What Is The Average Click Through Rate (CTR) Of Display/Content and Search Ads?

What Is The Average Click Through Rate (CTR)?

Following on from my last post about the average bounce rate, I have decided to write about what is the average click thru rate (CTR) on different networks and devices. Similar to the average bounce rate question, many clients have asked me questions such as ‘what is the average click through rate of display or content ads?’ or ‘average CTR of mobile or search ads’ etc. Therefore, I have decided to collect 12 months of data across different industries that will help to answer many of these questions. The below data is for a full year period from 1^st of Jan 2012 to 31^st of Dec 2012 across 200 websites and will highlight the average CTR of different devices and networks such as:

·      Display, Google search and Search partners network

·      Computers/Desktop, Mobile and Tablet devices

Average Click Through Rate (CTR)	Total
Display Network	0.13%
Computers	0.10%
Mobile devices with full browsers	0.24%
Tablets with full browsers	0.23%
Google search	4.79%
Computers	4.90%
Mobile devices with full browsers	3.71%
Tablets with full browsers	6.44%
Search partners	0.64%
Computers	0.62%
Mobile devices with full browsers	1.18%
Tablets with full browsers	0.50%
Grand Total	0.95%

As you can see from the above, the average CTR for:

1.     Display (content) network ad is 0.13%. Other sources report about 0.05% to 0.4% but not sure if this is accurate as 0.4% is a pretty high metric for display network.

2.     Google search network ad is 4.79% (This of course include brand terms which will get much higher CTR than non-branded terms). Other source reports about 2%

3.     Search network partners ad is 0.64%. Other source reports about 0.36% (data only for 1 client though)

Is your average CTR stat below or above the data presented? and do you have data that you would like to share with me, if you do, please email me or put through your comments.

Just in case, you are curious how Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is calculated. It’s pretty simple, this will be amount of clicks / amount of impressions. Example, if you have 2 clicks from 100 impressions this will be a CTR of 2%. Click Thru Rate (CTR) is a way of measuring how successful/effective your ads are and you should be spending time to optimise your CTR if your stats are way below the above averages.