If you're forecasting your digital media spend, you need to compare the ROI of your display ads, paid social, Google Ads, and social media. Depending on your objectives, it's worth reviewing and benchmarking the latest metrics like average click-through rates, average cost per click, and cost per lead.
I've put this compilation together to help marketing professionals create direct response conversion models for digital marketing campaigns. By creating budget models using known benchmarks for average CTRs and digital media click-through costs, you can better forecast your return on investment from digital media ads. Our budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets include:
This data is particularly useful if you haven't previously invested in advertising on publisher sites through ad networks or paid social media ads since it can help make the case and set expectations with colleagues or clients of the number of visits based on quantitative forecasts. As always, we recommend applying a targeted, data-driven approach to your marketing activities and we have tools and templates to help.
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We’ve updated our compilation of average clickthrough rates, cost per click, and cost per lead across Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Each year, we update our statistics summaries with the latest research as it becomes available. Stats are in three sections which answer these questions:
One of the best sources for PPC data is LocalIQ/Wordstream paid search bencmarks. Note that the sample is typically for smaller local businesses. The data below details CTR, CPC, CR and CPL in 2023 for a wide range of business categories:
Of course, these figures are averages for each sector CTRs tend to be higher for brand searches and lower for generic searches.
Note on data source:
This chart is based on a sample of 4,595 North American-based LOCALiQ client accounts in the home services vertical who were running search advertising, display advertising, and/or social media advertising in 2023. Each subcategory includes a minimum 10 unique active clients. “Averages” are technically median figures to account for outliers.
Cost per click in search advertising is driven by many factors. As demonstrated in the table below, depending on the industry, a click could cost a marketer less than $2 or as much as $8-9, such as those in attorneys & legal services.
However, it's important to look at the bigger picture when defining the value of your clicks. $9 is still a very reasonable cost considering the high-value potential for each customer lifecycle in this industry. Therefore it's reasonable to presume that the CPC is driven up by high competition for a relatively smaller number of target customers (/clicks).
We also have a comparison of Google organic Clickthrough rates by position.
For brand engagement rates, one of the best sources for insight on paid media engagement including CTR and cost is the Skai research. Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is a performance marketing platform offering advertising Placements on Google, Meta, Amazon Ads, TikTok, Snap, Walmart Connect, Instacart, Roundel, Criteo, CitrusAd, Pinterest, Microsoft, Apple Search Ads, and more.
Brands using it include Pepsico, Diageo, Reckitt, Daimler, LG, and Vodafone. It is one of the few sources available offering CTR benchmarks for search and display. Trends in retail categories are also shown in the full report. The most recent version published as of Jan 2024 includes Q3 of 2023, these are shared below.
Paid search (Google Ads) CTR and CPC trends
Retail media include retailers such as Amazon and Walmart and ad networks such as Criteo.
Unfortunately, there isn't a breakdown by social network in the Skai data, but the majority of the spend is with Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram. This shows how CTR is typically around 1.1-1.3% in social feeds which is significantly higher than the lower historic data reported for display towards the end of this article.
Further insight on organic and paid social engagement across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok is available from the Emplify (formerly Social Bakers) social media industry reports which cover 6 industries.
LocalIQs Google Adwords industry benchmarks average CTRs now report just on the Google Ads search network accounts they manage. They no longer report on the display network. This typically has sub one-percent CTRs.
Unfortunately, Google has removed CTRs reported for its Doubleclick display brand and their interactive Display benchmarking tool. So now we can only present previous data. No other alternatives are available as far as I'm aware.
Previous pre-2015 Doubleclick data shows an average CTR of just 0.05% for all display formats, i.e just 5 clicks per 10000 impressions, showing the difficulty of driving direct response from online display or banner ads. Perhaps that is why Google no longer publishes this data...
While this is a really low CTR, however you look at it, cross-media optimization tests shows that online ads do help increase brand awareness and purchase intent, particularly when combined with offline media.
It's not the case that the majority of ad viewers have 'banner blindness' and are not aware of ads that are viewable placements. If this were the case, businesses wouldn't invest in the level of display and programmatic ads that they do.
We also see much higher CTRs online for other online ad formats like Google AdWords and Facebook - these can exceed 1%, so are more effective in driving volume and also typically have higher intent, so conversion rates are higher.
