Not every viewer of an advertisement or email takes the next step. Click-through rate is the percentage who do. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions or deliveries, then multiplying by 100. A rate of 2 percent means that two out of every hundred people who saw the link clicked it.

Click-through rate is a widely used metric in digital advertising and email marketing because it is easy to measure and responds quickly to changes in creative, targeting, and placement. Higher rates usually indicate more relevant or compelling content. However, a high click-through rate is not the final goal; conversion after the click matters more for most campaigns.

Benchmarks vary by industry, format, and platform. What counts as strong performance in one context may be average in another. Marketers therefore track their own historical rates and test variations to improve them. Used with other metrics, click-through rate helps diagnose whether the first stage of the customer journey is working.