CTR calculator graded against your channel's benchmark

Click-through rate is the share of people who saw an ad and clicked it. It is the first rate in the funnel and the one most directly under the creative team's control: the audience decides whether the ad is shown, the ad decides whether it is clicked. A rising CTR on a steady audience means the message is landing; a falling one on the same audience means fatigue, and it usually shows up two or three weeks before the cost per lead does.

Which clicks count matters. Meta reports "CTR (all)", which includes reactions, comments and profile taps, and "CTR (link click-through rate)", which is clicks to your page. Use the link version; the other one flatters every campaign. Google's CTR is clicks on the ad divided by impressions and needs no such care.

It depends on the channel more than on anything else, because the channels sell different attention. Someone typing a query into Google is asking for the click; a Search CTR of 3 to 6 percent is normal and 10 percent is not rare on brand terms. A feed on Instagram or LinkedIn is interrupting something else, and 0.5 to 1.5 percent is the range. Display and YouTube pre-roll are lower again. Comparing a Search CTR with a Meta CTR says nothing; comparing this month's Meta CTR with last month's says a lot.

The benchmark table below is what the calculator grades against. Treat the "strong" column as a target for creative work and the "average" column as the line under which something is wrong.

On platforms priced per thousand impressions, CTR sets the cost per click directly: CPC = CPM ÷ (1,000 × CTR). Take a Meta campaign from a 0.9 to a 1.5 percent CTR and the click gets 40 percent cheaper on the same audience with no change to bids. On Google, a higher CTR raises the quality score, which lowers the CPC you need to hold a position. Either way, better creative is a media cost reduction, and the calculator's "at a strong CTR" line shows how big.

The one caveat is that a click is not a conversion. A curiosity hook can double CTR and halve conversion rate, and the cost per lead ends up where it started. Read CTR next to conversion rate, always.