Whenever the target objective of a banner, link or page is to achieve the result that the end user clicks on a link, button or banner to proceed through to another page then achieving that result is a ‘click through’. Imagine running a small text ad such as the one below:
Find Out More About The Internet
Click Here Now!
Clearly the purpose of this ad is for people to want to find out more about the Internet and click on the underlined link. Anyone who has done so has clicked through. The click through rate for an advertisement is an important metric. Internet marketers will compare click through rates for various advertisements, squeeze pages and banners to optimise their campaigns. If the page displayed 200 times and 20 people clicked the link then the click through rate would be 10%. If an alternative version could achieve 12% over a reasonable sample then the ad could be changed to this ‘more optimal’ version.