Banner Advertising: What’s a Good Click-Through Rate?
Monday, 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.
