The CTR is one of those metrics that you cannot ignore, especially when evaluating the effectiveness of your digital advertising campaigns.
It is also an important statistic when measuring the quality of your search engine positioning and evaluating how to attract more leads within your conversion strategy.
In simple words, the CTR is a percentage that, if properly studied and analyzed, can help you turn your digital marketing strategy 180° and end up achieving the current business objectives effectively.
What is meant by CTR?
As we already said, the CTR is an important metric known in English as Click-Through-Rate or Click-Through Rate, which makes it one of the Kpis that must be taken into account when creating online campaigns.
Basically, what this key management indicator seeks to measure is the percentage of effectiveness that an advertisement has in encouraging users to click on it.
What is the importance of CTR?
The importance of the CTR lies mainly in two very important aspects when launching and evaluating the results of an online advertising campaign.
The first aspect is that if you carry out an A/B test to see which type of ad produces the best results, the CTR is the indicator that will reveal this detail.
The second thing is that the higher the CTR of your campaign, the lower the charge that the Ads platforms make for your impressions or clicks. Since more people will click on your ad and that already translates into profit for these platforms, the goal here is a win-win.
How is CTR calculated?
To calculate the value of the CTR it is only necessary to know the following data:
- Total number of clicks obtained so far.
- Number of ad impressions.
Equation:
CTR = (Number of clicks / Total impressions) x 100
Here’s an example: suppose you’ve decided to launch a campaign and you’re running a test for two ads, in the first you decide to use the keyword bicycle and in the second you place mountain bike.
You decide to test it for a week, and in that time, you discover that the bike ad has gotten 2,000 clicks, while the mountain bike ad only got 800.
At first glance you would say that the first is better than the second but who can really ensure it is the CTR. See how it works:
Bicycle Advertisement:
CTR = (2000 / 32000) x 100 = 0,062 x 100 = 6, 2%
Advertisement B Mountain bike:
CTR = (800/11000) x 100 = 0,072 x 100 = 7, 2%
Both ads have a pretty good CTR, but the second one is much more effective than the first one by 1%.
In reality, this result is due to the fact that the keywords are much more specific, which causes the ad to be exposed less but connects better with the search intent of the audience.
Relationship between CTR and conversion rate.
The CTR is not a metric that has much meaning on its own, but it must be accompanied by the conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who actually carry out the action that we expect within a landing page.
Why should this relationship be made? Because it is useless to have a very high CTR, if hardly anyone executes the action indicated on the page where they are supposed to buy, subscribe or fill out a form to download content.
In short, without conversions there are no results, the objectives are not met, and visitors are not converted into customers.
Actions you can take to increase the click-through rate on your advertising.
- Make full use of the extensions available on ad platforms for digital advertising.
- Create ads that have an irresistible call to action and provide some benefit to the audience, such as a discount code.
- Make smart use of the keywords you want to rank for. That is, make sure that they are both in the ad title and in the body and URL of the ad.
- Use long-tail keywords, that is, instead of simply placing the word bicycle, you can use bushido mountain bike and thus increase your probability of conversion.
- Always adjust your offer, either by season or by fashion products. In case you didn’t know, all advertising starts with a high average CTR and as the ad’s novelty wears off, it starts to drop.
How does the click-through rate affect the quality of an ad?
A high CTR means that online campaign platforms rank you better or charge less each time your ad appears on their platforms, since they are quite sure that users will click on it.
But in the case of a very low CTR, it would be like throwing money away, especially in Google Ads and Facebook Ads, which may consider it to be of such poor quality that they simply do not show it within their advertising campaign platforms. .
Summary of the post and frequently asked questions about CTR:
What is the CTR?
The CTR is a web metric that calculates the Click-Through-Rate or Click Ratio, which is nothing more than the percentage of people who click on a certain web advertisement in relation to the number of impressions of the same.
How is CTR calculated?
The only thing you need to know to calculate this ratio is the number of clicks an ad has received, as well as the number of times it has been printed or shown to Internet users.
Then divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and multiply by 100 to get the click-through rate for that particular ad.
What is the CTR used for?
The objective of the CTR is to demonstrate how effective an ad or a publication is on the Internet when it comes to attracting visitors.
A high CTR ensures a better positioning of your campaigns and more traffic.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, it can be said that the CTR is one of the most important KPI’s when talking about online advertising, especially if the payment system is PPC (Pay per click).
It is also important to highlight that this metric does not have a meaning by itself, but must be evaluated based on the conversion rate, since sometimes an advertisement can be interpreted as if it were misleading advertising.