The percentage of impressions that result in a click on a link, advertisement, email, or call to action.
A measure of how effectively a message or placement encourages people to take the next step.
Short and sweet:
The percentage of impressions that result in a click on a link, advertisement, email, or call to action.
A measure of how effectively a message or placement encourages people to take the next step.
See also: CTR, Impression, Call to Action
Click-through rate divides the number of clicks an ad or link receives by the number of times it was shown, expressing how compelling that specific piece of creative or copy was at actually getting someone to act rather than just scroll past. A high CTR often signals strong message-audience fit, though it can also be inflated by clickbait-style copy that generates clicks without actually delivering on what was promised once someone lands on the page. Because it’s calculated per creative or per placement, CTR is one of the most common metrics used to compare different ad variations directly against each other in a test.
A Google Ads listing with a strong click-through rate of 8 percent is capturing far more attention than the industry average, which often hovers closer to 2 percent for the same type of search.
Email marketers might test two different subject lines to see which one drives more clicks relative to opens, since a catchy line that boosts opens doesn’t always translate into more taps on the link inside.
A YouTube ad’s performance on this measure can reveal whether the opening seconds are compelling enough to make someone tap through to a website rather than just watching passively and moving on.
