Plain answer
CTR (click-through rate) is the percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it. Divide clicks by impressions: 5 clicks from 100 showings is a 5% CTR. It's the clearest signal of whether your ad matches what the person in front of it actually wants.
How CTR actually works
Platforms read CTR as a vote. An ad people click is an ad the auction rewards — better positions, lower cost per click — because relevant ads make the platform more money per showing. An ad people scroll past pays a penalty in both rank and price.
That makes CTR a lever, not just a report. Google even enforces it directly in one program: non-profit accounts on the Google Ad Grant must hold a 5% CTR or risk deactivation.1 Google's own rulebook treats click-through as the proof an account is worth showing.
What's a good CTR?
It varies by format and intent, and cross-industry averages will mislead you. A search ad shown to someone typing "emergency plumber near me" should earn clicks at many times the rate of a display banner interrupting an article. Judge each campaign against its own history and its own format — is this week's CTR better than last week's, on the same audience? That comparison is real. The benchmark chart is not.
Field note from TomasMy minimum bar for creative on LinkedIn placements is a 5–6% CTR — and in niche C-suite audiences like logistics or government, I've seen 15%+. High CTR isn't vanity. It's the platform's proof that your ad is relevant, and relevance is what makes your traffic cheaper.
How do you improve CTR?
Say the specific thing. Match the headline to the exact search or the exact pain, put the price or the outcome in the ad, and cut the wrong audience with negative keywords so the people who'd never click stop counting against you. Most CTR problems are relevance problems, not creativity problems.
What this means for your ads
Treat CTR as a diagnostic, not a goal. A high CTR with no sales means the ad writes a check the landing page can't cash — check your conversion rate next. Clicks are the middle of the story. Never let a middle metric decide the budget.
Research sources
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