CTR industry benchmarks: what's a good click-through rate in 2026?

A good click-through rate depends on where you’re measuring it. Google Search Ads average 6.64%. Display ads sit around 0.46%. LinkedIn hovers at 0.44%. Comparing your LinkedIn CTR to a Google Ads benchmark is like comparing your 5K time to someone’s bike race. Same sport, different rules.

This post covers CTR industry benchmarks across seven channels, with real data from studies covering millions of campaigns. We’ll tell you what “good” actually looks like and where the numbers are headed. And (honestly) when chasing a higher CTR will just waste your budget.

If you care more about what happens after the click, check our guide on what a good conversion rate looks like.

What’s a good click-through rate?

CTR measures how often people click after seeing your ad, email, or search result. The formula is simple: clicks divided by views (the industry calls each view an “impression”), times 100.

Bookmark this table. You’ll keep coming back to it.

Channel	Average CTR	Good	Great
Google Search Ads	6.64%	6-8%	8%+
Google Display Ads	0.46%	0.5-1%	1%+
Facebook/Meta Ads	2.19%	2-3%	3%+
LinkedIn Ads	0.44-0.65%	0.55%+	1%+
Email marketing	2.09-2.62%	2.5-3.5%	3.5%+
Organic SEO (position 1)	27.6-39.8%	25%+	35%+
TikTok Ads	0.57%	0.8-1.5%	1.5%+
Display/Programmatic	0.46%	0.5-1%	1%+

Sources: WordStream/LOCALiQ, Mailchimp, Triple Whale, Huble, First Page Sage.

Notice the range for organic SEO. We’ll explain why that gap is so wide in the organic section below. (Spoiler: AI is involved.)

Our take: If someone tells you “a good CTR is 2%,” ask them “on what channel?” That number means you’re thriving on display, average on Facebook, and struggling on Google Search. Context is everything.

Click-through rate benchmarks by industry

Here are the latest click-through rate benchmarks by industry from WordStream/LOCALiQ, based on 16,000+ campaigns. These numbers cover Google Search Ads specifically.

Industry	Search CTR	YoY change
Arts & Entertainment	13.10%	Strong
Sports & Recreation	9.19%	Up
Travel	8.73%	Up
Real Estate	8.43%	Up
Finance & Insurance	8.33%	+18%
Restaurants & Food	7.58%	Up
Health & Fitness	7.18%	Down
Apparel & Fashion	6.77%	Up
Education & Instruction	5.74%	+31.7%
Business Services	5.65%	Flat
Dentists & Dental Services	5.44%	Lowest

All industries average: 6.64% (up from 6.42% the year before).

A few things jump out. Arts & Entertainment leads at 13.10%, which makes sense. People search for events and experiences with high intent to click. Dentists sit at the bottom, which also makes sense. Nobody wants to click on a dental ad.

These categories are broad though. “Health & Fitness” covers everything from gym memberships to telehealth apps. Your specific CTR will depend on your product, your audience, and your ad copy. Use these as a starting point, not a scoreboard.

For SaaS conversion rate benchmarks, funnel conversion rate benchmarks, or ecommerce metrics after the click, we’ve got separate guides.

Google Ads CTR benchmarks

The Google Ads CTR benchmark tells two completely different stories depending on the network.

Search Ads keep climbing. The average CTR was 5.3% in 2024, 5.97% in 2025, and 6.64% now. Why the steady rise? Google keeps making ads bigger and blending them more with organic results. Extra features like sitelinks (those sub-links under your ad), callouts, and snippets help too. More ad real estate means more clicks.

AI-generated ad copy is helping too. Google’s Performance Max and responsive search ads test dozens of headline combinations automatically. Better copy, higher CTR.

Display Ads haven’t moved. The average sits at 0.46%, basically unchanged for years. People have learned to ignore banner ads. Researchers at Rice University coined the term “banner blindness” back in 1998, and it’s only gotten worse. The first banner ad in 1994 had a 44% CTR. Today: 0.46%. That’s a 99% decline.

