CTR (Link)
Whether an ad earns the click — and how cheap your traffic gets when it does.
What it means
CTR (Link) is the share of ad views that produced a click through to your site: link clicks divided by impressions. Only taps that left the feed for your shop count — likes, comments, shares and profile taps sit in Meta's separate all-clicks rate, which always reads higher. Show an ad 200,000 times, get 2,400 clicks through, and it's 1.2%.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Link clicks are taps that sent someone to your site. Meta measures them at its end, so they won't match the sessions your site analytics records — that gap is expected.
Impressions is every time the ad rendered, repeat views included, which is why a rising FrequencyFrequencyA read on ad fatigue in your audience.Under 2 is healthy drags this number down even when the creative hasn't changed.
Worked example. An ad spends €2,000 at a €10 CPM, so it buys 200,000 impressions. It earns 2,400 link clicks. CTR (Link) = 2,400 ÷ 200,000 = 1.2%, which works out at €0.83 a click.
Lift the rate to 1.8% and the same €2,000 buys 3,600 clicks at €0.56 each — 1,200 extra visits for no extra budget, which is why creative is usually the cheapest thing to fix.
It answers the question
Of everyone who saw this ad, how many left the feed for your shop? A high rate means the creative is doing its job; a low one means people scrolled past.
Why it matters
Impressions are bought, clicks are earned. The ad is your shop window — plenty of people walk past, and a few come in.
It's also the first place a weak ad shows up, and it shows up fast: you'll have a readable number within days, long before purchases have the volume to judge anything. And it sets your costs. At a fixed CPM, doubling the click rate halves what you pay per click, then Meta's auction compounds it, because an ad people ignore gets shown less for the same money.
What good looks like
Read these by placement rather than as one account figure — retargeting and Reels run well above broad prospecting, so a 2% account average can hide a cold-audience ad at 0.4%. A high rate with no sales has moved the problem down the funnel rather than solved it; check it against Bounce RateBounce RateA quick signal of landing-page relevance and speed.Under 25% is healthy.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Rewrite the first 3 seconds | Swap the opening frame and headline on your top-spending ad, change nothing else | CTR (Link) up 0.2–0.5 points | 3–5 days | It restarts learning on that ad, so cost per purchase is unstable for a few days. A hook that grabs the wrong people lifts clicks while sales stay flat. |
| Fast Pause the ads under 0.6% | Turn off every ad still below 0.6% once it has had 10,000 impressions | Account CTR (Link) up immediately | 1 week | The average improves because you removed the weak rows, not because any ad got better. Reach narrows and Frequency climbs on whatever is left running. |
| Slow Test a different format | Put customer video against your static winners, 3 concepts at a time | CTR (Link) up when a concept lands | 2–4 weeks | Production money and time, and the concepts that lose still spend budget while you learn which one won. |
| Slow Put a real offer in the creative | Show the price, the bundle or the free shipping in the ad itself, not on the landing page | CTR (Link) up sharply | 1 quarter | You're buying the click with margin. Contribution Margin falls on every order, and discount-led buyers come back at a lower rate than full-price ones. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
The click rate on its own only tells you an ad is interesting. Next to purchases, it tells you whether it's interesting to the right people.
The ad and the offer agree
People want to click and want to buy. Scale in steps rather than all at once, so you can see where it stops working.
Clicks that don't buy
The ad promises something the page doesn't deliver. You're paying for traffic that leaves in seconds.
Fewer clicks, better clicks
The creative is filtering hard — it puts off people who were never going to buy. A low rate isn't a fault when the sales are there.
The creative is finished
Nobody clicks and nobody buys. Another colour or caption won't rescue this one — the idea itself has stopped working.
Together they tell you whether to change the audience or the ad. A falling click rate with Frequency climbing means the same people have seen it too often, so widen the targeting. A falling click rate with Frequency flat means fresh people are seeing it and not clicking, so the creative is the problem.
This is the ad's promise against the shop's delivery. A high click rate next to a high Bounce Rate means the creative sells something the landing page doesn't show, so you're buying visits that end in seconds. Read alone, the strong CTR (Link) looks like a win and the Bounce Rate looks like a site fault.
Common misreads
A click isn't a sale. Curiosity hooks and giveaway offers can post a high rate and sell nothing. Read it beside purchases and Bounce Rate before you call it a win.
Check Frequency first. The same ad shown more times to the same audience posts a lower rate without a word of it changing, and broadening the audience often restores it on its own.
The higher figure is the all-clicks rate, which counts reactions, comments, shares and profile taps. Only link clicks reach your shop. Compare ads on this one, or the most-liked ad always wins.
Also called
Link click-through rate · link CTR · click-through rate (link)
See yoursYour CTR (Link) by campaign and by ad, for the last 30 days.
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