Random Labs: What Is a Good Click-Through Rate on Social Media in 2026?

As we approach the end of 2025, marking another typically turbulent year for social media, it is a great time to examine click-through rates across various platforms. So, what is a reasonable click-through rate on social media in 2026?

What is click-through rate?

Click-through rate (CTR%) is primarily a key metric used in the context of paid digital marketing. This metric measures the ratio of users to the number of times a specific content was viewed, expressed in percentage format. Given the wide variations in factors such as ad budget, targeting, objectives, and more, CTR% serves as a standardized metric to analyze how effectively a paid strategy has been implemented.

What are the click-through rate benchmarks on social media?

The following table presents recent data on click-through rates across various social channels:

When evaluating clickthrough rates on a broad scale, it is best to consider them as a range when benchmarking, since countless variations impact this metric. A larger range, like we see with the percentages for Instagram, can indicate relatively higher overall variation, which makes sense for a platform like Instagram that flexes with so many different content types.

What factors contribute to click-through rate?

The following lists some of the major factors that can contribute to click-through rates for any ad:

• Ad objective: A campaign set to maximize clicks as its objective will obviously have a higher CTR% than other campaign types. CTR% can even become a vanity metric for objectives like awareness or video views. 
• Industry and competitor context: Different industries and audiences come with varying sizes of audience pools, as well as different levels of engaged users within those pools. This directly ties into our earlier definition of CTR%, which we mentioned is a ratio dependent on audience size.
• Ad quality: High-quality ads typically have compelling copy, clear calls to action, targeted keywords, and a good landing page experience, which collectively boost CTR%.
• Scheduling and timing: Seasonality matters greatly in social media and it is no different for advertising performance. 
• Budget: Among major factors for CTR%, but it should generally be lower on the priority list compared to ad objective and quality. Increasing budget allows you to scale high-performing ad copies to a larger pool of relevant audiences.

Although a broad, platform-wide range is a good starting point for comparing your CTR% performance across different social platforms, we can narrow down comparisons further with additional context such as ad objectives, industry, or audience size. 

Narrowing down benchmarks to your specific niche and campaign goals enables more meaningful comparisons and realistic performance expectations. Ultimately, the best benchmark is one that reflects the unique dynamics of your audience, ad creatives, and conversion goals, guiding you to optimize for both higher CTR and better overall returns.

What is a good CTR percentage? This depends on your business or objective.

Personalizing benchmarks that best suit your needs is definitely more involved, but that’s where we can help!

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