What is Click-Through Rate?

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Video Transcript

What is Click-through Rate (CTR)? It’s a key metric for YouTube Ads

Hey, what’s up everybody? Justin Sardi here, co-founder and CEO TubeSift.com and in today’s video, we’re going to be talking all about CTR, which is a key metric for YouTube ads. Now, if you haven’t checked out our video on KPIs or key performance indicators for YouTube ads, definitely check that out. We’ll link to that below this video or on this blog post. But today we’re going to be diving a little bit deeper into one of the most important metrics besides money in money out, but one of the most important metrics to pay attention to when it comes to YouTube ads and that is CTR or Click-Through Rate.

What exactly is click-through rate?

So what exactly is Click-Through Rate? Okay, well, it can be a little bit confusing at times. And in this video, I’m going to be breaking down exactly what it is, how it’s calculated and what benchmark you should be shooting for when it comes to Click-Through Rates. So let’s jump right in and first things first, what is CTR? Well, CTR stands for Click-Through Rate, and it’s basically a number that Google ads calculates for you. Based on the number of times your ad has been shown versus the number of people that click on your link on your ad. Now, obviously with these types of ads, in stream ads specifically, we’re trying to drive traffic off of YouTube to a landing page, a sales page, a squeeze page, whatever it might be. We’re trying to get people off of YouTube onto our website. And the ultimate goal is to convert them from there.

But first things first, you have to get them off of YouTube after seeing your ad, which is why Click-Through Rate is such an important metric. Now, the way that it works, it’s basically impressions, I’m sorry, number of clicks divided by impressions. So let’s say we have a hundred impressions and we got one click. Well, that is a 1% Click-Through Rate or a 1% CTR, right? Now it gets a little bit confusing because with YouTube ads, you’re not actually paying for impressions. Most of the time you can pay for impressions, but for the most part, you don’t pay for impressions, you pay for views. So you would think they base it off of views, but they don’t. They actually base it off of number of impressions versus number of clicks and that’s how you get that number.

What is the bare minimum CTR?

So a good number for a Click-Through Rate is bare minimum. I like to shoot for 1%, Click-Through Rate. Now obviously higher is better because the more people that are clicking your ad per impression or even per views, right? The cheaper your cost per click is going to be. So the more people that click your ad the better, right? So a 1% Click-Through Rate is the bare minimum that I like to shoot for. Obviously more is better, but a 1% bare minimum. If you’re getting less than 1% Click-Through Rate, it usually tells you that your ad copy or your actual video itself needs a little bit of work. And that’s where I like to start. And you can always check out our blog post on diagnosing problems with your ad or like your whole funnel. We have a whole blog post on that. That’s definitely worth giving a check or giving a look.

But the first thing I always look at is the Click-Through Rate. If I’m not getting at least 1% and I’m using TubeSift to target my audience. And if you are using TubeSift to target your audience using placement targeting, you know for sure that you’re putting your ad in front of the right people at the right time. So based on that, knowing that’s out of the way, and that’s not an issue, you need to look at your Click-Through Rate. Now, if your Click-Through Rate is not at least 1%, it means that your ad is not resonating with your audience. And from there, you can kind of go down the funnel and figure out what’s going on, but we have a whole other blog post on that and you can check that out after this one. And I’ll link to that below as well. But bare minimum, like I said, you want a 1% Click-Through Rate and that’s basically impressions versus views.

Have high quality messaging for a higher CTR

Now I technically like to shoot for at least 2% or personally like to shoot for at least 2%, sometimes higher. I’ve seen ads with as high as like a 6% Click-Through Rate and when you can really nail your messaging, that is when you will be able to get that higher Click-Through Rate. Now we have a few different blog posts and case studies as well that you can check out we’ll link to those below. One of those is a Squatty Potty case study. We’re talking all about how to use our scripting guide and how that ties into some of the best performing ads on YouTube. But ultimately if you can nail your messaging and nail your targeting, you are going to have a high Click-Through Rate, which is ultimately going to result in a higher ROI for your campaigns.

Try TubeSift for hyper-targeted ad placements

So that is all I have for this video that is CTR. If there’s anything else that you’d like us to cover, feel free to email us at support@TubeSift.com or you can click on the live chat on blog.TubeSift.com, we’ve got that there for you, okay? And as always, you can use TubeSift to dial in your target audience and really get precision targeting for your YouTube ads and take that whole guesswork part of things out of the equation. So all you really have to worry about is your ad and your landing page and your offer. So that’s it for me on this one. Thanks for watching. If you did like it, please give us that thumbs up, subscribe to our channel on YouTube, and I will see you all on the next blog post. Bye for now.

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Resources:

• KPIs for YouTube Ads from the TubeSift Blog
• Troubleshooting: How to Get YouTube Ads to Spend from the TubeSift Blog
• Targeting Options for YouTube Ads from the TubeSift Blog
• How to Find Monetized Placements for YouTube Ads from the TubeSift Blog