Panic Over Click-Through Rates? Google Can Help!

Published on
June 11, 2015
Contributors
Megan Malone
megan@vicimediainc.com

Megan Malone is a Founding Partner with Vici, and leads our Operations division.  Megan has both a radio and digital marketing background working for the Philadelphia Eagles, Beasley Broadcast Group, and Cox Media Group. In her career she has helped plan and implement thousands of digital media campaigns.   She holds a certification from Disney Institute’s People Management, Google Analytics, and was awarded the top 10 advertisers in Louisville from the American Advertisers Federation.  In her free time Megan is relaxing in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband Dave and toddler Zoey.

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Some of the most frequently asked questions in digital advertising revolve around click-through rates (CTR). So what is a good CTR and what is a bad CTR? The national average click-through rate for display ads as a whole is 0.07% (Criteo). Keep in mind, that's across all industries and all ad sizes. So it's important to know how your campaign stacks up against your own industry standard.There are many contributing factors as to why your campaign’s click-through rates may be higher or lower than the national average. CTR’s are likely to vary based on country, size of ad, type of ad, and category of business. Luckily, we can always depend on our friends at Google to help us determine average display stats including CTR, ad sizing, and video completion rates that is not too high, not too low, but just right.The first step is to go to Google and search “Google display benchmark tool.”

Google Benchmark

Once you're on the site, click this image to find insights on the success of your digital campaign:

Google Benchmark 1

Filter your search to find CTR statistics and trend reports that are relevant to your country, your industry, the ad sizes you use and even the ad formats you use.

Google Benchmark 2

Once the filters are customized to your digital campaign, you can measure the success of your campaign against your industry competitors and compare ad size and format performance to customize your campaigns in a way that yields the best results. Keep in mind- CTR is only one key performance indicator of a campaign- it's also important to measure conversions beyond the click.Overall, it seems that different ad formats are better suited for different campaign goals: expanding formats lead to higher interaction rates while in-page formats lead to higher interaction times.

Google Benchmark 3

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