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2023 AVERAGE AD CLICK THROUGH RATES (CTRS) FOR PAID SEARCH, DISPLAY AND SOCIAL
MEDIA

By Dave Chaffey 14 Feb, 2023
Essential
Internet ad analytics
Digital marketing statistics

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OUR LATEST SUMMARY OF AD CLICKTHROUGH RATES STATISTICS IN THE US, EUROPE, AND
WORLDWIDE IS DESIGNED TO HELP YOU BENCHMARK YOUR PAID DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA
ADS, SET MARKETING BUDGETS, AND DEFINE YOUR GOALS

If you're forecasting your digital media spend, you need to compare the ROI of
your display ads, paid social, Google Ads, and social media. Depending on your
objectives, it's worth reviewing and benchmarking the latest metrics like
average click-through rates, average cost per click, and cost per lead.

I've put this compilation together to help marketing professionals create direct
response conversion models for digital marketing campaigns. By creating budget
models using known benchmarks for average CTRs and digital media click-through
costs, you can better forecast your return on investment from digital media ads.
Our budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets include:

 * Simple digital channel planning spreadsheet
 * Conversion and revenue model spreadsheet
 * Month-by-month customer acquisition spreadsheet
 * Monthly marketing budget spreadsheet

This data is particularly useful if you haven't previously invested in
advertising on publisher sites through ad networks or paid social media ads
since it can help make the case and set expectations with colleagues or clients
of the number of visits based on quantitative forecasts. As always, we recommend
applying a targeted, data-driven approach to your marketing activities and we
have tools and templates to help.

If you're looking to identify and prioritize digital marketing channels for
growth, don't miss our step-by-step integrated RACE digital marketing plan
template. Our most popular free download helps managers, marketers, and small
business owners streamline their planning and improve performance. Find out more
about the RACE Framework and the integrated marketing strategy tools covered in
this blog when you join Smart Insights as a Free Member.



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AVERAGE CTR BENCHMARKS - FEBRUARY 2023 UPDATE

We’ve updated our compilation of average clickthrough rates, cost per click, and
cost per lead across Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Each year, we update our statistics summaries with the latest research as it
becomes available. Stats are in three sections which answer these questions:

 * Q. What are average display ad CTRs for different industries?
 * Q. What average CPC/ cost per lead can industry marketers expect?
 * Q. What are social media ad clickthrough rates - a comparison of Facebook,
   Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter CTRs?


SEARCH MARKETING BENCHMARKS: AVERAGE CLICK-THROUGH RATE

One of the best sources for PPC data is LocalIQ/Wordstream paid search
bencmarks. Note that the sample is typically for smaller local businesses.  For
2022 data, published early in 2023, the average engagement rates and costs were:

 * Average click-through rate: 6.30%
 * Average cost per click: $2.96
 * Average conversion rate: 7.26%
 * Average cost per lead: $40.74



Of course, these figures are averages for each sector CTRs tend to be higher for
brand searches and lower for generic searches.

Note on data source:

This chart is based on a sample of 4,595 North American-based LOCALiQ client
accounts in the home services vertical who were running search advertising,
display advertising, and/or social media advertising between May 1, 2020, and
June 25, 2021. Each subcategory includes a minimum 10 unique active clients.
“Averages” are technically median figures to account for outliers.

CPC COST PER CLICK/ COST PER LEAD SEARCH ADVERTISING BENCHMARKS

Cost per click in search advertising is driven by many factors. As demonstrated
in the table below, depending on the industry, a click could cost a marketer
less than $1 or as much as $8-9, such as those in attorneys & legal services.

However, it's important to look at the bigger picture when defining the value of
your clicks. $9 is still a very reasonable cost considering the high-value
potential for each customer lifecycle in this industry. Therefore it's
reasonable to presume that the CPC is driven up by high competition for a
relatively smaller number of target customers (/clicks).

We also have a comparison of Google organic Clickthrough rates by position.

