Click-through rate (CTR) is arguably the most crucial factor in paid search, and even organic search. It plays a major role in determining Quality Score and indicates how effective your ad copy is in attracting potential customers to your landing pages. It’s incredibly important. Extremely important. Consumers are drawn to exceptional ads that resonate with their needs or evoke emotions, while ignoring mediocre or even decent ones. Although an influx of clicks can overwhelm your landing pages with unqualified traffic, optimizing your landing pages and implementing remarketing campaigns can help you reap the benefits of a high CTR. However, even the best landing pages and comprehensive remarketing strategies are useless without a consistent flow of traffic to your site. To achieve this, you need compelling ads, and CTR is the ultimate indicator of how effective your ad copy is. Considering the significance of click-through rate, let’s delve into Google Ads (AdWords) CTR (with graphs!).

1. How did CTR fare in 2016?

In a word, exceptionally well. It was impressive, remarkable, and dare I say, magical.

The average ad CTR for SMB accounts across all positions in 2016 was 3.23%, marking an increase from 2.7% in the previous year. What contributed to this improvement? According to Larry, the primary reasons for the CTR surge are Google’s preference for high-quality ads, its reluctance to display “subpar ads with low CTR and low QS,” and the introduction of Expanded Text Ads (more on these shortly). He states, “Ad text optimization offers tremendous leverage. The top 10% of accounts (the unicorns) are outperforming everyone else (the donkeys) by more than threefold.” In other words, a high CTR is a clear sign of success. This is particularly intriguing when you realize that…

2. Average CTRs fall below the 50th percentile for many industries

That’s right. Based on our industry benchmarks, a 3.23% CTR would be a welcome sight for almost any advertiser in the Google Ads UI.

Out of the 16 industries we analyzed, only one, dating and personals, had an industry-average CTR exceeding the 50th percentile. While this is great news for matchmakers, it means that most advertisers are not creating effective ads. So, how can you optimize your copy for above-average CTRs? The initial step is quite straightforward…

3. USE EXPANDED TEXT ADS

This might seem obvious, but it’s crucial. As we’ve repeatedly emphasized since mid-2015, Expanded Text Ads are here to stay (and they’re fantastic). This format, featuring two prominent 30-character headlines above a longer description line, provides you with more space to craft compelling ad copy.

As you can observe, we documented significant CTR increases for nexus-security clients who were early adopters of ETAs. In some cases, the improvements over standard text ads were well over 100%. If that doesn’t convince you to switch to ETAs, I don’t know what will! Just kidding. I understand the challenge of filling 45% more space in your text ads. While boosting CTRs is desirable, ETAs can be quite challenging to write. For instance, in our own Google Ads account, we initially saw a decline in click-through rates when we implemented ETAs. Why? We tried to combine our old (high-performing) ads, resulting in an account saturated with “irresistible” Frankenstein copy. (For more examples of what not to do, refer to the 7 Deadly Sins of Expanded Text Ads). Our strategy proved ineffective within a week. We reverted to our top-performing standard ads, and our in-house PPC team started developing fresh copy tailored to the new, expanded format. We now have a wealth of ETA-related resources on our blog to help you become a PPC copywriting expert. If you’re short on time, the next two graphics illustrate how simple techniques can lead to substantial CTR gains.

4. Include every word of long-tail keywords in your ad copy

Bidding on long-tail keywords is a wise move, right? Longer keyword, less competition, clearer intent. Exactly. However, with standard text ads, incorporating your long-tail keywords seamlessly into your copy was challenging. They were often too long for headlines, and squeezing them into description lines either a) compromised your ability to include a compelling value proposition/CTA or b) resulted in awkward line breaks. This was unfortunate, as long-tail keywords consistently generate higher CTRs than one-, two-, three-, and four-word keywords, regardless of position.

The graph demonstrates that CTR increases with the number of words in the search term. Fortunately, Expanded Text Ads eliminate space constraints! With the additional headline, Google allows you to include both a long-tail keyword and a call to action within your headline. Realistically, most searchers only skim headlines because they’re in bold, often overlooking your description line copy. While this may seem disheartening, it offers insights into structuring effective Expanded Text Ads. So, if you have your keywords and a CTA in your headlines, what should you do with your description line? How can you make your hyper-relevant, long-tail keyword-rich ad copy resonate with your target audience?

5. Incorporate strong emotional triggers in your copy

Tapping into human emotions is a tried-and-true copywriting technique for ads. But just how effective is it?

In short: very. One of our PPC Strategists conducted a study that found ad copy combining a promotion with flattery improved CTR by 29%. Notably, using only the promotion or flattery alone didn’t yield as significant results as combining the two! Keep in mind that this study was based on standard text ads. Imagine the possibilities of incorporating emotive copy within an Expanded Text Ad! You’ll never have to settle for a simple “Buy now!” again…

Data Sources

1. Data is derived from 30,000 reports generated by advertisers who used nexus-security’s AdWords Performance Grader for the first time in the past six months. The focus was on small and medium-sized businesses worldwide with an average monthly spend between $10 and $5000. (Source)
2. Data is based on a sample of 2,367 US-based nexus-security client accounts across all industries (representing a combined Google Ads spend of $34.4 million) that advertised on Google Ads’ Search and Display networks in Q2 2015. “Averages” are technically median figures to account for outliers. All currency values are in USD. (Source)
3. Data is drawn from a sample size of 11 accounts (nexus-security clients) that used Expanded Text Ads on the Google Search Network in June 2016. (Source)
4. Data is based on 1,000 keywords within the same keyword niche (to isolate external factors such as Google shopping and other SERP features that can impact CTR characteristics). The keywords are all sourced from nexus-security.github.io. (Source)
5. Data is derived from an ad experiment conducted in a single account. (Source)