the absolute number.
- Separating the traffic. None of this is readable if paid traffic mixes with organic. Google Ads links to GA4 through auto-tagging (the GCLID parameter added to every click); Meta campaigns get tagged manually with UTM parameters. Only then can you compare organic bounce against paid bounce on the same page — and if paid does much worse, the mismatch is between ad and page, not the page itself.
Why we look at the site before touching the campaign
Part of what a click costs is not decided in the auction at all — it is decided on your site. Google scores the landing page experience, and weak pages pay more for the same slot. With 8 in 10 impressions on a phone, „your page" almost always means your page on a phone.
That is why campaigns are not a separate department here. We are a small studio in Cluj covering the whole chain: design and branding, web development, load speed, persuasive copy, mobile optimisation, email marketing with automations, forms and lead capture, dedicated campaign pages with autoresponders, discount coupons, cross-network remarketing between Google and Meta, brand awareness campaigns. Measurement gets wired through four tools we fit on every project:
- Google Tag Manager — the box that lets you add and remove any measurement script without touching the site's code.
- Google Analytics 4 — what people do after the click: what they read, where they give up, what they send.
- Meta Pixel — connects Facebook and Instagram ads to on-site actions, so remarketing has something to stand on.
- Hotjar — heatmaps and anonymous recordings: where people stall on a page, and why.
We list them not to sell anything here, but because every figure in this article passed through those layers — and because when you take over managing a Google Ads account, half the work turns out to be outside the account.
What these numbers do not say
| What it shows | What you cannot conclude |
|---|---|
| Keyword Planner bid ceilings | That this is what you will pay. They are historic top-slot extremes — our accounts pay well below them. |
| Search volumes | Exact figures. Google rounds them into steps (1,000; 3,600; 12,100) and reports twelve-month averages, so seasonality disappears. |
| The September forecast | That you will get it. Forecasts are projections on a given budget, not guarantees. |
| Conversions in our screenshots | Cross-account comparisons. Each account defines conversion differently, which is why we compare cost per click only. |
| Two managed accounts | A market benchmark. Two accounts, two industries — real reference points, not an average for Romania or Italy. |
| The behaviour studies quoted | Timeless figures. Nielsen measured in 2011, Google/SOASTA in 2017 — the mechanisms hold, the exact percentages have an age. |
Terms, briefly
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| CPC | Cost per click — what you pay when someone taps the ad, whatever they do next. |
| Top of page bid | The historic bid range for slots above the organic results. The market's ceiling, not your invoice. |
| Average monthly searches | How many searches a query gets in a typical month, as a twelve-month mean, rounded by Google. |
| Competition (in Keyword Planner) | How many advertisers bid on the query: Low, Medium, High. It describes ads, not SEO difficulty. |
| Forecast | Google's projection for a given budget: clicks, impressions, average cost. A flight plan, not a ticket. |
| CPA | Cost per conversion — a form sent, a call made. The figure that actually matters, and the only one no public benchmark carries. |
| Bounce rate (GA4) | The share of unengaged sessions: under 10 seconds, no conversion, no second page. A thermometer for ad-to-page fit. |
| Engaged session | A visit lasting over 10 seconds, or producing a conversion, or seeing at least two pages. The opposite of a bounce. |
| GCLID & UTM | The tags that record where a click came from: GCLID is added automatically by Google Ads, UTMs are added by hand elsewhere. Without them, paid and organic mix irreversibly. |
| Value proposition | The promise in your headline and subhead: what the visitor gets by staying. It has about 10 seconds — minus load time. |
Where you are, in three thresholds
- You are not running ads yet. Do not start from the campaign, start from the figures: the forecast for your industry and city tells you in advance whether the budget makes sense. That is exactly what we hand over free in the box below.
- You are running but not measuring conversions. Stop for a week and wire up measurement — without it, „going well" only means „the budget is being spent". Then compare your CPC against the reference points here.
- You run and you measure. Then the right comparison is not your CPC against anyone's average, but your cost per conversion this month against last. The figures here only tell you whether the market is taxing you abnormally.
If you want our eyes on your numbers, Google Ads management is precisely what we have done since 2011.
Questions clients ask — and a few they should
How much does a Google Ads click cost in Cluj?
It depends on the industry far more than the city. From the real auction data for July 2025 – June 2026: cabins 0.26–1.76 lei, barbershops 0.99–2.15, hairdressers 1.00–2.56, hotels 1.27–9.05, garages 2.42–13.85 — and vehicle inspection stations up to 77.60 lei.
Those are ceilings for the top slots, not what you pay on average: the Romanian account we manage paid 0.52 lei per click in June 2026.
