Internet marketers determine how successful an ad campaign is by measuring how many visitors click on a link. By tracking click-through rates (or CTRs), advertisers can accurately determine the response their web banners or email ads are receiving. Since most campaigns drive readers to complete a specific action, this first step – accessing more information by visiting a specific website – is easy to gain and highly valuable.
You may measure the CTR by dividing the actual clicks by the number of times an ad was viewed (aka: impressions). CTR rates are monitored for banner ads and emails. When tracking email CTR, it’s important to note that the “impressions” are replaced with “number or emails opened.” When with banner ads, impressions show the amount of times an ad is served.
As an example, if your banner ad has a large number of impressions, but a very small number of clicks, you have a low CTR and the campaign is not delivering desired results. In addition to tracking each of your campaign’s successes (or lack of), you can also use CTR to monitor your advertising quality score and see how your company’s CTRs compare with other industry competitors with established benchmarks.
We, at Dynamic Yield, count impressions of website content units only when at least 50% of a unit is actually visible in the user’s screen, for at least a second. We call it ‘viewable impressions‘. It will reveal to you how users really engage with certain parts of your site.
