Paid Search
Display Advertising Benchmarks | What a Good Banner CTR Looks Like
The median Google Display click-through rate is 0.35%. Why that is normal, which numbers matter more, and how to keep display spend out of junk placements.
BenchMarketing editorial team Updated October 2, 2026 3 min readShare
Display ads have the lowest click-through rates in digital advertising, and they always have. A banner beside an article competes with the article. Judging display by CTR alone leads most advertisers to the wrong conclusion.
The headline numbers
| Metric | Median | Middle half of accounts |
|---|---|---|
| CTR | 0.35% | 0.15% to 0.65% |
| CPC | $0.63 | $0.28 to $1.20 |
| CPM | $3.12 | $1.50 to $5.80 |
| Conversion rate | 1.00% | 0.40% to 2.10% |
| Cost per conversion | $65.00 | $32 to $120 |
Compare that with Google search, where the median CTR is 6.11%. The difference is intent. Search ads answer a question; display ads interrupt something else.
A CTR that is too good
A display campaign with a CTR far above 0.65% deserves suspicion before celebration. Mobile apps and games are the usual cause: ads placed next to buttons or inside game screens collect accidental taps. Those clicks cost money and almost never convert. Check the placement report, look for app placements with high CTR and no conversions, and exclude them.
What to judge display on instead
- Retargeting: cost per conversion and the conversion rate of returning visitors. Display is often the cheapest way to bring back people who already visited.
- Prospecting: cost per thousand impressions on placements you would be happy to appear on, plus the lift in branded search and direct traffic during the campaign.
- Viewability: an ad that never appears on screen cannot work. Prefer bidding that pays for viewable impressions.
Keeping spend in good places
- Exclude mobile app categories unless you are advertising an app.
- Review placements weekly at the start and exclude sites that spend without converting.
- Use content exclusions for sensitive categories that do not fit your brand.
- Cap frequency so the same person is not shown the same banner dozens of times.
Responsive display ads, where Google assembles the ad from your images, headlines and logos, usually reach more inventory than fixed banners. Supply several image ratios so they display well everywhere.
See the display ads benchmark page and Google Ads display benchmarks.
About the figures
Benchmark figures in this article come from the BenchMarketing dataset and update when the benchmark pages do. Each benchmark page lists its sources and period; see our methodology.
Sources
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