Google Ads has added a peer-comparison feature to its account Overview tab, letting advertisers see their weekly spend and click totals next to a group of businesses Google considers similar. PPC consultant Thomas Eccel first documented the rollout in a LinkedIn post, sharing a screenshot from his own account: €284 in weekly spend against a €268 benchmark, and 912 clicks compared with 765 for the peer group.
Google bases the comparison on factors such as industry and advertising location, according to Eccel. He cautioned that businesses in the same industry can carry very different margins, conversion rates, and average order values, and argued that profitability, not Google’s benchmark, should guide budget decisions.
The feature gives advertisers a new reference point inside the interface, but it says nothing about whether higher spend actually produced better returns. Anyone using the Spend Benchmarks card should treat it as a spend-pacing signal, not a performance target, and keep decisions anchored to their own margin and conversion data.
Search Engine Roundtable, citing Barry Schwartz’s report on Thomas Eccel’s LinkedIn post, first surfaced the Spend Benchmarks report.