Tests from the likes of Dynamic Logic and Millward Brown conclusively show that display ads also encourage site visits (view throughs) and searches even where people don't click on ads.
This is historic Doubleclick data for reference.
| Region | Overall Click-through Rate Percent (%) |
| North America | |
| Canada | 0.09% |
| United States | 0.10% |
| EMEA | |
| Austria | 0.11% |
| Belgium | 0.13% |
| Denmark | 0.12% |
| Finland | 0.05% |
| France | 0.12% |
| Germany | 0.11% |
| Greece | 0.17% |
| Ireland | 0.10% |
| Italy | 0.10% |
| Luxembourg | 0.09% |
| Netherlands | 0.14% |
| Norway | 0.11% |
| Spain | 0.12% |
| Sweden | 0.08% |
| Switzerland | 0.12% |
| United Arab Emirates | 0.18% |
| United Kingdom | 0.07% |
| JAPAC | |
| Australia | 0.07% |
| China | 0.12% |
| Hong Kong | 0.17% |
| India | 0.18% |
| Malaysia | 0.30% |
| Singapore |
0.19% |
Source: DoubleClick for Advertisers, a cross section of regions, January and December 2009, Published July 2010
Variation in online average CTRs by ad format
Ad clickthrough rate naturally varies according to placement (position on screen) and ad format (shape and size). The traditional full-banner performs very poorly compared to skyscrapers, the ubiquitous medium rectangle and the newer large rectangle format.
Interaction rates differ for different ad formats in a similar way to ad formats.
Interaction rate definition:
Interactions are defined as the user does one or more of the following:
Note that more recently Google introduced Responsive Display ads on the Google Display Network as the default ad type. These involve uploading your assets (images, headlines, logos, videos and descriptions) and Google will automatically generate ads to be shown on the Google Display Network.
Reports from early adopters suggest that these can have relatively high CTRs. This example of CTRs compared a Google Ads campaign provided by Smart Insights Expert commentator David Miles. It shows the uplift he received when testing this new format.
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Again, we will use the Q1 2020 ad benchmark report from AdStage as our primary data source. Here are the media CTRs for their clients in North America:
The average Facebook CTR in the newsfeed is 1.11%. This is trending downwards; a decrease of 0.37% compared to the previous year.
Other data reported includes:
Instagram ad clickthrough rate in the feed is 0.22%, significantly lower than in the previous year and much lower compared to Facebook. This reflects the visual nature of Insta which doesn't offer opportunities for CTR in organic newsfeeds (other than Stories). Benchmarks for Stories are a little higher at 0.33%.
Although the audience is quite different since LinkedIn targets B2B audiences, there is a similar CTR in LinkedIn of 0.22%.
Twitter has a higher clickthrough rate, although there is a significant decrease in the last quarter. Fewer impressions are served to Adstage customers in this category so this insight should be treated with caution.
Since the Google-Doubleclick data is no longer available we're unable to update this data, but we have kept it in this post since it may be useful for readers to understand historic trends in CTR.
This comparison of average online media clickthrough rates from Marin is useful for modelling the response of digital media for top-level budgets.
Facebook offers different forms of ad formats with different goals will naturally vary in response as these retail Facebook ads from. You can see that Facebook ad CTRs which may be more highly targeted that display ads have significantly higher CTRs, particularly for Lead generation (i.e. adding subscribers to a retailers email list) and Dynamic Product ads (retargeting visitors who have already visited a site with relevant offers). 
Wordstream also have these summary Facebook ad CTRs by sector:
Viewability is another issue for advertisers to consider when evaluating online ad effectiveness as measured by clickthrough rates. Ad blocking also has an impact since ad blockers have increased in popularity across countries and demographics, accounting for 35% of ads in some countries.
Viewability refers to the percentage of ads in a campaign or on a publisher site that are potentially available for clickthrough. Just 44.9% of all ads are clickable according to Google-published viewability data since ads may be below the fold and users do not scroll to see them. This varies across publisher and content category.
Given the impact of viewability and ad blocking on online ad clickthrough rates you can see that there are moves in the industry to only charge for viewable ads, which with increasing options for native advertising will potentially improve the effectiveness of ads.
By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
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