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What Is CTR? Understanding the Meaning of Click-Through Rate
Are you wondering why you’re getting gaming pop-up ads whenever you use your phone? Then it’s time to learn something about the click-through rate (CTR). Typically, gaming publisher sites like Imangi Studios and Play365 place ads on relevant websites, games, or apps based on your interest.
Now, if you play Candy Crush on your phone, the chances are that a Gemix ad will pop up, and because of curiosity, you click on the ad to play the game. The same thing can happen to you, whether intentionally or accidentally.
The more you or your kid click on the gaming ads, the higher your CTR rate — concerning the gaming category. Once the publisher site records this data, it becomes clear that your interests hinge on the gaming category.
So, what happens? The next time you are on an app or playing a mobile game, more gaming ads start appearing. Before you know it, Candy Crush is continuously promoting Gemix on your phone, laptop, and tablet. And unless you change your display campaigns, you can’t escape it.
That is how efficient CTR is at promoting gaming apps through publisher sites. Therefore, if you plan to market your business online, you should take advantage of its efficacy. But what exactly is CTR? Let’s take a look.
Understanding Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate is defined as the number of times users click on your link, advertisement, or call to action. If you know anything about digital marketing, you are aware of several metrics to track successful sales.
For instance, click-through rate vs. conversion, which should be given more focus? For increasing website traffic or rankings, monitor the CTR, but for growing signups and subscriptions, you should watch the conversion rate.
In the same manner, maintaining a successful CTR depends on certain factors. Nevertheless, CTR’s primary purpose is to tell you how relevant the customers find your advertising: you can either have a high or a low CTR.
If you have a high CTR, you know that your ad is relevant to your target market. However, a low one means that most of your users do not find your advertisement appealing. On the other hand, pay per click (PPC) is search engine marketing where businesses pay Google every time one user clicks on their business advertisement.
If you are using Facebook or Google to publish your ads, the platforms will assign each of your ads a quality score based on their performance and how they relate to your landing page goals. Your quality score will also determine whether the platform will continue to post your ad or not.
Say, for instance, you want to promote a gaming app on Facebook. First, you need to familiarize yourself with the Facebook Ads Manager and its metrics. Once you create your advertisement, you can set up the app accordingly so that it will call people to install your product.
You can then use the Ads Manager to check your ads spend and analytics. The more people install your application, the higher your quality score will be, the more Facebook will advertise your gaming app, and the fewer costs you will incur for placing the ad.
How to Calculate CTR
You don’t necessarily need a click-through rate calculator to determine your CTR score. Typically, most sites have analytics software that does the work for you. Nevertheless, the mathematics involved is easy.
To determine your click-through rate, take the number of clicks you received on your ad, divide it by the number of impressions it received and multiply by 100. The answer is your CTR in percentage. Impressions refer to the number of times your ad was shown to users.
For example, if your ad was presented to 100 people 1000 times, your impression will be 1000. If the number of times people clicked on it was 50, then your CTR will be (50/1000)100 to get a CTR rate of 5.
Is There a Good and a Bad CTR?
What is a good click-through rate? The truth? It depends. There is no one size fits all answer to this question. A good CTR will depend on your industry, individual campaign, and your keyword choice.
Take, for instance, CTR in email marketing, the average click-through rate for email in retail is 2.25 percent, in government, it is 3.99 percent, and in the restaurant industry, it is 1.34 percent. You will also get different average rates for display and search networks.
Search refers to the click-through rate Google search: this is the ads you get when you search for a Google topic. Display refers to the ads you find placed on a site or a landing or social media page without the necessary search.
A good AdWords average CTR is 1 to 5 percent on the search network and 0.5 to 1 percent on the display network. What you want is to get a high CTR. But sometimes, high CTR can be bad for your business.
Using a keyword that is not pertinent to your brand, for instance, will not generate leads. Getting a high click-through rate for such a keyword is terrible because you will be paying for every click, yet you are not turning a profit.
So, in some cases, low CTR is better for business. You need to ensure that you have the marketing objective right, then the CTR will fit your business metrics, and you will get a fantastic sales conversion.
Conclusion
An affiliate marketing business can benefit greatly from increasing the average affiliate click-through rate. However, as mentioned above, you should optimize your CTR to fit your niche. Don’t rush to get a high click-through rate. First, analyze the PPC metrics in your industry, then work on your CTR with your findings.
If you have tried CTR marketing before, let us know what you did to get high conversions. We would love to hear from you.
Thomas Glare (Author’s Bio)
Thomas graduated with a Master’s Degree in Computer Science in the UK and is currently working as a marketing expert. He specializes in SEO for local businesses and e-mail marketing. He has worked for two major companies in the past, gathering skills and experience.
