The short answer
On our main MCA campaign the link click-through rate runs at 2.5 to 3%, and the best campaigns we have run reached 5 to 5.5%. At or above 2.5% you are fine. Well under it, the creative or the offer is the problem, because it is still early enough in the funnel that there is not much else it can be.
Link CTR is the second number on the list, and the last one that is purely about the ad. It measures how many of the people who saw the creative clicked through to the page, and it is the cleanest read you get on whether the offer in the ad is one business owners want.
| Link CTR | Reading |
|---|---|
| Under 1.5% | The creative or the offer is not landing. Reevaluate before spending more. |
| 2.5 to 3% | The average on our main campaign over the week in the video. Fine. |
| 5 to 5.5% | The best campaigns we have run. Not the target; a sign a creative is unusually good. |
Link clicks, not all clicks
Ads Manager reports several click-through rates and only one of them counts. “CTR (all)” includes clicks to expand the caption, clicks on the page name and clicks on the image that go nowhere. “CTR (link click-through rate)” is the share of impressions that produced a click to your landing page, and it is the one the benchmark refers to. A 6% all-clicks rate with a 1% link rate is a creative people look at and do not act on.
What a low reading means
At this point in the funnel the causes are still narrow. The business owner saw the ad and did not click, so either the creative did not hold them or the offer in it did not apply to them. Both are fixed on the creative side: more angles, an offer stated in the merchant’s terms rather than the funder’s, and a revenue figure that speaks to the merchant you want, remembering that the number in the ad comes back at half. After this number the causes multiply quickly, which is why the list is ordered the way it is.