Marketers measure the CTR, or Click Through Rate, of an advert or link to understand the percentage of web users who view the advert or link and decide to click on it. The rate is calculated via a simple equation: divide the number of people who decided to click by the total number of people who viewed the relevant advert or webpage.
The CTR is often measured in email marketing to assess the relative success of different campaigns. It’s used to understand how different adverts appeal to different audiences over time. Still, the CTR only provides a part of the story. Marketers know that it’s the conversion rate, or the number of webpage visitors who buy a service or a product, that counts – and a high CTR doesn’t necessarily deliver a high conversion rate.