What's an Average CTR?

Today's question was posted by anonymous to PPC Discussions on August 1st.

"In your experience what CTR would you consider as average for a keyword? (Just curious)

Also, in dealing with businesses who are advertising very technical and quite specific content, does it make more sense to use exact match, phrase match or broad match with negative match keywords?"

In terms of CTR, there's not really an "average". I see CTRs ranging from under 1% for competitive terms to 70%+ for longer, lesser searched phrases. CTR really varies from campaign to campaign and market to market. Rather than focusing on an "average" I always suggest that people benchmark their initial CTR and constantly take steps to try and improve on their own numbers. That's measurable and brings real value - trying to determine an "average" CTR is really an exercise in futility that brings no real benefit.

In regards to your second question, I'm a huge fan of exact match. I usually start with exact match - measure the results - then test phrase/broad match based on the success (or failure) of the exact match phrase. I've seen great success in technical markets using exact match and my own experience has shown poorer ROI in those same markets when using phrase or broad match.

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