Click-through rate (CTR)
CTR is the share of people who saw your ad and clicked it: clicks divided by impressions. It shows how relevant the ad looks to the searcher.
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CTR
CTR is the share of people who saw your ad and clicked it: clicks divided by impressions. It shows how relevant the ad looks to the searcher.
Of the people who saw this ad, how many found it worth a click? A higher CTR usually means the ad matches what people are looking for. On Google Search it feeds expected CTR, one of the three Quality Score components. CTR says nothing about what happened after the click, so it signals relevance, not profit.
Where you'll see it
In Google Ads, CTR is a default column in the Campaigns, Ad groups, Ads and Keywords tables (Columns > Performance). In Meta Ads Manager, use "CTR (link click-through rate)" rather than "CTR (all)", which also counts likes, profile clicks and expanding text. TikTok Ads Manager shows CTR in the default metrics of every level.
Worked exampleTwo ads in one ad group, 8,000 impressions each
| Clicks | CTR | |
|---|---|---|
| Ad 1 | 320 | 4.0% |
| Ad 2 | 160 | 2.0% |
At a similar cost per click, ad 1 brings twice the traffic for the same visibility. Whether it brings twice the sales is a separate question: check conversion rate before pausing ad 2.
Do
- Compare like with like: Search, Display, Video and Meta feeds behave differently
- Check conversion rate next to CTR
- Wait until the difference is meaningful
Don't
- Optimize for CTR alone; clickbait can raise cost per acquisition
- Read Meta’s “CTR (all)” as link clicks
- Judge an ad after a few hundred impressions