Click-through rate; the percentage of people who click a link, advertisement, or call to action after seeing it.
A key metric for measuring how effectively content captures attention and encourages action.
Short and sweet:
Click-through rate; the percentage of people who click a link, advertisement, or call to action after seeing it.
A key metric for measuring how effectively content captures attention and encourages action.
See also: Click-Through Rate, Impression, Call to Action
CTR shows up across nearly every advertising and email platform’s reporting interface, serving as the quick, universal shorthand marketers reach for when comparing how compelling different pieces of creative or subject lines actually were. Because it’s calculated the same basic way everywhere, whether for a search ad, a display banner, or an email link, it gives marketers a consistent unit for comparing performance across otherwise very different channels and formats. A single unusually strong or weak CTR on its own rarely tells the whole story, though, which is why it’s typically read alongside conversion data to see whether those extra clicks actually led anywhere valuable.
A search ad with a CTR of 6 percent is performing well above the typical benchmark for most industries, which often sits closer to 2 percent.
Email marketers watch this figure closely because it reveals whether the actual link inside a message is compelling, separate from whether the subject line alone got someone to open it.
Display banner ads notoriously suffer from a low reading on this measure, often well under half a percent, which is part of why marketers frequently pair them with retargeting rather than expecting an immediate click.
