CTR Metrics in Bid Requests

What is Click Through Rate (CTR)?

Click Through Rate (CTR) is a common key performance indicator (KPI) that looks at how many clicks were generated on average views of ad creative. It gives marketers insight into user behavior, and helps determine how successful and engaging a given piece of creative is.

A “click through” is what happens when the user/viewer clicks to engage with the ad content. The click through rate is simply the calculation of the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. Each campaign will have its own CTR based on engagement and average impressions.

A benchmark CTR metric for a given inventory can be used for targeting, and can help marketers/advertisers compare campaign performance to the average performance for that inventory. This helps marketers and advertisers optimize their campaigns, ad formats, and ad sizes.

At Smaato, we can share a benchmark CTR for a given placement, to give marketers, advertisers, and DSPs greater insight into potential campaign performance.

Why Include CTR in the Bid Request?

Adding average observed CTR metric to the bid request helps give marketers/advertisers valuable insight into potential campaign performance. It also provides targeting guidance for marketers to kick start inventory selection, and allows them to compare their individual campaign performance to the generally-seen benchmarks.

We offer this average expected CTR to our marketer partners to help them manage expectations for their campaigns and to make informed bids.

How Do We Calculate CTR?

At Smaato, we calculate the benchmark CTR over a 24 hour period. As such, CTR metrics are updated once daily.

In order to provide statistically significant metrics, we require a minimum number of clicks in the 24h time frame. Click through rate is generated per Country, App Bundle or Website, as well as by further placement details (such as ad format and ad size).

A missing CTR does not mean users aren’t engaging with the inventory. It may mean, however, that we do not yet have enough click data or to calculate a respective metric. Or, it may mean that the inventory is too new, so there is not enough historical data to generate the rate. Finally, a missing CTR may occur because of integration limitations, which prevent clicks from being recorded.

How Do We Count Clicks to Calculate Benchmark CTR

Clicks are counted slightly differently based on the type of inventory. Smaato always counts the first click on an ad. This means that the first time a user engages with the ad, it counts as a click. There are certain ad formats that require engagement to view the entire ad, for example, expanding ads. With expanding-ad MRAID advertisements, we would count the click to expand the advertisements the first click, since the user is still engaging with ad content. In most cases, though, MRAID ads are not expanding ads, so the first click is the click that drives the user to the advertiser’s landing page.

For Video, any click that causes a redirect will count as a click through. For example, clicking on a video (for interstitial ads) or on the end card (for rewarded and interstitial ads), will trigger a redirect, and count towards CTR.

How To Get Started

It’s simple to get started. If you are interested in seeing CTR in bid requests, ask your client partner manager to ensure that the CTR metric is turned on for your account. Once CTR is activated for you, you will receive the CTR metric in the metric object as “click_through_rate”. The metric will range as a decimal from 0 to 1.

Bid Request Sample

Here’s an example of a sample bid request, with CTR included:

{
    “allimps”: 0,
    “app”: {
        “bundle”: “10”,
        “cat”: [
            “IAB9”
        ],
        “id”: “120131377”,
        “name”: “Test iOS”,
        “publisher”: {
            “id”: “1100000000”,
            “name”: “Test Inc.”
        },
        “storeurl”: “https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/test/id10”
    },
    “at”: 1,
    “bcat”: [
        “IAB23”
    ],
    “device”: {
        “connectiontype”: 2,
        “devicetype”: 4,
        “dnt”: 0,
        “ext”: {
            “atts”: 3
        },
        “geo”: {
            “city”: “Queens”,
            “country”: “USA”,
            “metro”: “501”,
            “region”: “NY”,
            “type”: 2,
            “zip”: “11373”
        },
        “h”: 1792,
        “hwv”: “11”,
        “ifa”: “43F8AE34-DEAD-BEEF-DEAD-35D6AD8D834E”,
        “ip”: “9.5.97.2”,
        “js”: 1,
        “language”: “en”,
        “lmt”: 0,
        “make”: “Apple”,
        “model”: “iPhone 11”,
        “os”: “iOS”,
        “osv”: “14.7.1”,
        “pxratio”: 2,
        “ua”: “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 14_7_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/15E148”,
        “w”: 828
    },
    “ext”: {
        “madcr”: “MA”
    },
    “id”: “4e93ec49-dead-beef-dead-a3eef8ac37c2”,
	    “imp”: [
        {
            “banner”: {
                “api”: [
                    3, 5, 6, 7
                ],
                “battr”: [
                    1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14
                ],
                “btype”: [
                    1
                ],
                “format”: [
                    {
                        “h”: 50,
                        “w”: 320
                    }
                ],
                “h”: 50,
                “mimes”: [
                    “text/javascript”,
                    “application/javascript”,
                    “image/jpeg”,
                    “image/png”,
                    “image/gif”
                ],
                “pos”: 0,
                “w”: 320
            },
            “bidfloor”: 0.6097,
            “bidfloorcur”: “USD”,
            “displaymanager”: “SOMA”,
            “displaymanagerver”: “sdkios_21.6.16”,
            “ext”: {
                “strictbannersize”: 0,
                “deeplinks”: 1
            },
            “id”: “1”,
            “instl”: 0,
            “metric”: [
                {
                    “type”: “click_through_rate”,
                    “value”: 0.00030974936,
                    “vendor”: “EXCHANGE”
                }
            ],
            “secure”: 1,
            “tagid”: “131130307”
        }
    ],
    “regs”: {
        “coppa”: 0,
        “ext”: { }
    },
    “source”: {
        “ext”: {
            “omidpn”: “Smaato”,
            “omidpv”: “21.6.16”
        }
    },
    “tmax”: 449,
    “user”: {
        “ext”: { },
        “id”: “6DF55994-DEAD-BEEF-DEAD-C0A69A089F28”
    }
}

Ready to get started?

Reach out to your client partner manager to ensure that the CTR metric is activated for your account.