Stop obsessing over CTR. It’s not a priority metric.
I often see advertisers share their success with Meta ads and they use Click Through Rate as the measuring stick. This can be incredibly misleading, and I’m not sure if they’re doing that intentionally.
It’s not that CTR doesn’t matter at all, but by itself it’s meaningless.
First, which CTR are you even talking about? There are three types:
- CTR for all clicks
- CTR for links
- CTR for outbound clicksOutbound clicks measure the number of clicks on ads that take people to properties away from Facebook. More
After that, are we using the gross CTR or unique CTR? It matters a lot. CTR for all clicks and for links, in particular, can include extra clicks. Unique outbound CTR will most accurately measure the rate of clicks on your ad to your website.
Second, a high CTR doesn’t mean it’s a successful ad. Did anyone complete the purchase after clicking? Or was your ad clickbait? This, of course, is the most important measurement of all. You can have a high CTR with none of these important actions. You can have a low CTR with conversionsA conversion is counted whenever a website visitor performs an action that fires a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion. Examples of conversions include purchases, leads, content views, add to cart, and registrations. More.
A primary reason for this is that there’s an easy way to artificially inflate CTR. Most advertisers know that this can be accomplished by optimizing for link clicksThe link click metric measures all clicks on links that drive users to properties on and off of Facebook. More or landing page viewsLanding Page View is a Facebook ads metric that represents when people land on your destination URL after clicking a link in your ad. More. You’re bound to get what looks like a magical CTR, yet none of those people will do anything when they get to your website.
Do yourself a favor and use smarter metrics. Don’t mislead people or your clients by highlighting metrics that can be manipulated.
- The number of optimized actions (usually a conversion)
- Cost per optimized action
Leave the misleading secondary metrics for someone else.
