What's a Good CTR for the Google Display Network in 2026?

The average click-through rate (CTR) for standard Google Display Network banner ads is 0.46% in 2026. A CTR between 0.5% and 1% is considered good performance for display, and anything above 1% is excellent.

Why Display CTR Sits So Far Below Search

Display ads interrupt content rather than answering an active search query, so the intent behind a display impression is far lower than a Google Search ad, where the searcher typed the query themselves. That gap is why the 0.46% Display average looks tiny next to Google Search's own 2026 benchmark of roughly 6.64% average CTR across industries — the two networks are measuring fundamentally different moments in a buyer's journey, and comparing them directly against the same "good CTR" bar isn't useful.

Format Changes the Number Significantly

• Standard static banners: around 0.46% CTR, the baseline most advertisers see across a typical Display campaign
• Rich media units: roughly 1.84% CTR, about 4x the static banner average, reflecting the extra attention interactive or animated formats pull
• Video display formats: deliver roughly 73% higher CTR than static banners, landing meaningfully above the 0.46% baseline

Because format alone can shift CTR by 2-4x, benchmarking a Display campaign only against the flat 0.46% figure without accounting for which ad format ran can make a genuinely solid rich media or video campaign look average, or make a genuinely weak static banner campaign look fine by comparison.

What Pushes a Campaign Toward 1%+

Placement targeting is the other major lever: a Display campaign run only on hand-picked, highly relevant placements or in-market audiences tends to land well above the 0.46% blanket average, while broad, automatically-placed campaigns across the full Display inventory typically sit at or below it. Remarketing placements — showing ads to people who already visited the site — also consistently outperform the cold-audience average, since that audience already has some familiarity with the brand before the impression even loads.

Reading Display CTR Correctly

A low Display CTR relative to Search doesn't necessarily mean a campaign is failing — Display is more often used for awareness and remarketing than for the direct-response job Search ads do, so judging Display success purely on CTR against a Search-level bar sets a misleading target from the start. Pairing CTR with view-through conversions and remarketing list growth gives a fuller picture of whether a Display campaign is actually doing its job, rather than relying on a single click-based metric.

Campaigns built around a single flat CTR target also tend to overlook frequency: showing the same static banner to the same user too many times drags CTR down over the life of a campaign even when the creative itself is sound, which is a separate problem from the format or targeting issues above and needs a frequency cap rather than a creative refresh to fix.

Bottom Line

Treat 0.46% as the realistic baseline for standard Google Display Network banner ads in 2026, 0.5-1% as solid performance, and 1%+ as a strong result — but check which ad format and targeting type produced that number before comparing it to another campaign, since format alone can swing Display CTR by several multiples.

Sources: WebFX, "2026 Google Ads Benchmarks: CTR, CPC, CVR, CPA, and More"; Digital Applied, "Display Advertising Benchmarks 2026: 150+ Data Points".