About AdCulator
AdCulator is a free suite of advertising-metrics tools for marketers, advertisers and business owners. Paid advertising ultimately comes down to a handful of numbers — what it costs to reach people, how many of them act, and what you get back — and our goal is to make those numbers fast and painless to work out.
Who's behind it
AdCulator is written and edited by Ovi C., our senior editor, who covers advertising metrics and benchmarks — CPM, CPC, CTR and ROAS — in plain English. The bias throughout is towards numbers you can act on rather than one-size-fits-all rules of thumb, because "a good CPM" depends almost entirely on who you're advertising to and where.
Every guide on the site carries a byline and a last-updated date, and every benchmark figure names the report it came from. If you can't tell where a number came from, we haven't done our job.
Why we built it
Most ad-metrics calculators are clunky, single-direction, or hidden behind sign-ups. We wanted tools that load instantly, work in any direction (enter what you know, solve for what you don't), and never ask you to register. Everything runs in your browser and gives results as you type.
What's inside
- 16 calculators — including CPM, CPC, CTR, ROAS, CAC, eCPM and a YouTube CPM calculator for creators — each solving in every direction.
- Campaign Forecast — project the full funnel, profit, ROAS and break-even before you spend, or work backwards from a goal.
- Advertising benchmarks — average costs and rates by industry and country, to compare your campaigns against.
- 13 plain-English guides — what a good CPM, CPC, CTR or ROAS actually looks like, and what to do when yours isn't.
How the calculators work
Every calculator runs entirely inside your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us, stored on a server, or logged anywhere — the maths happens on your own device, which is why results appear as you type rather than after a page reload. Once a page has loaded, it keeps working even if your connection drops.
A few things that follow from that: there is no account and no paywall, your last inputs are remembered on your own device so you can pick up where you left off, and every result has a shareable link you can send to a colleague. Most of the calculators can also be embedded free on your own site.
Where our benchmark data comes from
Benchmark figures are drawn from published industry reports — such as LocaliQ and WordStream — and the source is named on the page next to the number, not buried in a footnote. We don't publish a figure we can't point at a source for.
Where a number is an estimate rather than a measured average, we label it as directional and say so plainly. Country-level advertising costs in particular move with season, auction competition and audience, so treat them as a sense of the range, not a quote. All of it is provided for estimation and education — a well-informed starting point that you should always validate against your own account data before making a decision.
Found something that looks wrong? Tell us and include the source. Well-evidenced corrections get reviewed and fixed quickly.
How it's funded, and editorial independence
AdCulator is free and supported by advertising — there are no paywalls, subscriptions or sign-ups. That keeps the tools open to everyone. See our privacy policy for how ads and cookies are handled.
Advertising pays for the site; it does not shape what the site says. Advertisers have no input into which tools we build, what our guides recommend, or what a benchmark page reports. We don't take payment for reviews, placements or links, and we don't sell anything of our own — so there's no product we need a number to flatter.
Get in touch
Spotted an error, or have a tool you'd like to see? We'd love to hear from you — head to the contact page, or email adculator@gmail.com directly.