The average number of clickthroughs per hundred ad impressions expressed as a percentage. It is essential to distinguish what a clickthrough rate does and does not measure. The CTR measures what percentage of people clicked on the ad to arrive at the destination site; it does not include the people who failed to click, yet arrived at the site later as a result of seeing the ad. As such, the CTR may be seen as a measure of the immediate response to a commercial, but not the overall answer to an ad. The exception involves ads that display no identifiable information about the destination site; in these cases, the click rate equals the overall rate.
Merely getting visitors to a site had to value when Web site traffic was generally accepted as a measure of success. The trend towards profitability, along with better tracking tools, has resulted in less interest in clickthrough rates and more interest in conversion rates.
A high clickthrough rate does not assure a reasonable conversion rate, and the two rates may even share an inverse relationship. An advertisement geared towards curiosity clicks will result in fewer sales, percentage-wise, than a publication geared towards qualified clicks. Calculators for CPM, CPA, CTR, more on the way, plus other useful digital marketing resources. Available for free as a Google Sheet, so it’s always nearby on any device.