The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026

The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026 – Key takeaways

• Over £1.1 million of live UK Google Ads spend analysed in a single quarter, our biggest sample yet, on top of 3,000+ audits since 2017.
• At least 56% of active accounts have a conversion-tracking fault serious enough to distort the numbers they optimise on. Second quarter running.
• The tracking tax: accounts with clean tracking report 2.5 times the return of accounts with a serious fault, while faulty accounts see flatteringly cheap costs per action. Broken measurement lies in both directions.
• Wasted search spend rose by almost a quarter in three months: the median account now puts 24% of its search spend into keywords that do no real work, up from 20% in Q1.
• The median account’s ads appear in fewer than one in five eligible searches: ad rank takes 54% of eligible impressions, roughly three times what capped budgets take.
• The CPC panic is overdone: like for like, clicks cost just 4% more than a year ago, and conversion-rate gains of 7% more than covered it.
• Around a third of UK Google Ads spend goes to Performance Max, whose reported return still cannot be fully verified.
• The median UK ecommerce account reports a return of only about 1.4 times spend, and that is as much a tracking problem as a performance one.

Every quarter we take an anonymised look across the live UK Google Ads accounts in our audit programme. We are not looking for reasons to spend more. We are looking for money that is already going to waste. This is the second report in the series, and the first that can say how things are moving, not just where they stand. You can read the Q1 2026 edition for the baseline.

The short version: UK advertisers held their budgets broadly flat this quarter and got more for the money, with conversion rates up and cost per action down. The loud story doing the rounds, that click prices are running away, is not what the clean data shows. The quiet story is worse. The share of search spend doing no real work rose by almost a quarter in three months, and most accounts still cannot fully trust the numbers they steer by.

Source: PPC Geeks, Q2 2026 (April to June). Figures are floors or medians. See the methodology below.

UK Google Ads spend: the headline findings

For Q2 2026 (April to June), across the live UK accounts we analysed:

• At least 56% of active accounts have a conversion-tracking fault serious enough to distort the numbers they optimise on. Unchanged from Q1, and still the floor.
• The tracking tax is 2.5x: ecommerce accounts with clean tracking report a median return of 3.0; accounts with a serious fault report just 1.2, while their costs per action look flatteringly cheap.
• Wasted search spend rose by almost a quarter in three months. The median account now puts 24% of its search spend into keywords that do no real work, up from 20% last quarter.
• The median account’s ads show in fewer than one in five eligible searches. Ad rank takes 54% of eligible impressions, roughly three times what capped budgets take (18%).
• Like for like, cost per click rose about 4% year on year. Conversion rates rose 7%, so efficiency improved.
• Around a third of UK Google Ads spend goes to Performance Max, and its reported return still grades its own homework.
• The median ecommerce account reports a return of only about 1.4 times spend.
• We analysed over £1.1 million of live UK spend in a single quarter, our biggest sample yet, on top of the 3,000 or so audits we have run since 2017.

Finding 1: the tracking problem is not going away (The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026)

Last quarter we reported that at least 56% of active accounts had a conversion-tracking fault serious enough to distort the numbers they optimise on. A sceptic could call one quarter a blip. It is now two quarters, same method, same result: 56% again. More than half of UK accounts are steering by instruments that are wrong, and most of them are letting Google’s automated bidding optimise on that same wrong data.

As before, that figure is the cautious floor. It counts only the faults we can prove from the outside. Consent settings, tag errors and untracked revenue would only push it higher.

New this quarter, we cross-referenced the tracking probe against performance, and the result deserves a name: the tracking tax. Ecommerce accounts with a serious tracking fault report a median return of just 1.2 times spend. Accounts with clean tracking report 3.0. That is a 2.5 times gap in what the two groups believe they are getting back.

The twist is that the damage runs both ways at once. The same faulty accounts report a flattering cost per action, £41 against £57 for clean accounts, because fake conversions, such as page views counted as sales, pump up their conversion counts. So broken tracking makes good marketing look bad and bad marketing look good, simultaneously, in the same account. We should be straight about what this is: a correlation across different businesses, not a controlled experiment. Well-run accounts may both track better and perform better. But the mechanism is real in both directions, and either way the conclusion is identical: until the measurement is fixed, neither a flattering number nor a damning one can be trusted.

Finding 2: wasted search spend rose by almost a quarter

Here is the finding that should sting. Across the accounts we could measure properly, the median account put around 24% of its search spend into keywords that converted nothing or cost more than three times its own average. Last quarter that figure was 20%. That is a rise of almost a quarter in a single quarter, and it was not driven by a few bad apples: nearly half of the measurable accounts, 22 of 49, now run above 30%, up from around a third in Q1.

The sharpest edge is the money that bought nothing at all. Spend on keywords that converted absolutely nothing jumped from 11% to 16% of the keyword spend we measured, a rise of more than two fifths in three months. Put plainly: around £1 in every £6 of measured search keyword spend bought no conversions whatsoever, up from roughly £1 in 9 last quarter.