Google uses something called Quality Score to decide how much you pay per click. One of its three ingredients is “expected CTR,” basically Google’s prediction of how likely people are to click your ad. Higher expected CTR means lower costs. So your CTR doesn’t just measure performance. It directly affects your ad spend.

Our take: Display CTR is a vanity metric at this point. For display campaigns, look at view-through conversions (people who saw your ad and later visited your site) and brand lift instead. The value of a display ad happens when someone sees it, not when they click.

SEO and organic CTR benchmarks

Organic CTR follows a steep cliff. The top spot gets the lion’s share, and everything after drops fast.

Google position	CTR
1	27.6-39.8%
2	15.8-18.7%
3	10.2-11.0%
4	7.2%
5	5.1-6.3%
10	1.6-2.5%

Sources: First Page Sage, Backlinko, SISTRIX. The range exists because different studies use different sample sizes and query mixes.

Positions 1 through 3 capture roughly 55-70% of all clicks. If you’re on page 2, you’re basically invisible.

Branded searches are a different game. When someone searches your company name, position 1 gets about 60.4% CTR. People know what they’re looking for.

How AI Overviews are changing everything

Most CTR benchmark posts show you one organic CTR curve and call it a day. That’s no longer how search works.

Google’s AI Overviews (those AI-generated answer boxes at the top of search results) now appear on 48% of searches, up 58% year-over-year according to BrightEdge. They’re crushing click-through rates.

Ahrefs analyzed 300,000 keywords and found that AI Overviews reduce CTR for the #1 position by 58%. Seer Interactive studied 25.1 million organic impressions across 42 organizations. Their findings were even steeper: 61% lower organic CTR and 68% lower paid CTR on queries with AI Overviews.

Pew Research found that people clicked any traditional result in only 8% of sessions with AI Overviews (vs. 15% without). Zero-click searches (where nobody clicks anything at all) grew from 56% to 69% between May 2024 and May 2025. That’s a lot of searches going nowhere.

The flip side is interesting though. Queries without AI Overviews actually saw CTR rise from 2.8% to 3.8% over the same period. The search market is splitting in two. Some queries give you more clicks than ever. Others give you almost none.

And brands that get cited inside the AI Overview? They get 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than competitors who don’t get cited (Seer Interactive). Getting into that AI answer box is becoming the new “ranking #1.”

LinkedIn CTR benchmarks

LinkedIn plays by completely different rules. A 0.44% CTR on LinkedIn Sponsored Content is normal. On Google Search, that same number would be an emergency.

Why so low? LinkedIn’s audience is browsing a feed, not searching for something specific. They’re not in buying mode. They’re in scrolling-during-a-boring-meeting mode.

The format you choose changes the CTR dramatically though:

LinkedIn ad format	Average CTR
Single Image Ads	0.39%
Carousel Ads	0.49%
Video Ads	0.20%
Thought Leader Ads	2.68%

Sources: Huble, The B2B House.

Thought Leader Ads (where a real person’s post gets promoted as an ad) deliver 6x the CTR of a standard single image ad. That’s not a small difference. That’s a completely different channel.

Timing matters too. Q3 (July to September) is the best quarter for LinkedIn ad CTR, with September peaking at 1.05% average. Retargeting campaigns (showing ads to people who already visited your site) hit 0.9-1.4% CTR.

Performance tiers for LinkedIn:

• Below 0.35%: something’s off
• 0.35-0.55%: average B2B performance
• 0.55%+: you’re doing well
• Above 1%: exceptional

If you’re running LinkedIn ads and the CTR feels low, look at your format before blaming your targeting. And if you’re tracking what happens after the LinkedIn click, lead conversion rate benchmarks will help you compare.

Social media CTR benchmarks

Facebook/Meta Ads

The median Facebook Ads CTR across all industries is 2.19%, up 13.5% year-over-year. Triple Whale tracked 35,000 ecommerce brands and found that every single industry improved in 2025.

Campaign type matters. Traffic campaigns average 1.71%. Lead campaigns average 2.59%. If you’re comparing your numbers to a benchmark, make sure you’re comparing the same campaign type.