ALTERNATIVE DATA ON CTRS FOR LARGER BUSINESSES

For brand engagement rates, one of the best sources for insight on paid media
engagement including CTR and cost is the Skai research. Skai (formerly Kenshoo)
is a performance marketing platform offering advertising Placements on Google,
Meta, Amazon Ads, TikTok, Snap, Walmart Connect, Instacart, Roundel, Criteo,
CitrusAd, Pinterest, Microsoft, Apple Search Ads, and more. Brand using it
include Pepsico, Diageo, Reckitt, Daimler, LG and Vodafone. It is one of the few
sources available offering CTR benchmarks for search and display. Trends in
retail categories are also shown in the full report.

Paid search (Google Ads) CTR and CPC trends



GOOGLE ADS BIDDING COMPARISON 



RETAIL MEDIA CTR AND CPC TRENDS

Retail media include retailers such as Amazon and Walmart and ad networks such
as Criteo.



PAID SOCIAL CTR

Unfortunately, there isn't a breakdown by social network in the Skai data, but
the majority of the spend is with Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram. This
shows how CTR is typically around 1.3% in social feeds which is significantly
higher than the lower historic data reported for display towards the end of this
article.



Further insight on organic and paid social engagement across Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and TikTok is available from the Emplify (formerly Social
Bakers) social media industry reports which cover 6 industries.


GOOGLE ADS (FORMERLY ADWORDS) DISPLAY NETWORK BENCHMARKS

LocalIQs Google Adwords industry benchmarks average CTRs now report just on the
Google Ads search network accounts they manage. They no longer report on the
display network. This typically has sub one-percent CTRs.

GOOGLE DOUBLECLICK BENCHMARKS FOR AD PLACEMENT

Unfortunately, Google has removed CTRs reported for its Doubleclick display
brand and their interactive Display benchmarking tool.  So now we can only
present previous data. No other alternatives are available as far as I'm aware.

> Previous pre-2015 Doubleclick data shows an average CTR of just 0.05% for all
> display formats, i.e just 5 clicks per 10000 impressions, showing the
> difficulty of driving direct response from online display or banner ads.
> Perhaps that is why Google no longer publishes this data...



While this is a really low CTR, however you look at it, cross-media optimization
tests shows that online ads do help increase brand awareness and purchase
intent, particularly when combined with offline media.

It's not the case that the majority of ad viewers have 'banner blindness' and
are not aware of ads that are viewable placements. If this were the case,
businesses wouldn't invest in the level of display and programmatic ads that
they do.

We also see much higher CTRs online for other online ad formats like Google
AdWords and Facebook - these can exceed 1%, so are more effective in driving
volume and also typically have higher intent, so conversion rates are higher.

Tests from the likes of Dynamic Logic and Millward Brown conclusively show that
display ads also encourage site visits (view throughs) and searches even where
people don't click on ads.


VARIATION IN ONLINE AVERAGE CTRS FOR DISPLAY ADS BY COUNTRY

This is historic Doubleclick data for reference.

Region Overall Click-through Rate Percent (%) North America Canada 0.09% United
States 0.10% EMEA Austria 0.11% Belgium 0.13% Denmark 0.12% Finland 0.05% France
0.12% Germany 0.11% Greece 0.17% Ireland 0.10% Italy 0.10% Luxembourg 0.09%
Netherlands 0.14% Norway 0.11% Spain 0.12% Sweden 0.08% Switzerland 0.12% United
Arab Emirates 0.18% United Kingdom 0.07% JAPAC Australia 0.07% China 0.12% Hong
Kong 0.17% India 0.18% Malaysia 0.30% Singapore

0.19%

Source: DoubleClick for Advertisers, a cross section of regions, January and
December 2009, Published July 2010

Variation in online average CTRs by ad format

Ad clickthrough rate naturally varies according to placement (position on
screen) and ad format (shape and size). The traditional full-banner performs
very poorly compared to skyscrapers, the ubiquitous medium rectangle and the
newer large rectangle format.




VARIATION IN ONLINE AD INTERACTION RATES BY AD FORMAT

Interaction rates differ for different ad formats in a similar way to ad
formats.



Interaction rate definition:

Interactions are defined as the user does one or more of the following:

 * Mouses over the ad for 1 continuous second
 * Clicks an Exit link
 * Makes the ad display in Full Screen mode
 * Expands the ad

GOOGLE RESPONSIVE DISPLAY ADS

Note that more recently Google introduced Responsive Display ads on the Google
Display Network as the default ad type. These involve uploading your assets
(images, headlines, logos, videos and descriptions) and Google will
automatically generate ads to be shown on the Google Display Network.

