Quick answer
CPC (cost per click) is the price paid each time someone clicks an ad. It is the unit of search and most self-serve social advertising, and it is only as good as what the visitor does next.
CPC
DefinitionPaying per click shifts the risk of being ignored to the platform: an ad no one clicks costs nothing. In return the platform optimises for clicks, which is not the same as optimising for the right visitors. On search, intent is in the query, so clicks are often good; on social and display, a cheap click can be a curious scroller who leaves in two seconds.
Also called: Cost per click, Pay per click.
When is CPC the right unit to buy on?
When intent is in the query. Search advertising is the clearest case: a developer who typed "postgres connection pooling" and clicked is a good visitor, and paying per click prices the risk correctly. It also suits self-serve campaigns with tight budgets and strong conversion tracking, where the platform's click optimisation can be checked against what the clicks led to.
It is the wrong unit when the audience is small and reads rather than clicks, when the goal is recognition rather than a visit, and when the platform's click optimisation would steer delivery toward whoever clicks most, which in a developer feed is rarely the developer you want.
Why is CPC high for developers, and why is a low one suspicious?
Developers are few, valuable and hard to reach, and they click less: they read the card, remember the company, and visit the docs later from a search or by typing the address. Platforms that reach real developers price the click accordingly. A campaign that reports a surprisingly low CPC on a developer audience is usually reaching a broad audience or running clickbait; the clicks are cheap because they are not from developers.
The tell is what happens after the click: short visits, no sign-ups, no activations. A high CPC with activations behind it is cheap; a low CPC with nothing behind it is expensive.
Common mistakes
- Picking the channel with the lowest CPC and discovering the clicks were not developers.
- Optimising a developer campaign for clicks, which rewards clickbait.
- A seven-day window on an audience that signs up in week three.
- Comparing a monthly plan to a CPC rate card without computing the cost per activated developer.
How developers experience it
- They read the card and come back later, which no CPC report sees.
- They click clickbait once and never trust the company again.
- A click from a developer with the problem is worth a hundred curious ones.
What should you measure instead of, or alongside, CPC?
- Cost per sign-up, by channel, with a weeks-long attribution window.
- Cost per activated developer, which is the number that predicts revenue.
- Follows and reads, which show the audience was right even when it did not click.
- View-through conversions, for developers who saw the card and signed up later without clicking.
Two channels with the same CPC can differ many times over on cost per activated developer. The pixel and the attribution window are what make that visible.
How does a managed plan relate to CPC?
A managed plan is bought for a month, not per click, so there is no CPC to optimise and no incentive to chase clicks. Clicks are reported alongside reads, follows and pixel conversions, and the effective cost per click can be computed afterwards for comparison. On daily.dev that is how it works: one monthly plan, with the click one line in the weekly report rather than the unit of the invoice.
On daily.dev
How it works on daily.dev
daily.dev Ads is not bought per click: it is a managed monthly plan, and clicks are one of the things we report alongside reads, follows and the conversions your pixel records, including the ones that happen days after the ad.
Explore my optionsCPC vs CPM vs a monthly plan
| Capability | CPC | CPM | Monthly plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay for | Each click | Each thousand impressions | A month of managed delivery |
| Platform optimises for | Clicks | Delivery | The brief |
| Suits | Search and intent channels | Reach and presence | Developer feeds with a campaign manager |
| Risk | Cheap clicks from the wrong people | Impressions nobody looked at | Judging it before recognition builds |
| Compare on | Cost per activated developer | Cost per activated developer | Cost per activated developer |