CPC inflation is no longer just a paid-search annoyance. As AI Overviews squeeze paid visibility, weak intent targeting is becoming much more expensive to carry.
Search Engine Land reports that CPC is still rising across most industries, citing WordStream by LocaliQ data showing year-over-year increases in nearly 87% of industries and an average Google Ads CPC of $5.26. The same piece says Seer Interactive found that paid CTR on queries with AI Overviews fell 68%, from 19.7% to 6.34%.
That combination matters for affiliates because it changes where the wasted money sits. Rising CPC alone is painful. Rising CPC plus lower paid visibility is worse, because fewer paid slots are left in the most visible parts of the SERP, and automated bidding competes harder for the traffic that remains. In practical terms, broad low-intent buying gets weaker, while precise transactional intent becomes more valuable.
This is why “cheap clicks” is becoming a less useful way to think about search. A click can be expensive and still profitable if the intent is strong enough. A click can be relatively cheap and still destroy margin if the funnel is trying to monetize curiosity instead of purchase intent. As search gets tighter, query quality matters more than click volume, and a lot of older affiliate search models are starting to look overpriced rather than under-optimized.