Why does Cluj bid higher than Florence for hotels?
Keyword Planner gives the fact, not the reason: a 9.05 lei (~€1.81) ceiling for „hotel cluj" against €1.31 for „hotel firenze", even though Florence has eleven times the volume — 40,500 searches against 3,600.
The likely explanation is competition over scarce inventory: in Cluj the same handful of slots are contested by hotels, booking platforms and aggregators. The practical takeaway matters more than the explanation: do not assume a small city means cheap clicks.
Is the „top of page bid" what I will actually pay?
No. It is the range advertisers have historically bid for slots above the organic results — the market's ceiling, not your invoice. What you pay depends on ad and landing-page quality, targeting, and bidding strategy.
The proof from our accounts: the real average paid (0.52 lei in Romania, €0.15 in Italy) sits under the ceilings of those industries.
Why do costs vary so much between industries?
Because the auction is not on „Cluj", it is on each individual query, and the price is set by whoever bids on it. A garage click is worth a lot — the repair is urgent and expensive — so it gets bid aggressively.
The cleanest example is inside one industry: „spalatorie auto cluj" (car wash) has the same search volume as „service auto cluj" but a ceiling four times lower. Same car, different wallet.
What is a realistic starting budget?
Our forecast used 50 lei a day (about €300 a month), for which Google projects roughly 1,600 clicks at 0.92 lei each. That is a reasonable start for a local service with a cheap click.
In an expensive industry — garages, inspection, round-the-clock tyre service — the same budget buys a fraction of that, so the threshold at which the campaign produces useful data is higher. Our rule: the minimum budget is the one that buys at least a few hundred clicks a month. Below that you learn nothing.
My campaign has a high bounce rate. Is the ad bad?
Not necessarily the ad. In GA4, a bounce is a session under 10 seconds with no conversion and no second page — and the frequent causes, in order, are: the page loads slowly (at 5 seconds of load time the probability of leaving has already risen 90% against 1 second, per the 2017 Google/SOASTA research), the page promises something different from the ad, or a technical fault you cannot see from your desktop.
The quick test: compare paid bounce against organic bounce on the same page. If organic is fine and paid is not, the mismatch is between ad and page.
Are these figures useful outside Romania and Italy?
The specific numbers, no — auctions are local. The mechanisms travel: demand does not set the price, competition does; the more valuable and more urgent the customer, the pricier the click; the word „cheap" inside a query does not buy a cheap click.
Run the same export for your own city in Keyword Planner and you will see the same shapes with different figures.
How do I choose a Google Ads agency?
Ask for three things, all verifiable in ten minutes. The Google Ads account must be yours — you own it, the agency gets access, and if you part ways the campaigns and history stay with you. A monthly report stating what a lead cost, not how many impressions you had. And a contract you can exit on short notice without penalties.
Whoever refuses any of the three is telling you exactly how the relationship will go.
Is it better to rank organically or pay for ads?
It depends on how fast you need customers. Ads bring traffic on day one and stop the day the budget stops; organic takes months and stays. For a small business the usual combination is ads on the immediate commercial terms and content on the questions people ask before buying.
The figures here help with the paid side: if the click in your industry is cheap — cabins, beauty — ads are almost certainly the first profitable move.
How do I get the exact figures for my own industry?
From Google Keyword Planner, with an active Google Ads account: enter your queries and you get volume and bid range. If you have no account or no appetite for it, use the box in this article — we send the same export free, in one email.
Method and sources
So all of it is checkable, the full chain: bid ranges and volumes come from Google Keyword Planner, Cittago account, „Keyword Stats" exports dated 3 August 2026, twelve-month averages for July 2025 – June 2026, generic queries only (brand terms removed by hand). Cost estimates are the forecast exports from the same day for September 2026, on budgets of 50 lei/day (Romania) and €10/day (Italy). Account screenshots come from two accounts we manage, June 2026, with no client identifying data; Google's dashboard rounds the figures it displays. External benchmarks: WordStream, „Google Ads Benchmarks 2026", May 2026, 13,474 search campaigns, US only; Smarter Ecommerce Market Observer, 3 August 2026, median across €650M of European e-commerce spend. Behaviour research: Nielsen Norman Group, „How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?", Jakob Nielsen, 2011; Google/SOASTA mobile speed research published on Think with Google, February 2017; the 53% abandonment figure above 3 seconds: Google, 2016. Currency conversions use ~5 lei/€. What is not in this article: invented figures, „market" averages without a stated sample, or client data published without anonymisation.
Last updated: 3 August 2026. We refresh these figures monthly; whatever changes stays written here.
