What is CTR?
CTR, or click through rate, is the share of times an ad was shown that someone clicked it, found by dividing clicks by impressions.
Formula
CTR = clicks ÷ impressions × 100
Worked example, not a result
One product dragging the campaign average down
Say a shopping campaign is shown 62,000 times in a month and gets 1,364 clicks. CTR is 2.2 percent.
Then look at products individually. One item collects 9,400 impressions and only 47 clicks, which is about 0.5 percent. It is being shown a lot and chosen almost never.
On shopping placements that usually means a mismatch rather than a bad product. The title may not contain the words people are searching, so the listing appears for the wrong queries. The image may be a lifestyle shot that is hard to read at thumbnail size next to plain product photos. The price shown may be well above the others on the row. Any of those makes a listing invisible in a crowd.
That single view turns a vague campaign metric into a specific job on one product's title, image or price.
The impression and click counts above are invented to show the method.
Why it matters
CTR is the first honest signal about relevance in the visitors lever. It tells you whether the people seeing your listing recognise it as the thing they were looking for, which is a question about your title, image and price rather than about your budget.
It also has a direct effect on cost. Search auctions take expected click through into account when deciding whether to show an ad and what to charge, so a listing that earns clicks generally earns cheaper ones. That makes CTR work one of the few things that improves volume and cost at the same time.
For a store owner the useful read is by product and by search term rather than by campaign. A campaign average tells you nothing you can act on. A product with plenty of impressions and almost no clicks tells you exactly which title to rewrite or which image to replace, and that work usually pays back faster than a bid change.
Common mistakes
- Chasing a high rate for its own sake. Clickbait style titles that overpromise earn clicks and lose money, because the product page cannot deliver what the listing implied.
- Comparing rates across placements that behave differently. A shopping listing shown to someone typing a product name and an image ad shown mid scroll are not measuring the same thing.
- Reading only the campaign average. The average hides both the products worth pushing and the ones quietly wasting impressions.
- Ignoring price as a driver. On shopping placements the price sits next to the click, so an uncompetitive price shows up as a low rate long before anyone complains about it.
Related terms and answers
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