US search ads get clicked far more often than social or display ads. WordStream and LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmark puts the median click-through rate for US search ads on Google and Microsoft at 6.64%, measured April 2025 to March 2026.
Focus Digital’s 2026 study averages 0.90% on Facebook and 0.68% on Instagram, and its display study averages 0.46%.
What click-through rate measures
Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of ad impressions that end in a click: clicks divided by impressions, times 100. An ad shown 1,000 times that gets 10 clicks has a 1% CTR. The formula is the same for search ads, social ads, display banners and email.
CTR counts direct clicks only. As Choozle’s guide to click-through rate explains, someone who sees an ad, leaves, and later reaches the website another way doesn’t count toward CTR, even if the ad brought them there. Keep this in mind for every benchmark below. CTR tells you how often an ad pulled an immediate click. It doesn’t tell you how much business the ad produced.
Search ad click-through rate by industry
The most widely used search benchmark is the annual report from WordStream and LocaliQ. Its 2026 edition covers US search campaigns on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads combined, from April 2025 to March 2026, and was published May 18, 2026. It puts the median CTR across all industries at 6.64%, according to the WordStream 2026 Google Ads benchmarks, close to the 6.66% in the 2025 edition noted in Digital Applied’s summary.
These figures are medians, not averages. They describe US accounts only, and they blend Google and Microsoft search, so they don’t describe either platform alone. The report covers many industries. The table shows the four whose figures we could confirm, as summarized by Digital Applied’s breakdown of the 2026 edition:
| Industry (US search, 2026 edition) | Median CTR | Median CPC |
|---|---|---|
| Arts & Entertainment | 12.75% | $1.63 |
| Animals & Pets | 7.49% | $4.06 |
| Apparel / Fashion & Jewelry | 6.64% | $4.44 |
| Attorneys & Legal Services | 5.87% | $9.87 |
| All industries | 6.64% | $5.42 |
The spread is wide. Arts and entertainment searches, such as someone looking up showtimes or tickets, get clicked nearly twice as often as the cross-industry median and cost far less per click. Legal searches get clicked less often and cost much more. If you run a theater, a music hall or another venue, the guide to campaigns for entertainment venues covers how search fits alongside other channels.
The CPC column is here only for context. Cost per click by industry has its own variation and caveats.
Social ad click-through rate by platform
Social ads click at a fraction of the search rate, because people scrolling a feed aren’t looking for anything in particular. Focus Digital’s 2026 social media ads study gives these averages across all campaign objectives:
| Platform | Average CTR, all objectives |
|---|---|
| 0.90% | |
| X | 0.86% |
| 0.68% | |
| TikTok | 0.61% |
| 0.52% |
The campaign objective changes the figure a lot. In the same study, Facebook traffic campaigns average 1.93% and lead campaigns 2.70%. Those campaigns are optimized to find people likely to click, so judge a lead campaign against the lead figure, not the all-objective average.
The method shapes how far you can trust the finer splits. Focus Digital compiled published advertising benchmarks from August 2025 to October 2026, then used its own modeling to align time periods and fill gaps. Its industry figures for Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and X are calculated from Facebook’s industry CTR and scaled by each platform’s average. They are estimates rather than measured results, so we don’t publish those splits here. The platform averages and the Facebook objective figures are the firmer numbers.
Display ad click-through rate by industry
Display ads, the banners and image ads that run on websites and apps, get clicked least of the three. Focus Digital’s display study, covering February to December 2025, puts the average CTR at 0.46%. Real estate had the highest rate at 1.08%, which the study attributes to people actively researching property. B2B services had the lowest at 0.22%. Agents weighing display against other channels can see more in our guide to advertising for real estate agents.
Be careful with the 0.46% figure. The same number appears in WordStream data from August 2017 to January 2018, drawn from US client accounts across search and display, and it has been repeated on many pages since. A 2025 study landing on exactly the same rate may reflect stable behavior, or it may reflect sources quoting each other. Use 0.46% as a rough guide for display, not as a precise current measurement.
Why CTV and TV are not judged by click-through rate
Viewers can’t click a TV screen, so connected TV (CTV) and broadcast ads have no real CTR to measure. Choozle’s guide says CTR shouldn’t be used alone to measure awareness channels such as video, CTV, audio and display. It suggests judging them on reach, frequency, viewability, video completion rate, site activity and conversions.
Search and retargeting capture demand that already exists, while CTV and digital audio create it. In a Viant post on CTR, Steven Ohrnstein, Viant’s SVP of Platform Automation & Analytics, describes channels like CTV and digital audio as ones that “create demand”. A TV spot might lead someone to search for your business days later, and that search ad then gets the click.
For TV, the metrics that matter are whether the ad was watched in full, how many households saw it and how often, and what happened on your website afterward. Our guide explains how view-through rate works for local businesses. For context on the channel itself, see how fast CTV advertising is growing.
What a good CTR looks like for a local business
Compare like with like. A 1% CTR is weak for a search ad, about average for a Facebook ad across objectives, and well above average for a display banner. Use the benchmark for your channel, your campaign objective and, where one exists, your industry. A good CTR beats that figure and still brings in leads. Then track your own CTR over time, since your past results show what a change in creative or targeting actually did.
A high CTR isn’t the goal on its own. Viant’s Ohrnstein notes that a high CTR doesn’t always bring high-quality customers: an ad that pulls lots of curious, low-intent clicks can cost more per lead than one with fewer, better clicks. For a plumber, a dentist or a restaurant, the questions that matter are whether those clicks turned into calls, bookings or form fills, and what each one cost. Don’t rank channels by CTR either. A TV spot and a search ad do different jobs, and putting their click rates side by side hides that. Home service businesses can see how channels work together in our guide to advertising for home service businesses.
This is easier to judge when every channel reports in one place. Adwave creates ads from your website and runs them on TV, search, social and the web from one daily budget, starting at $30 per day. Channel availability depends on budget: TikTok, for example, starts from $91 per day and must be turned on. Adwave tracks campaign activity and website conversions, so you can see search and social clicks next to the site visits and leads that follow TV exposure. To count leads and sales, you install a tracking snippet on your site and choose the actions to count. No dashboard proves that one ad alone caused a sale, but seeing clicks, conversions and spend together tells you more than CTR alone.
