Banner Advertising: What’s a Good Click-Through Rate?
By Anna Johnson on September 22nd, 2008If you run banner ads, you may wonder what kind of click-through rate (CTR) you should be targeting. Well, according to MarketingSherpa… don’t worry too much about it!
The thinking is that since display or banner ads are primarily a branding tool, CTRs are a by-product rather than an objective.
Still, as MarketingSherpa point out, the higher your CTR, the more successful your ad is likely to be in terms of resonating with your target audience.
My take: accept a lower CTR (compared with paid search ads), but keep track of industry benchmarks. While the aim may not be to get clicks, the CTR is still an indication of the effectiveness of the ad.
So what are the industry standards? What is a reasonable CTR to aim for? A study by MarketingSherpa reveals different average CTRs for different banner sizes:
- 160 x 600: 0.14 percent
- 300 x 250: 0.37 percent
- 120 x 600: 0.18 percent
- 728 x 90: 0.27 percent
- 468 x 60: 0.10 percent
- Overall average: 0.21 percent
So now you have some benchmarks. But remember, a lot will also depend on your target market, where you run your ad, and the placement of your ad on a given website and webpage, among other things.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:13 am
Your CTRs are way out of line and too high. An average CTR on banner ad is .08
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Hi Don, I won’t argue with you. These are the results from MarketingSherpa’s study last year. No doubt, a lot depends on the industry, target market, etc.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:51 am
There are soo many variables, but I think a good/achievable goal is to have a banner that gets clicked at least .5%. I’m usually happy with 1 in 300 for my ads. Thing to note here is that banners of live in site templates, and often get way more impressions the the text link ads. No click? Well branding was still at least done.
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:35 am
Hey guys, just started advertising with AdWords a few days ago. I’m getting 0.60% for 728×90 and 0.53% for 300×250 as of right now. So, I was actually thinking his numbers were on the low side
February 19th, 2010 at 3:17 am
So .101 for a facebook ad is a stinker?
April 6th, 2010 at 6:45 am
Hmm, my last seven days activity has shown a CTR of 25.37%
mind you that is on a fairly small number of clicks:
Last 7 Days Activity
Impressions Received: 67
All Clicks Received: 17
Confirmed Sales/Leads: 0
Total Pending Sales: 0
Click Thru Rate: 25.37%
this is promoting through a CPA – dunno if that makes any difference