Top performers: Health & Wellness (2.70%), Books & Music (2.34%), Lifestyle & Boutique (2.28%).

For Facebook Ads conversion rate data, we’ve got a separate breakdown.

TikTok Ads

TikTok Ads average 0.57% CTR across industries, according to Triple Whale. That sounds low, but context matters. TikTok is a video-first platform where people watch, not click.

The format changes everything. Spark Ads (boosting organic posts as ads) deliver 2.4x higher CTR than standard in-feed ads. TopView ads (the first thing you see when you open TikTok) hit 12-16% CTR, but those are premium placements with premium pricing.

Reddit and X

Reddit Ads average around 0.5% CTR, with strong creative pushing to 0.7-0.8%. The trick with Reddit is that users can smell an ad from three subreddits away, so authenticity matters more than production value. X (formerly Twitter) sits around 1.5% for promoted tweets.

Email CTR benchmarks

Email CTR (what email platforms usually call “click rate”) measures how many recipients clicked a link in your email.

The average across all industries sits between 2.09% and 2.62%, depending on the source. MailerLite (3.6 million campaigns) reports 2.09%. Mailchimp (billions of emails) reports 2.62%. GetResponse (4.4 billion emails) reports 3.25%.

The number that matters most: automated emails get 7.39% CTR versus 2.27% for regular campaigns (Brevo). Welcome sequences, cart abandonment, post-purchase followups. Triggered, relevant, personal. That’s a 3x advantage over batch-and-blast newsletters.

Industry	Email CTR
Legal	4.90%
Manufacturing	4.22%
Nonprofits	2.90-3.27%
Education	2.15-3.02%
Business & Finance	2.37-2.78%
E-commerce	1.07-1.74%
Software/Web Apps	1.15%

The top 10% of email senders hit 5.22% CTR (Brevo). If you’re above 3.5%, you’re in strong shape. Below 1.5%, your subject lines or content probably need work.

Display advertising CTR benchmarks

Display advertising CTR depends almost entirely on the format. The breakdown from Digital Applied’s Q1 2026 data:

Display format	CTR
Standard banner	0.46%
Native ads (ads that look like regular content)	1.16%
Carousel display	1.34%
Rich media (animated or interactive banners)	1.84%
Video display	1.96%

A “rich media” ad is one that moves, plays video, or lets you interact with it (like expanding or swiping). A “standard banner” is the static image you’ve trained yourself to ignore.

By industry: Real Estate leads at 1.08%, Travel at 0.62%, Retail at 0.51%, and B2B SaaS trails at 0.28%.

For context, the overall display CTR has been essentially flat for years. The medium hit its ceiling a while ago. If you’re running display for awareness, that’s fine. But if you’re measuring success by clicks, you’re measuring the wrong thing.

If your visitors do click through, bounce rate benchmarks will tell you whether they stick around.

Why a high CTR isn’t always a win

Viant Technology calls CTR “the most misleading and overused metric in marketing.” Strong words. But the math backs it up.

Consider two ad campaigns:

• Campaign A: 0.9% CTR, $15 per lead
• Campaign B: 3% CTR, $45 per lead

Campaign B “wins” on CTR. Campaign A wins on the metric that actually matters: cost per customer. Higher CTR can mean you’re attracting clicks from people who’ll never buy. Clickbait headlines, broad targeting, and misleading ad copy all boost CTR while tanking everything downstream.

One analysis found that B2B campaigns with 30-40% lower CTRs than B2C campaigns delivered up to 2.5x higher ROI. Fewer clicks, but the right clicks.

When should you chase CTR? Awareness campaigns. Brand building. Content distribution. When the goal is eyeballs, not transactions.

When should you ignore CTR? Lead generation. E-commerce sales. Any campaign where the thing that matters happens after the click.

This is where click conversion rate and other conversion rate metrics come in. CTR tells you how many people walked through the door. Conversion rate tells you how many bought something. If you want to increase your conversion rate, that’s where testing comes in.

Tools like Kirro help you measure what happens after the click. Is that high-CTR campaign actually making you money, or just running up your ad bill? That’s what A/B testing answers.

