What is “Clickthrough Rate” Exactly?

Clickthrough Rate (CTR) is an internet marketing metric that measures the percentage of impressions that ended up in a click. 

In other words, if you’re running any form of pay-per-click ad campaigns (be it Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, TikTok Ads, or Google Ads), click-through rate is the percentage of people who clicked on your ad (clicks) out of people who saw your ad (impressions).

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Here’s the clickthrough rate formula:

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Click-Through Rate = (Clicks on Ad / Impressions) x 100

CTR Example Calculation:

Let’s say your ad has 80 clicks and 10,000 impressions.

Using the CTR formula: CTR =  (80/10,000) x 100 = 8%

That's an 8% CTR for this campaign.

Read on to learn the importance of CTR in determining the performance of your ads, and best practices to boost the CTR of your ad campaigns. 

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Why Does Clickthrough-Rate Matter?

Since the main goal of any ad is to drive qualified leads to your offer and get prospects to take the desired action… 

CTR is the initial touchpoint that helps you estimate the amount of interest your market is showing on your offer. And this is why CTR is critical.

What a high or low CTR means:

High CTR: It means that your audience is finding your ad highly relevant. Your ad is resonating with your audience, and enticing them to take action. 

Low CTR:  A low CTR signifies that something in your ad — be it your targeting, messaging, or offer — isn’t speaking strongly enough (or relevant enough) to your audience to convince them to take the next step.

So in summary: CTR is the main indicator that allows you to gauge how effective your ad truly is at bringing in prospects.

Now, now that you’re well aware of the significance of CTR in your advertising efforts… It is time to determine what a “good” click-through looks like.

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What Is a Good CTR?

The subject of “what is good CTR” has been a hotly debated topic amongst marketers, but the honest conclusion is always the same: it… depends.

A good click-through rate can vary based on the following factors:

• The industry you are in
• Your targeting options (keywords, interests, demographics, etc)
• The ad platform you are advertising on
  

So while it is true that you want to keep your CTR on the high side, there is no clear point-blank answer. If you’d like to discover what a good click-through rate would look like for your business, researching your specific industry’s average CTRs as a baseline, and then aim for an above-average CTR for your ad campaigns.

In the next section, we reveal what the average CTR is for Google Search, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, and TikTok Ads. It is important to note that the average CTR varies drastically from platform to platform. And the main reason boils down to user intent. People on Facebook and Instagram use the platform to browse for the most part, and therefore have low intent. 

On the other hand, Google Search has the highest average CTR compared to other PPC platforms due to its high search intent.  

Since YouTube is part of the Google network, YouTube advertisers can target people based on their Google keyword searches. 

Like YouTube, TikTok platform users are also looking to learn or be entertained.  Therefore, YouTube and TikTok audiences are also high-intent users. 

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What is a good CTR for Google Search Ads?

According to Wordstream, a good (above average) CTR for Google Search Ads is 6-7% or more. 

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What is a good CTR for Facebook Ads? 

According to Wordstream, who surveyed 8,287 US-Based Facebook ad accounts from 2016-2019, the average CTR across all industries is 0.89%. 

What is a good CTR for YouTube Advertising?

For YouTube Ads, our 5+ years of video ad experience across multiple industries has shown us that anything below 1% CTR is grim — if this is your case here, we would suggest you go back to the drawing board and work on re-doing your ad creative. 

Between 1-1.5% is a good CTR for YouTube Ads.

And anything above 2% is fantastic territory to be on (though this is generally hard to achieve — especially in tougher markets.)

Watch our video below to learn what an average, and good CTR looks like for YouTube Ads, and how to improve your YouTube ads CTR.

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What is a good CTR for TikTok Advertising?

Tiktok advertising is the newest kid on the block, having launched only in June of 2020. 

There is no average CTR report currently published for TikTok ads. However, what we do know is that 92% of TikTok users take action after watching a TikTok (according to a 2021 TikTok study on 7000+ global participants).  Clearly, TikTok’s users are highly engaged. 

Here at Linx Digital, we started running TikTok ads for our clients who were previously relying on Google, Facebook, and YouTube Ads. 

What we found (based on a sample size of our existing client campaigns) is that a good clickthrough rate for TikTok ads is above 1%.   

The best part about TikTok ads is that we have noticed a much lower cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition compared to PPC giants of Google, YouTube, and Facebook. This means that we are able to exceed our client’s business KPIs, which is to acquire new customers at an acceptable cost-per-acquisition.

In the TikTok Ads case studies below, we reveal the CTR, CPC, and more metrics we have experienced with TikTok:

TikTok Ads Case Study 1: Make Money Online Niche

TikTok Ads Case Study 2: Online Education Provider‍