What is CTR and How to Increase It

What is CTR is taught in the first grade of affiliates somewhere between the concepts of “vertical” and “affiliate”. Therefore, it will not be possible to get lost in three pines with CTR – the abbreviation stands for Click-through rate. It can be called click rating or clickability coefficient.

CTR (Click-Through Rate) is the percentage of clicks relative to ad views. It shows how effectively your ad attracts attention and encourages users to take action. A high CTR indicates that your offer is attractive and optimized for the target audience. However, it is important to remember that CTR is only one indicator of advertising effectiveness and should be considered in conjunction with other metrics, such as conversions and ROI.

What does CTR affect?

An uninitiated person in the topic of affiliate marketing, who accidentally got to this page, will ask: why is this CTR needed at all and how does it help in work? We answer: this metric is a tool for managing an advertising campaign. It helps to understand how catchy the calls and images really are, whether they encourage the target action.

Using the click-through rate, you can:

• Evaluate the advertising campaign. This is not the main parameter, but it is still worth considering its decrease. A low coefficient is a signal that the advertising campaign is working worse than it should;
• Understand which creative needs to be optimized. For low-click offers, it may be worth changing the keywords and then they will become more successful;
• Compare the effectiveness of the ad. Those that work the worst should be changed, removed or reduced in the budget.

How to calculate CTR?

The calculation formula is simple – CTR = (Number of clicks / Number of times) × 100%. That is, if 1000 people looked at the ad and clicked 10 times, the indicator will be 1%. This parameter is most often found in the advertising campaign management offices, so knowledge of how to calculate CTR manually is usually not needed.

In most cases, the percentage figure is not standardized, because there is no general understanding of what the CTR should be. There are approximate figures for the advertising sphere and orientation towards the affiliate vertical.

How to increase CTR?

Low CTR results in the advertiser receiving less traffic, and therefore fewer orders/applications, all other things being equal.

In addition, advertising platforms apply various sanctions to advertising that is not interesting to users. The cost per click increases, while the number of impressions, on the contrary, decreases.

What you need to know when setting up

• More creatives for the god of creatives. One or two for testing will not be enough. You cannot guarantee that they will definitely hook the audience. Thinking that the offer is not flowing here, you can make a lot of mistakes, although it was worth only creating three more creatives for everything to work. There should be 3-5 creatives. Competition between them will only play to your advantage, because it will help you see the strongest and most catchy option for the target audience;
• Take advantage of the predictability of human behavior. People often spend more during holidays or high-profile events. New Year, Black Friday, even the release of a new iPhone – creatives can be tied to anything. During such periods, there will be more clicks and the CTR will grow;
• Don’t bother with advertising. Counterintuitive advice, but if you persistently shove something in a person’s face, he will not be interested in it. Over time, frequent creatives will stop being perceived, and then they will simply turn off. New things catch on well — and preferably ones that remind you of the old. The absurdity of frequent displays is noticeable in push notifications — even the most naive person will not believe that he has received a gift for the sixth time in a day. The optimal number would be 1-2 reminders, no more. For a particularly unique audience, you can set 1 display for 3-5 or 7 days;
• Change creatives in time. Similar ads with the same calls to action become boring and stop converting. A successful creative can be “milked” by changing elements, colors or text. Changing once a week may be enough to maintain a decent CTR level.

These rules are not absolute, but their use will help to significantly improve the quality and quantity of traffic for the offer.

Don’t get too carried away in the rush to find the highest CTR. With this approach, the entire advertising campaign will turn into a test period, and the neural network will not have time to learn. As a result, the campaign will be ineffective. Therefore, conduct tests to find high clickability within the limits of your time and financial resources.