Home Service Ad Cost Inflation: Benchmarks for 2026

Your ad bill went up. Before you raise the budget, check whether clicks got more expensive, fewer visitors contacted you, or fewer enquiries became jobs.

Sources checked September 14, 2026. The trends below come from a 2025 report. They describe an earlier period and should not be used as a forecast of 2026 prices.

What the published cost trends show

LocaliQ’s 2025 report uses 3,211 US Google and Microsoft search-ad campaigns from April 1, 2024 to March 21, 2025. Each trade category includes at least 103 campaigns. The report’s averages are medians. Dollar figures are USD.

Measure	Reported change or share
Cost per lead, year over year	+10.51%
Businesses paying more per lead	69%
Businesses paying more per click	75%
Conversion rate, year over year	-14.96%

The conversion-rate change is relative. It is not a fall of 14.96 percentage points. These ad-account trends also differ from a consumer inflation measure such as CPI.

Lead costs differ by trade

Category	Median search-ad cost per lead
Air conditioning installation and repair	$127.74
Heating and furnaces	$129.02
Plumbing	$129.02
Roofing and gutters	$228.15

These figures come from the same LocaliQ report. They cover search ads, with separate categories for air conditioning and heating. They do not establish an LSA price or what a booked job should cost.

Download all eight figures as a CSV. Each row includes its source, units and observation period.

Find the reason your own lead cost changed

Compare the same services, locations and months. A quiet maintenance month can look very different from a month full of replacement work. Keep searches for your company name separate from searches for a service.

Start with ad spend and clicks. Then count valid enquiries. Look for duplicate form submissions, wrong-area calls and tracking changes that could distort the comparison.

Finally, check the office results. Did the calls get answered? Could you offer an appointment? How many jobs were completed and paid? Write down the answer before changing your bids.

For the wider channel comparison, use our HVAC, plumbing and roofing cost-per-lead guide.

Work out the cost of the job

Illustrative calculation: You spend $3,000 and get 30 valid enquiries. Six become paid jobs. That is $100 per enquiry and $500 in ad spend per job.

If the same spend produces only three paid jobs, your ad cost per job is $1,000. Your lead cost has stayed at $100. That is why it helps to keep both figures in view.

Use matching periods and allow time for estimates to close. Include agency fees and follow-up costs separately if you want the full acquisition cost. Revenue divided by ad spend gives ROAS. It does not deduct the labor, materials and other costs required to deliver the work.

Review the visits that ended before an enquiry

Some homeowners reach your site and leave without calling. PipelineOn can help identify some eligible visitors and show the available contact and visit details. Your team can review them for a useful follow-up.

Treat an identified visitor as a separate record from someone who contacted you. Measure whether follow-up produces a new conversation before counting it as an enquiry.

See the examples for HVAC owners, plumbing companies and roofers. For a broader research reference, visit our home service marketing statistics.

Correction, September 14, 2026: We corrected the plumbing and HVAC costs, clarified the search-ad channels and removed the claim that ROAS measures profit. We also removed comparisons that mixed different reports without enough context.