How to improve your CTR (by channel)

Google Ads

• Write specific headlines that match search intent. “Men’s running shoes under $100” beats “Great shoes for runners.”
• Use ad extensions (sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets). They make your ad bigger, which gets more clicks.
• Add negative keywords (terms you don’t want your ad to show for) to block irrelevant searches that drag your CTR down.
• Try Google Ads A/B testing to find which ad copy actually works.

SEO

• Treat your title tag like ad copy. It’s competing for clicks against 9 other results.
• Write meta descriptions that answer the searcher’s question and make them want the full answer.
• Use structured data (extra code that tells Google what your page is about) to get rich snippets. Those stars, prices, and FAQ dropdowns in search results boost CTR significantly.

Email

• Test subject lines. Even small changes (personalization, urgency, curiosity) can move CTR by 20-30%.
• Segment your list. Send relevant content to relevant people. A 10,000-person list that gets the same email will always underperform five 2,000-person lists getting tailored content.
• Set up automated sequences. They get 3x the CTR of regular campaigns.

Social (Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn)

• Test creative formats. Video and carousel consistently outperform static images across platforms.
• On LinkedIn, try Thought Leader Ads. 6x the CTR of standard image ads.
• On TikTok, use Spark Ads to boost organic posts. 2.4x higher CTR.

Across every channel

A/B test everything. Headlines, images, CTAs, send times, targeting. Small changes compound. If you’re not sure where to start, set up a free test with Kirro and let the data tell you what’s working.

And track the right A/B testing metrics. CTR is one signal. Pair it with conversion rate, landing page conversion rate, and revenue to get the full picture.

For hands-on tips about landing page optimization, we’ve got a dedicated guide. To see what happens after those clicks land, our landing page conversion rate benchmarks cover the numbers by industry and channel. And if you want a tool that ties CTR and conversion testing together, that’s what Kirro does.

FAQ

What is the industry average for CTR?

It depends on the channel. Google Search Ads average 6.64%. Google Display Ads average 0.46%. Email averages 2.09-2.62%. Facebook Ads average 2.19%. LinkedIn Ads average 0.44-0.65%. TikTok Ads average 0.57%. There’s no single “industry average” that covers everything. These numbers come from WordStream/LOCALiQ, Mailchimp, Triple Whale, and Huble, based on millions of campaigns.

What is a CTR benchmark?

A CTR benchmark is a reference number from real campaign data that tells you how your click-through rate compares to others in your channel or industry. It’s context, not a target. If the benchmark for your industry is 6% and you’re at 4%, that tells you there’s room to improve. But hitting 6% doesn’t automatically mean your campaigns are successful. Your goal conversion rate matters more.

What is a good CTR range?

It varies by channel. For Google Search Ads: 6-8% is good, 8%+ is great. For display: 0.5-1% is good. For email: 2.5-3.5% is good. For LinkedIn: 0.55%+ is good. For Facebook: 2-3% is good. Check the full channel table at the top of this post.

Does CTR affect Google Ads Quality Score?

Yes. Expected CTR is one of three factors Google uses to calculate Quality Score (along with ad relevance and landing page experience). Higher Quality Score means you pay less per click. So improving your CTR doesn’t just get you more traffic. It actually lowers your ad costs. That’s the closest thing to a free lunch in digital marketing.

How has AI changed CTR benchmarks?

Two ways, moving in opposite directions. On the ad side, AI-generated ad copy (Google’s responsive search ads, Performance Max) is pushing Google Ads CTR higher. The five-year upward trend is partly driven by better AI copywriting.

On the organic side, AI Overviews (Google’s AI-generated answers at the top of search results) are cutting CTR dramatically. Ahrefs found a 58% drop in organic CTR for the #1 position when AI Overviews appear. But queries without AI Overviews saw CTR increase. The market is splitting, and your SEO strategy needs to account for both sides.

If you want to test whether your CTR improvements actually move revenue, that’s what A/B testing is for. The simple stuff works, and tracking CRO metrics alongside CTR gives you the full picture of what’s happening on your site.