Reports from early adopters suggest that these can have relatively high CTRs.
This example of CTRs compared a Google Ads campaign provided by Smart Insights
Expert commentator David Miles. It shows the uplift he received when testing
this new format.




Still deciding where to invest your resources? Structure your marketing plan
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WHAT ARE SOCIAL MEDIA AVERAGE CTRS - A COMPARISON OF FACEBOOK AND TWITTER?

Again, we will use the Q1 2020 ad benchmark report from AdStage as our primary
data source. Here are the media CTRs for their clients in North America:

FACEBOOK AD CTR

The average Facebook CTR in the newsfeed is 1.11%. This is trending downwards; a
decrease of 0.37% compared to the previous year.



Other data reported includes:

 * CTR on the right side placement averages just 0.16%.
 * Facebook Stories have an average CTR of 0.79%.
 * Facebook Audience network is 0.69% (mainly used for promoting apps such as
   gaming apps on publisher sites and in apps). This uses a range of ad formats
   such as display, native and video.

INSTAGRAM AD CTR

Instagram ad clickthrough rate in the feed is 0.22%, significantly lower than in
the previous year and much lower compared to Facebook. This reflects the visual
nature of Insta which doesn't offer opportunities for CTR in organic newsfeeds
(other than Stories). Benchmarks for Stories are a little higher at 0.33%.



LINKEDIN AD CTR

Although the audience is quite different since LinkedIn targets B2B audiences,
there is a similar CTR in LinkedIn of 0.22%.



TWITTER AD CTR

Twitter has a higher clickthrough rate, although there is a significant decrease
in the last quarter. Fewer impressions are served to Adstage customers in this
category so this insight should be treated with caution.




HISTORICAL DATA FOR CONTEXT - COMPARISON OF DISPLAY, SEARCH (ADWORDS) AND SOCIAL
ADS AVERAGE CTRS

Since the Google-Doubleclick data is no longer available we're unable to update
this data, but we have kept it in this post since it may be useful for readers
to understand historic trends in CTR.

This comparison of average online media clickthrough rates from Marin is useful
for modelling the response of digital media for top-level budgets.


FACEBOOK AD CLICKTHROUGH RATES BY SECTOR

Facebook offers different forms of ad formats with different goals will
naturally vary in response as these retail Facebook ads from. You can see that
Facebook ad CTRs which may be more highly targeted that display ads have
significantly higher CTRs, particularly for Lead generation (i.e. adding
subscribers to a retailers email list) and Dynamic Product ads (retargeting
visitors who have already visited a site with relevant offers).  

Wordstream also have these summary Facebook ad CTRs by sector:




THE CHALLENGE OF ONLINE AD VIEWABILILTY

Viewability is another issue for advertisers to consider when evaluating online
ad effectiveness as measured by clickthrough rates. Ad blocking also has an
impact since ad blockers have increased in popularity across countries and
demographics, accounting for 35% of ads in some countries.

Viewability refers to the percentage of ads in a campaign or on a publisher site
that are potentially available for clickthrough. Just 44.9% of all ads are
clickable according to Google-published viewability data since ads may be below
the fold and users do not scroll to see them. This varies across publisher and
content category.



Given the impact of viewability and ad blocking on online ad clickthrough rates
you can see that there are moves in the industry to only charge for viewable
ads, which with increasing options for native advertising will potentially
improve the effectiveness of ads.

 * 

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online
marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. Dave is editor of the
100+ templates, ebooks and courses in the digital marketing resource library
created by our team of 25+ digital marketing experts. Our resources are used by
our Premium members in more than 100 countries to Plan, Manage and Optimize
their digital marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here.
Dave is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling
books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital
Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. My personal site,
DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and
support materials including a digital marketing glossary. In 2004 he was
recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing
‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. Please connect
on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.

This blog post has been tagged with:

Ad blockingBanner adsDigital advertisingDigital Marketing BenchmarkingFacebook
advertisingInstagram advertisingProgrammatic Advertising
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