Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who clicked a specific link, ad, or call to action out of the total number of people who viewed or were served it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
CTR is a leading indicator of how compelling a headline, ad creative, or subject line is at capturing attention, but it says nothing about what happens after the click — a high-CTR ad can still lead to a poorly converting landing page, which is why CTR is typically read alongside, not instead of, conversion rate. It's also sensitive to placement: an ad in a prominent position will often earn a higher CTR than the same creative placed lower on a page.
If a search ad is shown 10,000 times and receives 250 clicks, its click-through rate is 2.5% (250 divided by 10,000).
It varies significantly by channel and placement — search ads, display ads, and email subject lines each have very different typical CTR ranges, so benchmarks should be compared within the same channel and industry.
No — CTR only measures how many people clicked, not what they did afterward; a high-CTR campaign that sends unqualified traffic to a landing page can still produce a poor conversion rate.
CTR measures clicks as a percentage of impressions, how many people clicked something, while conversion rate measures completed goals as a percentage of visitors, how many of those clickers actually did what the site wanted.