And this is not a quirk of a growing sample. In the 42 accounts we could measure in both quarters, the same-account picture says the same thing: median waste rose about 2 points, with 20 accounts getting worse and 13 improving. The rise is real, like for like.

If anything, 24% understates it. Cross-reference the waste figures against the tracking probe and the accounts with trustworthy tracking show a median of 36% of search spend not pulling its weight, against 22% measured in faulty accounts, whose fake conversions make dead keywords look alive. The cleaner your data, the more waste it admits to.

The same care applies as before: some of that spend defends a brand or assists a sale that last-click reporting never credits, so we would not call all of it pure waste. But the direction matters. In a quarter when overall results improved, the share of search budget doing nothing grew. The strong keywords carried more of the load, and the dead weight got heavier. That is not a market problem. That is a housekeeping problem, and it is growth you have already paid for.

Everyone wants to blame rising click prices. In the accounts we can compare properly, clicks got 4% dearer while conversion rates rose 7%. The market is not taking your money. The wasted quarter of your own budget is.

Dan Trotter, Head of PPC, PPC Geeks

Finding 3: your budget is not the reason your ads don’t show (The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026)

In Q1 we reported that the median account loses around 18% of its available search clicks to capped budgets. That is still true, and 39 of the 62 accounts with meaningful spend still lose more than one click in ten that way. But this quarter we looked at the whole picture of where eligible impressions go, and the budget story turns out to be the small half.

The median account loses around 54% of its eligible search impressions to ad rank. Google ran the auction, considered the ad, and left it out, because other advertisers’ combination of bid and ad quality beat it. Put the two together and the median account’s ads actually appeared in fewer than one in five of the searches they were eligible for. This is not a rare failure mode: 44 of the 53 measurable accounts lose more than 30% of their eligible impressions to rank, and the figure was effectively the same in Q1, so it is a pattern, not a blip. It is also the number that most often stuns people in our audits, because nothing inside the account screams about it.

Two honest notes. “Eligible” counts only the auctions Google considered the account for, and broad targeting widens that pool, so a low share partly reflects wide match settings rather than weak ads alone. And losing to rank means outranked or priced out, a mix of bid and quality, which is precisely why it is fixable: tighter targeting, better ads and smarter bids all move it. Rank takes roughly three times more of your eligible impressions than capped budgets do. If you only ever look at the “limited by budget” flag, you are watching the wrong leak.

Put Findings 2 and 3 together and the conclusion writes itself, and this quarter we can put exact numbers on the overlap. 24 of the 53 measurable accounts, about 45%, are wasting more than 20% of their search spend while losing more than 10% of their clicks to capped budgets, paying for the wrong clicks and unable to afford the right ones at the same time. 47 of the 53, nearly nine in ten, have at least one of the two leaks. Only six accounts are clean on both. One more useful discovery: waste and rank-lost visibility are statistically unrelated across accounts, so fixing one does nothing for the other. They are two separate leaks needing two separate fixes, and an audit that checks only one is half an audit. The win is still moving the money you already spend, not adding to it.

Finding 4: the truth about rising CPCs

“Google Ads is getting more expensive” is the industry’s favourite headline, and on the lazy numbers it looks true. Blend our whole book together and the average cost per click rose about 18% year on year. But blended figures mix in new accounts and shifts between channels, so they measure the mix, not the market.

Compare the same accounts like for like, Q2 2026 against Q2 2025, and the picture changes completely. Cost per click rose about 4%. Conversion rates rose about 7%, and cost per action actually fell around 3%. The same advertisers spent a broadly flat amount and got more out of it. If your costs jumped far more than 4% this year, the honest first question is not “what is Google charging?” but “what changed in my account?”

One seasonal note, because it will explain what many advertisers felt this quarter. Within the year, Q2 was genuinely harder than Q1: in the same 50 accounts, clicks cost about 13% more than in the first quarter and conversions fell about 15%. That is the normal shape of spring and summer auctions, not inflation, which is exactly why quarter-to-quarter price moves should never be read as a trend. If your Q2 looked worse than your Q1, you were in the majority, and year on year you are still likely ahead.

The longer arc backs the calm reading too. Across our whole book, conversion rates have now risen for two consecutive years, from about 5% in 2024 to about 7% this year, and cost per action is lower today than it was in 2024 despite click prices rising every year. Efficiency has been outrunning click inflation for two years straight.

Finding 5: Performance Max still grades its own homework (The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026)

Around a third of all UK Google Ads spend in our sample went to Performance Max this quarter, 34 of the 78 accounts. Its share actually slipped a little, from 34% to 32%, the first dip we have measured, though one quarter does not make a retreat. On reported numbers it remains the star. Like for like it showed a return on ad spend of about 4.8, against about 3.0 for standard Search.

The asterisk from Q1 has not shrunk. Brand and Shopping cannibalisation flatter that reported return, the biggest single category of its activity is the one Google labels as unknown, and the platform cannot prove its conversions are incremental. It also rests on the same conversion tracking that is distorted in over half of accounts. A third of the nation’s Google Ads budget still flows into a channel that marks much of its own homework.

