Click Through Rate :  Are People Clicking My Ad?

Click Through Rate (CTR) is the most basic measure of success in online advertising. It shows the ratio between ad views (i.e. the number of times an ad appears) and clicks (i.e. when someone actually clicks on the ad and is forwarded to the advertisers landing page). If an ad appeared 10,000 times for a certain keyword search and 300 users clicked on the ad text then the click through rate was 3%.

The higher this value is, the better the campaign performs. The usual click through rate is around 0.1-0.3% in case of a regular display campaign whilst a search campaign`s average click through rate can be between 3 and 30%, depending how precise the targeting and how compelling the offer is.

Click through rate can be improved by using ad text that is tailored to specific keywords or placing a call-to-action within the ad text.

Click through rate also plays vital role in determining the Quality Score of an advertisement. Google Adwords determines the ranking of the ads by taking into account both the amount an advertiser willing to pay (i.e. the bid) and the relevancy of the ad (i.e. Quality Score). A good Quality Score enables an advertiser to pay less for the same position or get more traffic for the same price, and a good click through rate, among other factors, plays an important role in this effort.