EPC (Earnings Per Click)

EPC (earnings per click) is the average revenue earned for each click sent to an offer, calculated as EPC = total earnings ÷ total clicks. It is the income side of a click, what you make per visitor, as opposed to what a click costs to buy.

EPC is the central yardstick in affiliate marketing. Affiliate networks publish an offer's average EPC so partners can gauge how well it monetizes traffic before promoting it. An offer with a $1.20 EPC earns, on average, $1.20 for every click an affiliate drives, blending commissions across converters and non-converters into one number.

Why it matters#

EPC is most powerful when read against acquisition cost. The core profitability test for a media buyer is simple: if EPC exceeds your CPC (Cost Per Click), each click earns more than it costs and the campaign is profitable; if EPC is below CPC, you are losing money on every visitor. This EPC-versus-CPC spread is the daily decision-making lens for traffic arbitrage.

Be careful comparing EPCs across sources, "network EPC" is averaged over all affiliates and traffic types, so your actual EPC depends heavily on your traffic quality, geo, and Landing Page. EPC is closely related to revenue ratios like ROAS (Return on Ad Spend); EPC expresses the same return on a per-click basis, which suits affiliates buying click-priced native traffic against an Affiliate Offer.

Related terms: CPC (Cost Per Click), Affiliate Offer, and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).