What Is a Good CTR? Benchmarks by Channel in 2026

CTR is the share of people who saw something and clicked it. It is one of the first numbers anyone looks at, and one of the easiest to misread. Before you decide whether yours is good, you need the right comparison.

How CTR is calculated

CTR is clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100. An ad shown 2,000 times that receives 50 clicks has a CTR of 2.5%.

The definition of an impression changes by channel. In search and social advertising, it is a time the ad was shown. In email, platforms usually report click rate as clicks divided by emails delivered, and separately the click-to-open rate, which is clicks divided by opens. On a listing site or ranking board, the meaningful equivalent is clicks on a listing divided by visitors who saw the page.

Benchmarks by channel

Overall averages: click-through rate 6.64%, cost per click $5.42.

WordStream, 2026 Google Ads Benchmarks, last updated May 19, 2026.

Foundry CRO’s compilation does not attribute every figure to a named study, so treat its numbers for smaller channels as orientation. The WordStream medians are based on thousands of US campaigns and are more reliable.

Email click rates

Email platforms publish their own benchmarks, and they differ because they count different things:

These figures come from a 2026 roundup by Prospeo. The spread is a warning against comparing your number with any single benchmark. Compare with the same platform’s figure for your industry, and with your own past sends.

Organic search

Organic CTR falls sharply with position. First Page Sage’s meta-analysis, cited in a 2026 summary by OuterBox, gives these averages:

The same summary notes that studies disagree widely on position 1, from about 20% to 40%, and that Backlinko measured 27.6% across four million results. It also reports an Ahrefs study published in February 2026 of 300,000 keywords, which found that AI Overviews correlated with a 58% lower CTR for the top-ranking page. A Seer Interactive analysis from April 2026 found that pages cited inside an AI Overview earned roughly 120% more clicks per impression than uncited pages on the same queries.

Why a high CTR can mislead

CTR tells you whether people found the ad interesting enough to click. It does not tell you whether they were the right people or whether they did anything afterwards.

• Curiosity clicks. A provocative headline can double CTR and halve the share of visitors who sign up.
• Accidental clicks. On mobile, some formats attract taps that were not meant as clicks.
• The wrong audience. A broad audience may click more than a narrow one and buy less.

The number that matters further down is the cost of each result you want: a sign-up, a trial, a sale. Our guide to cost per acquisition explains how to calculate it across channels.

Using CTR well

1. Compare like with like. Same channel, same format, similar audience.
2. Compare against yourself. Your own CTR over time is more informative than an industry median.
3. Test one change at a time. Headline, image or offer, so you know what moved the number.
4. Pair CTR with conversion rate. A version with a lower CTR and a higher conversion rate often wins.
5. Count landed visitors. Platforms count clicks; your analytics counts visits. The gap shows how many clicks never reached your site.

On listing sites and ranking boards, the same logic applies. A listing’s clicks divided by the visitors who saw it is its CTR. What you pay divided by those clicks is your cost per click, which you can set beside the figures above. Our pillar guide to what a click costs on UpRank works through that calculation.