Performance
Performance marketing benchmarks in India, from real accounts
Observed CPM, CTR and ROAS ranges from the Meta and Google accounts we run across India, and the maths that decides whether a campaign deserves more budget.
- Written by
- Nausil MK
- Published
- Reading time
- 5 minutes
Most benchmark posts average a D2C skincare brand, a B2B SaaS company and a Whitefield real estate developer into a single cost-per-click number. That number describes nobody. It is worse than having no benchmark at all, because it gives you false confidence that your ₹4.20 CPC is healthy when your category should be paying ₹1.80.
What follows are ranges we observe inside accounts we manage from our Indiranagar studio. These are not industry facts and we are not citing anyone. They are what we see across the Meta and Google accounts on our floor, mostly Indian brands spending between ₹2 lakh and ₹40 lakh a month.
Read a benchmark as a diagnostic, not a target
A benchmark is only useful if it tells you which lever is broken. Three numbers do that job.
- CPM tells you about auction competition and account health. Mostly outside your control.
- CTR tells you about creative. Almost entirely inside your control.
- Conversion rate tells you about the landing page and the offer. Also inside your control.
CPC is a derived number. If your CPC is high, it is because your CTR is low or your CPM is high. Chasing CPC directly is how teams end up buying cheap, worthless traffic and calling it efficiency.
Meta ranges we see in India
Prospecting campaigns, broad or interest-based, 30-day windows, all figures in INR.
| Category | CPM | Link CTR | CPC | Blended ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D2C apparel | ₹110–₹240 | 1.1%–2.4% | ₹8–₹18 | 1.8x–3.4x |
| Beauty and personal care | ₹140–₹300 | 1.3%–2.8% | ₹9–₹20 | 2.2x–4.1x |
| Food and QSR, city level | ₹90–₹180 | 1.6%–3.2% | ₹5–₹11 | Track footfall, not ROAS |
| Fitness and wellness leads | ₹120–₹260 | 0.9%–1.8% | ₹12–₹28 | ₹180–₹600 CPL |
| Real estate leads | ₹200–₹450 | 0.7%–1.4% | ₹25–₹70 | ₹450–₹1,800 CPL |
| B2B services leads | ₹250–₹600 | 0.6%–1.2% | ₹40–₹110 | ₹700–₹3,000 CPL |
Two things worth saying plainly. A 4x ROAS is not a good result if your gross margin is 35%. And a cost per lead means nothing without a qualification rate attached to it. We have seen a real estate account at ₹420 CPL underperform one at ₹1,600, because the cheap leads converted to site visits at 3% and the expensive ones at 22%. The client was, understandably, furious about the expensive one until we put both funnels side by side.
Google Search ranges
Search is a different animal. Intent already exists. You are buying position, not attention.
| Category | CPC | CTR | Conversion rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local services, Bengaluru | ₹18–₹55 | 5%–11% | 4%–9% |
| Ecommerce, branded terms | ₹4–₹14 | 12%–28% | 8%–18% |
| Ecommerce, category terms | ₹22–₹90 | 3%–7% | 1.2%–3% |
| Legal, finance, insurance | ₹90–₹400 | 4%–8% | 2%–6% |
If you are bidding on something like digital marketing agency in Bangalore, or any competitive local service term, expect the top of that CPC band. Bengaluru is one of the most expensive local auctions in the country because the density of sellers here is absurd. Every one of them is bidding on the same forty keywords.
The number nobody puts in a benchmark table
ROAS is a vanity ratio until you know your contribution margin. Run this instead.
- Take your average order value.
- Subtract COGS, shipping, payment gateway fees, and expected RTO or return loss.
- What remains is contribution per order.
- Divide contribution by your allowable customer acquisition cost.
A brand with ₹1,800 AOV and ₹560 contribution cannot survive at 3x ROAS. It needs roughly 3.2x just to break even on paid, before salaries, before rent, before the ₹40,000 a month it spends on photography. We have told brands to cut spend by 40% and watched profit go up the same month. That is not a fun conversation to have, but it is the work.
Where accounts actually break
Across the audits we run, the failure is almost never the bidding strategy. It is one of these four.
- Creative volume. Accounts shipping fewer than eight to twelve genuinely new concepts a month fatigue inside three weeks and CPMs climb.
- Event quality. Purchase events firing on a thank-you page load instead of server-side, so the platform optimises on a partial, delayed signal.
- Fragmentation. Twelve ad sets splitting ₹3 lakh means nothing ever exits the learning phase.
- Page speed. Past four seconds on a mid-range Android over 4G, a third of your traffic is gone before the page paints.
The highest-leverage change we make in most accounts is not inside the ad platform. It is on the page the ad points to.
Build your own benchmark in 30 days
Pick one campaign structure. Hold it for four weeks without panicking. Log CPM, CTR, conversion rate and contribution per order every week. That internal baseline beats any published table, including this one, because it is measured against your margin, your audience and your creative.
If you want a second read on where your account sits against these ranges, we do a free strategy call from the Indiranagar studio. Bring read access to your ad accounts and your margin sheet, because without the second one the conversation is theatre. We will tell you which of the four failure points is costing you most, whether or not you end up working with us.
