YouTube Ads budget calculator

Divide what you pay per impression by your click-through rate. 2026 benchmarks put the average cost per view at about US$0.026, the view rate around 32% and click-through at 0.65% (Mega Digital). That works out to roughly US$1.30 per click from a skippable in-stream campaign, and studies that look at click-focused YouTube campaigns report US$3–$4. In Canadian dollars $1.50–$4 is a fair range; the preset splits it at $2.50.

Treat it like other video traffic: 1–2% of visitors contacting you is realistic, and often lower, because many YouTube views happen on a TV or in the middle of watching something else. YouTube is better at making people recognise your name when they search later than at producing direct leads, and this calculator cannot measure that.

Google lets you set any daily budget, but a few dollars a day buys only a handful of clicks, so you learn nothing. A useful test is a budget that buys a few hundred clicks in a month, roughly $500–$1,000 at the preset cost per click, with one short video and one clear call to action, then compare the cost per lead against Google Search.

It depends on your margin. If you keep 50% of each sale after delivering it, you need a ROAS of about 2× just to break even and 4× or more to make the campaign clearly worth it. Online stores with thin margins need higher ROAS than a service business where one customer is worth thousands.

Enough to get real data. A campaign that only buys a handful of clicks a day takes months to tell you anything, so a sensible starting budget is one that buys a few hundred clicks a month at your industry's cost per click. Use the calculator to see what that means in dollars for your numbers, then scale up only once leads are coming in at a cost you can live with.

It varies enormously by industry and city. Retail and restaurant keywords are often under $2, local trades and professional services commonly run $5 to $20, and legal, insurance and HVAC emergency keywords can pass $30 in Toronto and the GTA. Google Keyword Planner shows free estimates for your own keywords and area.

ROAS compares ad revenue to ad spend only. ROI compares profit to total cost, so it also subtracts what the product or service cost you to deliver and any agency or management fee. A 3× ROAS can be a good ROI for a consultant and a loss for a store selling low-margin goods.

For a local service website, 2% to 5% of paid visitors contacting you is typical, and a focused landing page with one clear call to action can reach 5% to 10%. If yours is under 2%, fixing the page usually improves results more than spending more on ads.

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