What is Click through rate?
{{Restructure|date=January 2025}}'''Click through rate''' ('''CTR''') is a [[Unit of measurement|measurement]] used in online [[advertising]]. ==Overview== Click through rate is given as a [[percentage]]. If an advertisement has a click through rate of 5%, this means out of 100 people who saw the advertisement, 5 people clicked the link and reached the target website. ==History== Click though rate has dropped significantly over the past years. In 1994, an [[advertisement]] was placed by [[AT&T]] on the website [[HotWired]] – considered as the world's first digital advertisement. The ad had a CTR of 44%, implying that out of 100 people who saw the ad, 44 clicked on the ad and landed on the AT&T website. <ref>{{Cite web|last=Wasserman|first=Todd|title=This Is the World's First Banner Ad|url=https://mashable.com/2013/08/09/first-banner-ad/|access-date=2020-09-28|website=Mashable|date=9 August 2013|language=en}}</ref> In 2020, Google ads have a CTR of 3.17%, implying that out of 100 people seeing the ad, only about 3 people clicked on and went into the advertiser's website.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Google Ads Benchmarks for YOUR Industry [Updated!]|url=https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks|access-date=2020-09-28|website=www.wordstream.com|language=en}}</ref> ==Email campaigns== An email campaign is sending out emails to a large number of recipients at a time to promote a product or service. CTR in email campaigns is the number of people who clicked the link in the email and landed on the sender's website.<ref>{{Cite web|title=IAB|url=https://www.iab.com/|access-date=2020-09-28|website=IAB|language=en-US}}</ref> In 2020, the average email campaigns' CTR is 2.62.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Email Marketing Benchmarks|url=https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/|access-date=2020-09-28|website=Mailchimp|language=en}}</ref> ==Search engine rankings== CTR is an important factor in [[Search engine|Search Engines]] like [[Google]]. For a search term, Google will display