Finding 6: the ecommerce reality check

New this quarter: we looked at what ecommerce accounts actually report getting back. Across the 51 accounts tracking revenue, the median reported return was only about 1.4 times spend, and half sat below that. Set against the glossy 4-times-plus benchmarks the industry likes to quote, that looks bleak.

The median also hides a brutal spread. The bottom quarter of ecommerce accounts report getting back around 20p for every £1 they spend, while the top quarter report more than £5, and the top tenth nearly £8. The distance between a well-run account and a poorly-run one is not a few percent. It is a different business reality, and Finding 1 says a good chunk of that gap is measurement, not marketing.

Read it carefully, though. Reported return is a floor, not a verdict. It ignores margin, repeat purchases and anything that happens offline, and it rests on conversion tracking that Finding 1 says is broken in most accounts. Untracked revenue makes a good account look unprofitable. If your reported return sits near that median, check the measurement before you condemn the marketing.

Finding 7: how much of your budget just buys your own name? (The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026)

Also new this quarter: across the accounts where brand terms could be cleanly separated from generic search, the median account put around 9% of its search spend into its own brand name. Those tend to be the cheapest clicks in the account. In our Q1 analysis they cost a median 29% less per click than non-brand keywords.

Cheap is exactly why they need defending. When a competitor bids on your name, it is those cheap clicks that get more expensive, and most accounts only notice after the damage is in the numbers. If you have never separated brand from non-brand in your reporting, you do not actually know what your generic search costs you.

What this means for your Google Ads spend

The order of operations from Q1 survives contact with a second quarter of data, with one sharpened edge.

1. Fix the tracking first. Two quarters running, most accounts are optimising on distorted numbers. Everything else you do compounds this error until it is fixed.
2. Reclaim the wasted quarter. The dead share of search spend grew to 24%. Move that budget onto the keywords that demonstrably sell, and onto the clicks you are currently losing to capped budgets.
3. Ignore the CPC panic. Like for like, clicks cost 4% more and convert 7% better. Rising costs are rarely the real problem in a UK account. The wasted quarter is.
4. Watch Performance Max with clear eyes, and know what share of your budget is simply buying your own brand name back.

The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026 – How this compares with the wider market

Our findings are first-party, pulled from real accounts rather than a survey, and the wider market data still points the same way. The IPA Bellwether report earlier this year found UK marketing budgets revised up to their highest level in nearly two years, with online channels among the biggest gainers; our own sample shows those budgets holding rather than retreating. Our waste figure also still sits inside independent estimates, which commonly land in the 15 to 40% range. If anything, our 24% median suggests the middle of that range is the honest place to plan from.

About this data

These figures come from the live UK Google Ads accounts in PPC Geeks’ audit programme, analysed anonymously and in aggregate for Q2 2026 (April to June). That is 78 enabled accounts and 62 with meaningful spend, depending on the measure, totalling just over £1.1 million in the quarter. Year-on-year comparisons are like for like across the 53 accounts present in both years. The ecommerce figure covers the 51 accounts tracking revenue; the brand-share figure covers the 16 accounts where brand terms could be cleanly classified. We name no client, and no one can identify a single account. Several of our numbers are deliberately cautious floors, and where the account data alone cannot reveal a fault, we have said so and given the conservative figure.

PPC Geeks is a UK PPC agency working across Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and TikTok. If you would like an honest look at where your own account stands, tracking included, our free Google Ads audit does exactly that. No pressure to spend more. Just the truth about the money you already spend.

Frequently asked questions (The State of UK Google Ads Spend: Q2 2026)

Why is my search impression share so low?

Usually rank, not budget. Across the UK accounts PPC Geeks analysed in Q2 2026, the median account lost 54% of its eligible search impressions to ad rank (a mix of bid and ad quality) and only 18% to capped budgets. Check the ‘lost to rank’ and ‘lost to budget’ impression-share columns separately: they need opposite fixes.

Are Google Ads CPCs rising in the UK?

Slower than the headlines suggest. Comparing the same UK accounts like for like, cost per click rose about 4% year on year in Q2 2026, and conversion rates rose about 7%, so efficiency actually improved. Blended figures that mix in new accounts and channel shift exaggerate the rise.

How much Google Ads search spend is typically wasted?

Across the live UK accounts PPC Geeks analysed in Q2 2026, the median account put around 24% of its search spend into keywords that converted nothing or cost more than three times its own average, up from 20% in Q1. Independent estimates commonly land in the 15 to 40% range.

What is a normal ROAS for ecommerce on Google Ads?

Lower than most benchmarks admit. Half of the UK ecommerce accounts we analysed reported a return below 1.4 times spend, the bottom quarter below 0.2, and the top quarter above 5. Treat a low reported figure as a prompt to check your conversion tracking first: accounts with clean tracking reported 2.5 times the return of accounts with a serious fault, because untracked revenue makes good accounts look unprofitable.

Is Performance Max’s reported ROAS reliable?

Treat it sceptically. Brand and Shopping cannibalisation flatter its reported return, Google withholds most of the query data, and the platform cannot prove the conversions are incremental. Like for like it reported 4.8 against Search’s 3.0 in our Q2 2026 sample.