How Does Your CTR Compare with Others in the Industry?

“What’s a ‘good’ click-through-rate?” is one of the most common questions I’ve received in my short nine months working in the media world. CTR is a commonly recognized statistic that shows advertisers how often their ad is being clicked. While CTR is not necessarily the most important data point depending on the goals of the specific campaign, it is important to understand.

WordStream looked closely at their data to create this very useful chart. Here, click-through-rates are broken down by industry to give advertisers a more in-depth look.

First, it is exceedingly important that advertisers compare search campaigns with other search campaigns and display campaigns with other display campaigns. Overall, the average CTR of a search network campaign is 1.91% while GDN (Google Display Network) only holds a CTR of 0.35%. It just wouldn’t make sense to compare search and display click-through-rates.

Next, advertisers need to be aware of the diverse industries. There are some industries that run in the middle of the pack in both search and display like Health/Medicine and Auto while others succeed stronger in search verses display or vise-versa.

Some search network successors are Dating/Personals (3.40%), Finance/Insurance (2.65%), and Business to Business (2.55%). To succeed in the search world, you have to have powerful and enticing copy, people actively searching for your product/service/industry, and motivation for consumers to click on your ad. However, Industrial Services (1.40%) and Legal (1.35%) don’t quite seem to have the same success when it comes to search advertising. Maybe it’s due to advertising restrictions causing the copy of the ads to be less enticing, or maybe consumers use word of mouth to find a lawyer as opposed to the internet.

On the GDN, Technology trumps all with a 0.84% CTR followed by Dating/Personal and Advocacy both at 0.52%. I imagine the creative minds in the technology business can come up with some pretty intriguing display ads. I believe that consumers are continuously interested in these three industries whether they’re actively searching for them or not, which could spark interest when a viewer sees the ad and lead to a click. On the reverse side, Employment Services (0.14%), Consumer Services (0.20%), B2B (0.22%), and Education (0.22%) are among the worst CTR performers on the GDN.

So, before pegging a campaign as a success or failure based on the CTR, it is important to see the averages in the same industry. This will help you better understand your campaign as well as set reasonable goals for the next campaign.