CTR Click Through Rate: What is it and how to increase it to improve your digital marketing strategy?

How the CTR is calculated

Total Impressions being the total number of times your ad has been shown to a user. While the total clicks, is the number of times that a user who has been shown your ad has clicked on it. This metric, which is always shown as a percentage, is visible in the control panel of your PPC account. Be it Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Criteo, etc … All online advertising platforms show this metric to assess the quality of your ads. A high CTR means that a high percentage of people who see your ad click on it, while a low CTR implies that your ad is of poor quality or is of little relevance to the users who are viewing it.

What is a good CTR?

The honest answer to the question is: “It depends.” CTRs naturally vary from campaign to campaign, and even from one keyword to another. Everything related to the way your ad is displayed plays an important role, from the ad text to the ad ranking on the results page. So if you want to have a “high” click-through rate, there really is no magic number. The average click-through rate varies by industry, and your expected CTR depends on the position of your ad, among other factors. Below you’ll find benchmarks for the average Google Ads click-through rate across 20 common industries. As you can see in the graph, the CTR not only depends on the ad, but also on the channel in which the ad is displayed. For example: An SEM ad that appears in the first position when we search for a certain keyword, will have a CTR much higher than the CTR of a banner that appears in a general press newspaper advertising the same product. The reason is simple, in the first case, the user is looking for a specific product, while in the second case we are interfering with the user’s navigation, who is most likely not interested in obtaining information about our product or service at that time. There may be many factors influencing your low CTR.

• Bad segmentation of your campaigns
• The format does not include an animation
• Ad text is not attractive
• Ad images are not suitable
• Ad colors do not stand out
• The ad is not understood
• etc…

To uplift the CTR, we recommend that you start by reviewing the ad segmentation, check the locations where your ads have been displayed in the case of a banner, or check the search terms for which your ads are displayed. This will be very useful when it comes to seeing what type of user is seeing your ads. If you do not detect any irregularity, we recommend that you modify the advertisement. Put into circulation two different ads, with different formats (the more animated the better results you should see). Many times we think the ads we are launching will bring in tons of clicks, that however, isn’t always the case. Once you have different ads circulating with the same segmentation, analyze the results for the ads with lower CTR and continue running the ads that are working for you. This is a process that can be iterative, as you can try to improve CTRs indefinitely. To learn more about how to optimize your marketing budget, read our entry on “How much I have to spend on digital marketing campaigns”.