Many SEO specialists and advertisers who work with metrics have come across the concept of CTR more than once. It often slips into the statistics of requests, but what it is, not everyone knows. If you have to optimize the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, then you can’t go without this indicator.
In today’s article we will look at what CTR is, what factors it depends on and how it can be increased.
CTR: what is it and how is it calculated
CTR (Click-Through Rate) is a click-through rate that allows you to see how many visits a site has received after viewing an ad. Thanks to this, we can analyze statistics and determine how successfully the advertisement was launched.
The CTR is calculated using a fairly simple formula:
CTR = (ad clicks / ad impressions) * 100%
For example, let’s take a situation where our ad was shown 5000 times with 50 clicks. Substituting the values, we get 1% – this is our click-through rate. In different situations, it means completely different results.
When is CTR to be considered effective
It all depends on what kind of ad was released. If this is targeted advertising, then the indicator is one, if contextual – another, for banners – the third. Below is a look at how it all works.
Targeted advertising
Targeted advertising is based on specific metrics related to the user. Such ads will only be shown to those who meet the configured criteria. For example, we can set up an ad campaign for children’s clothing so that it only appears to mothers in their 30s and 35s in one location.
Although the settings are very flexible, the CTR usually does not reach high values. This is due to the fact that such ads are displayed for all users from the selected target audience. On the one hand, this is good, but not everyone is looking for what customized ads have to offer. Therefore, many users will simply pass by, which means that clicks will not grow. As a result, the CTR value can vary from 0.1% to 1%.
contextual advertising
Contextual advertising is an advertisement that satisfies the user’s request. Most often we see it in search engines in the first positions with the mark “Advertising”. Key queries are usually divided into several categories: commercial, informational and geo-dependent. In each of them, the CTR value may differ.
- Commercial. It is used when the user wants to purchase a product. Such queries often include words such as “price” or “buy.” This is a fairly effective method to get new customers, but at the same time it is not the most practical one: the user can either follow the ad or go further for the best offers. CTR can vary greatly: from 1-5% to 10-20%.
- Informational. In this case, we are talking about useful sites that users are looking for in order to learn something new. Advertising campaigns for such queries do not work well, since people are used to finding the desired site themselves, rather than opening it through intrusive queries. A good CTR in this case is from 3% to 8%.
- Geo-dependent. Such ads are linked to the user’s location. For example, the query “sushi delivery” will display ads in the specified region. The CTR in such cases is usually high, since the request satisfies the user’s need in the current region. Values usually range from 20% to 25%.
It is also important to know about high-frequency keys, for example, “laptop”, “car”, “apartment”. Quite a lot of traffic is attracted for such requests, but usually it is not possible to collect many clicks.
Advertising banners
As with targeted ads, banners do not have a high CTR. This is due to the fact that they appear quite chaotically: the user views banners on different resources, and their appearance does not depend on him. Based on this, visitors rarely click on ads, which means that their CTR is noticeably low. Usually it reaches 0.4% for Yandex and 0.08% for Google.
What affects CTR
As I said, CTR is one of the most important ad metrics. The higher its value, the more successful the advertising campaign was. Consider the factors that affect this:
- Quality. It is not so much the value of clicks that matters as the relevance of the ad unit to user requests. If a user sees an offer that meets their requirements, they are more likely to click on it.
- Design part. This point concerns banners – if their design “leaves much to be desired”, then there can be no talk of a high CTR. The same applies to the text component – a banal and boring text will not give high efficiency.
- Compliance with the topic. If your site talks about the repair of old equipment, then you do not need to insert ads of another category into your ad. It is better to clearly match the request – then there will be more conversions.
In addition to the above, seasonality also affects CTR, but this is more related to the type of activity that depends on the season.
How you can increase your CTR
We’ve already covered some ways to increase your CTR, but here are some more meaningful tips to help you do this:
- adapt to the target audience, select relevant queries;
- a call to action can increase CTR by 10-30%;
- use different ads in different search engines;
- add quick links in your ads;
- set the show time and add thematic pictures.
I also advise you to analyze your competitors in detail, but not copy them. Try different approaches – the CTR value will always tell you which direction to go.
Conclusion
Today we talked about what CTR is. This is a fairly simple way to get statistics on the effectiveness of the launched ads. It is important to understand that no value is a guarantee that a user will purchase a product or use a service. For advertising to pay off, it is important to work out the UX / UI design and text component of the site. Try, experiment, study suitable materials, and then the effectiveness will not keep you waiting.