Click-through rate or click-through rate is one of the most important metrics when it comes to the performance of an Adwords campaign and represents the ratio between the number of clicks and the number of impressions of an ad in search results.
Why is it important to get a high CTR?
CTR is responsible for the success of PPC campaigns, as it affects both the Quality Score and the amount we pay when someone clicks on our ad to the same extent. Given that the performance of a campaign depends a lot on the relevance of the ads we design and how users perceive us, it is very important to optimize our campaigns in the most efficient way possible in order to finally achieve the expected results.
What does a high CTR mean?
The best answer here is… IT DEPENDS. It depends on the type of campaign, it depends on the products or services being promoted and even the keywords used. No two Adwords campaigns are the same, just as not even the twins are identical to each other. To see what works and what doesn’t, several elements must first be tested, to see what influences our achievement of our ultimate goal.
In the report below, made by Wordstream , we can see the average click-through rate for Search and Display campaigns in 20 of the most common industries.
Field of activity |
Average CTR Search |
CTR Medium Display |
| Law | 1,72% |
0,52% |
|
Cars |
2,14% |
0,41% |
|
B2B |
2,55% |
0,22% |
|
Consumer Services |
2,40% |
0,20% |
|
Double |
3,40% |
0,52% |
|
E-commerce |
1,66% |
0,45% |
|
Education |
2,20% |
0,22% |
|
Employment Services |
2,13% |
0,14% |
|
Financial Services Insurance |
2,65% |
0,33% |
|
Medical Services |
1,79% |
0,31% |
|
Consumer Goods |
1,80% |
0,37% |
|
Industrial Services |
1,40% |
0,35% |
|
Legal |
1,30% |
0,45% |
|
Real Estate |
2,03% |
0,24% |
|
Technology |
2,38% |
0,84% |
| Tourism and catering | 2,18% |
0,47% |
As can be seen, the highest click-through rates for Search were recorded in the categories of Dating (3.40%), Financial and Insurance (2.65%) and B2B (2.55%), and the lowest click-through rates are in the Legal ( 1.35%), Industrial Services (1.40%) and E-commerce (1.66%) categories.
If we talk about Display, here we can see that the click-through rates are much lower because unlike Search campaigns, where we know that the user is interested in a certain product or service, in Display campaigns the user is exposed to the text ads or banners that we serve, without being looking for what we promote.
I think that many times it has happened to you to see various ads that are not in your area of interest or to follow the same banner on all the sites you enter. This happens when we don’t target our audience correctly or set a frequency capping. Frequency is the number of times an ad is shown to a unique user over a specific period of time. For example, we should not show the same banner to a user more than 3-5 times/day.
Thus, the highest click-through rates for the Display network are present in the areas: Technology (0.84%) and Law and Dating (0.52%), and the lowest: Employment Services (0.14%), Consumer Services (0.20%) and B2B and Education (0.22%)
