When you invest in an advertising campaign for your CPG brand, you need benchmarks to know whether you are making headway. Here are some of the average click-through rates (CTRs) for the CPG industry.
Why CTR Still Matters for CPG Marketing
The number of times consumers click through your ad remains a hallmark of a successful CPG marketing campaign. While a variety of CPG KPIs (key performance indicators) exist, click-through is still a top metric to watch in pay-per-click advertising channels.
In addition to correlating with ad traffic and general audience interest, search engines like Google look at your historical click-through data to determine your quality score and ad effectiveness. The CTR also helps you hone your approach by specific target audience. A poor CTR could indicate bad ad copy or that you’re spending money on the wrong keywords. While variances (some of them out of your control) can occur, CPG marketing should strongly focus on these metrics.
The bad news is that these variances can make these types of CPG KPIs tough to predict.
CPG KPIs That Matter — CTR
There is plenty of data on CTRs by industry, type of ad, and channel. This makes the job of CPG marketing more difficult. The CXL Institute reports the average click-through rates by CPG product lines include:
- Home goods rank at 0.37% for display networks and 1.80% for search.
- E-commerce ranks at 0.45% for display networks and 1.66% for search.
In all categories, it’s interesting to note the average CTR for search is always higher. This indicates consumers are actively searching for keyword-related content, but viewers are more passive on the display channel. This makes sense because the studies show consumers find ads in their newsfeeds annoying.
Nowhere are newsfeeds more prevalent today than on Facebook, where over seven million advertisers compete for end-users' attention. Ad fatigue plays a role on the platform, but some of the Facebook ad benchmarks are important for CPG marketing:
- The average CTR across industries is 0.89%.
- The average food-and-drink CTR is higher at 1.20%.
- The average beauty product CTR is 1.02%.
- Both the food and drink and beauty product categories have higher CTRs than internet and telecom at .68%.
Wordstream reports the average ad conversion for Facebook is 9.21%, which is higher than conversions in the Google ads channel. Twitter ads have the highest overall CTR, and LinkedIn has the lowest. Looking specifically at Facebook's video ads rather than just link ads, however, the CTR of 2.21% actually beats Twitter's CTR of 2%.
Instapage suggests the retail and beauty categories rank high as these ads feature high-quality pictures of people along with discounts, sales, or promotions that drive CTR. Marketing Dive suggests CPG brands can improve lagging CTR KPIs by combining “several rich media features into a single unit to boost interaction.” Creating awareness campaigns can also boost consumer engagement, primarily through the use of video and interactive imagery.
CPG marketers must also pay close attention to the types of ads generating higher CTR. Marketing Dive recommends mobile expandable banners as performing well in any space, including CPG.
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