What is click-through rate?
Click-through rate, or CTR, is the share of impressions that result in a click. It measures how compelling and relevant an ad, listing, or email is to the people who see it.
CTR is used everywhere there are impressions and clicks: paid ads, organic search listings, and email. The benchmark for good shifts a lot between them.
The CTR formula.
CTR = (clicks divided by impressions) times 100. Count clicks and impressions over the same placement and period.
Keep the pairing clean. Clicks from one campaign against impressions from another produce a meaningless rate.
A worked example.
Your ad gets 500 clicks from 25,000 impressions. CTR is 500 divided by 25,000, times 100, which is 2%.
What is a good CTR?
It depends almost entirely on the channel. Paid search often runs a few percent because intent is high; display advertising is usually well under 1%; email click rates sit somewhere between. Compare your CTR to the norm for that specific channel, not to a single cross-channel figure.
CTR feeds straight into cost. A higher CTR lowers your CPC at the same CPM, because you earn more clicks from the same impressions.
How to improve your CTR.
Tighten the match between message and audience, test creative and headlines, and make the call to action clear. Relevance is what lifts CTR, and platforms reward it with lower costs.
In organic search, CTR depends on how well your title and description answer the query. Earning more clicks from rankings you already hold is one of the cheapest gains available. See how we improve organic click-through for B2B SaaS.