CTR, click-through rate, is the ratio of clicks to impressions.
CTR (%) = clicks / impressions * 100%. For example, if your ad was shown 1,000 times and received 3 clicks, CTR = 3 / 1,000 * 100% = 0.3%.
CTR applies both to ads and to landing pages.
When Does CTR Matter by Itself?
The importance of CTR is very often overestimated and rarely underestimated.
You can read more detail in my glossary.
People periodically ask me, “Is this a good CTR?” For a landing page, for a network. The question is not entirely correct.
The most important campaign metric is profit volume. High volume is good, low volume is bad. Everything else is a proxy. Sometimes a landing page with 7% CTR makes more profit than one with 30% CTR.
Of course, CTR is sometimes decisive. These are situations where CTR strongly affects traffic price or volume.
For example, a high CTR can produce very cheap Facebook traffic. Search advertising is a little more complicated, but CTR is still decisive. Its importance is noticeably lower in mobile ad networks: you can gain some traffic volume, but not a large reduction in cost per click.
Landing-page CTR can matter in a PPV campaign when the goal is not to prepare the user for the offer, but to move as much traffic as possible to the offer or a presell page. In many PPV campaigns, the landing page effectively plays the role of a banner.
How to Analyze CTR
Clearly, there are not many cases where CTR matters by itself. But it is almost always worth analyzing because CTR can indicate that something is wrong with the campaign:
- Landing-page CTR is too low. As a general rule, pay attention below 5-10%, but in some cases 1% is fine and in others 30% is terrible. If CTR is low, think about why users do not click: perhaps the page is bad, loads slowly, or places the link too deep and awkwardly on target devices.
- CTR is too high or suddenly rises. This can indicate bots, especially if the increase appears across every landing page under test.
- Any sharp CTR change. This can indicate a change in traffic quality.
- Comparing CTR across tested pages or ads. Compare it only if conversion rates are roughly equal. For example, when you carefully polish a page through colors and element placement without changing the meaning much.
- Large landing-page variation across devices. Test more carefully how the page looks on each device.
So:
For ads:
- For search and social traffic, CTR affects price and is decisive.
- For PPV, display, and teaser networks, CTR may or may not be decisive; it depends heavily on campaign goals. It is more likely important than not.
- For mobile traffic, CTR is not a major parameter and should be optimized last.
For landing pages:
- It matters when the goal is to move traffic onward.
- It matters when comparing landing pages with the same conversion level. Or you can make the landing page yourself.
- In every other case, profit is the main metric.
In any case, understand that CTR is usually not the most important metric. Every analysis should aim to find profitable setups, not setups with maximum CTR.