All About

Relative CTRDOB - Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Part of Knowledge Sharing Activity

-Pawan Dhera16/5/2016

What is Relative CTR?

Relative CTR is a measure of how your ads are performing on the Display Network compared to other advertisers' (Competitor’s) ads that are appearing on the same websites/placements.

To evaluate these numbers, “HIGHER IS BETTER”.

Where will you get this Metrics?

To view relative CTR within your AdWords account,

Go to the "Ad groups" tab, select “Modify columns" from the "Columns" drop-down menu, and select "Relative CTR.” under the Competitive Metrics column and hit save.

Relative CTR will appear at the campaign or ad group level.

Why Numbers are in 1x Format?The number is a simple calculation of the campaign’s CTR divided by the CTR of the other competitors ads (Unknown = x) running in the same places.

E.g.Campaign CTR%/(x) = Relative CTR(0.03%)/(x) = 0.6x0.03/0.6 = xx=0.05%So the CTR of the Competitors ads running in the same places on the GDN have a CTR of 0.05%.

Anything below 1x is “below avg.” and will likely have fewer impressions that “above average” 1x adgroups.

Why does Relative CTR matter?For E.g. (When Relative CTR = 2x)At first glance, a CTR of any GDN campaign with 0.04% may seem low. But knowing that this is two times the CTR of competing ads (Relative CTR = 2x) tells you that your ads are actually performing better than ads on the same page. This means that your ad creative matches the websites content and that your audience is responding well to your Ads.

(When Relative CTR = 0.5x)Alternatively, you may see that your Relative CTR is 0.5x, meaning that your ads are only getting half of the average CTR. This means that your ads may not be resonating with the users you’d like to reach and that you may be able to improve performance by refining your ad creative/placements where your ads are being served.

How to optimize Relative CTR?• Start reviewing your placements for possible exclusions.  A low relative CTR can

hurt your Quality Score and result in lower ad rank on the DN.• Use site and category exclusions.  I especially like going to the Page Types page

and choosing to opt out of error pages, parked domains, and forums when it’s obvious that the conversion rate compared to cost isn’t worth it.

• Revisit your message – There’s a reason why your ad is receiving less traffic than those on the same pages.

• Include negative keywords in your DN campaign.• Utilize contextual targeting.  If you aren’t using keywords to help the AdWords

system to place you on relevant sites, you might consider trying it to find additional ad groups you might not have originally thought of.