Expected Click Through Rate vs. Click Through Rate

One of the most important metrics in paid advertising is the clickthrough rate. When you understand what it is, and how to analyze it, you can learn a lot about your advertising campaigns.

However, you don’t have to wait until you get clicks to leverage the value of clickthrough rate. In Google Ads, you can view your expected clickthrough rate, which gives your marketing strategy another edge to work with.

Let’s find out more about both of these metrics.

What is Clickthrough Rate?

In Google Ads, the clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of the total ad viewers that clicked your ad, and therefore visited your website or landing page. It is calculated by:

clicks ÷ impressions = CTR

For example, if your ad receives 10 clicks and 500 impressions, then your CTR would be 2%.

You must be familiar with the numbers that tell you about good and bad CTR but moving beyond this, it’s important to take a look at what it means to have good or bad CTR:

Benefits of a Good Clickthrough Rate

There are a few things to be gained from a decent clickthrough rate. Here are some of the key benefits of a good CTR in paid advertising.

It Signals That You Are On Track

With a high CTR, you can take confidence in knowing that your ads are on point. Everything from the ad copy, images, keywords, and the ad positioning are coming together to deliver an ad that engages your viewers. People find your ads relevant to their needs and interests and are being enticed to click on them.

Good CTR improves your Conversion Rate

If your content is enticing prospective buyers to click on your ads, then that leads to a bump in qualified traffic coming to your site. That initial excitement that viewers feel when they see your ad in organic listings or email can carry through to the website or landing page.

This increases the likelihood that they will follow through by responding to your call-to-action (CTA), effectively resulting in a conversion.

Therefore, a good clickthrough rate increases your conversion rates.

High CTR Yields a Higher Ad Impression Share

Having a higher CTR can earn you some pretty big discounts, most notably in your cost per click metric (CPC). Over time, as you accrue more clicks, these savings can really add up.

This isn’t solely limited to vanilla search ads as it extends to all Google properties including the display network and Gmail Ads.

Keep in mind too that a great CTR won’t just impact your CPC – it also benefits impression share. That means your ads will start showing up more often, which gets your brand in front of more eyeballs.

What is Expected Clickthrough Rate?

The expected clickthrough rate (eCTR) measures the probability of your ad receiving clicks when it is displayed for specific keywords. This is irrespective of other factors that affect the ad visibility, such as ad position, ad format, and extensions.

The expected CTR component is taken into consideration by Google when calculating quality score, and as a result, it also impacts your ad rank for Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs).

Benefits of Expected Clickthrough Rate

So, as it is merely a projected value, it’s important to take the expected CTR metric with a pinch of salt. That being said, we can still put this information to good use. Here are some benefits:

A Good Expected CTR Does Half of Your Work for You

As aforementioned, eCTR matters more than CTR when it comes to quality score. If your keywords have an average or above average eCTR status compared to other keywords in Google Ads, then it’s a good sign.

However, a below average status is a signal that you should reassess your ads, and look for ways to optimize them, as well as your keywords and landing pages. This will help you create more relevant content that is aligned with user intent. Over time, this will boost CTR and eCTR.

You Can Improve ROI by focusing on Expected CTR

If you want a better quality score, the eCTR metric isn’t one you can ignore. By optimizing the expected clickthrough rate, PPC marketers can reduce their average CPC, which in turn helps the quality score. Furthermore, this will reduce your wasted spend, which ultimately improves the overall return on investment and leads to better campaign performance.

eCTR Can Help You Get an Estimate Against Industry Benchmarks

Google Ads has a deep well of data to draw from whenever it is comparing eCTR. Google understand your industry, and it knows the top influencers in that space, as well as the best performing ads.

The quality score that it generates for your ads is an accurate barometer for ad relevance. By using it as a guide, you can tweak keywords in your campaign to increase your ad rank.

PPCexpo has a Quality Score Report that lets you analyze your current score and its associated components. Try it out to reap the rewards.

What if your Expected Clickthrough Rate is Not Up to the Mark?

A poor eCTR tells us a few things. First and foremost, you should analyze your ad copy, keywords, and images, both in your ads and also on the landing pages. Are you using high-value keywords and emotive language that resonates with your target audience?

By making minor adjustments, you can produce a more creative ad that speaks directly to the needs and interests of your ideal customer. Small fixes may be all that is needed to boost your eCTR.

What if your Clickthrough Rate is Not Up to the Mark?

If your CTR is low, you should focus on current campaign settings to cut your losses. Whether it’s irrelevant keywords or inaccurate ad targeting, you should get to the bottom of the problem soon before you waste your marketing budget.

Run the PPCexpo Audit Report to get deeper insights into why your CTR is low.

The Relationship Between eCTR and CTR

The connection between these two values is somewhat confusing, especially when you are first getting used to PPC marketing.

As one can easily influence the other, some marketers may wonder which is the more important one to focus their efforts on.

Ultimately, actual clicks count for a lot more than any projected clicks do. CTR is a key metric in paid advertising, as it tells you just how engaging your ads are to viewers.

Although it may not be as important, the expected clickthrough rate does wield some influence, and it is often easier to fix it in a short space of time. This is because you can reassess the elements of your ads, such as copy and keywords to create a more engaging ad for prospects.

By comparison, improving your actual CTR will take more time to do, and potentially some investment to earn more impressions. For that reason, digital marketers arguably have more control over eCTR than they do over CTR.

So, which should you focus on?

Focus on eCTR to Generate a Better CTR

They are so intertwined that it seems making improvements in one will eventually boost the other.

As expected CTR is a key factor in Ad Rank, we can consider eCTR to be a valuable metric worth paying attention to. While it’s much better to get actual clicks rather than projected ones, it is beneficial to focus on building up our eCTR.

In doing so, we can improve our quality score, which has great benefits for the health of our campaign. In time, working to increase eCTR will translate to an increase in actual CTR, which will result in more conversions, lower costs, and a greater ROI for the campaign.