What's a Good CTR for YouTube Ads by Industry in 2026?

A good click-through rate for YouTube Ads in 2026 falls between 0.5% and 1.5% overall, with an average around 0.65% — but industry matters enormously: Toys leads at 1.00% CTR and Gaming follows at 0.90%, while Restaurants sit at just 0.04% and Household Essentials at 0.045%, a spread wide enough that a single platform average tells you almost nothing about whether your own campaign is performing.

Why the Spread Between Industries Is So Extreme

YouTube ad CTR correlates strongly with how visual and discovery-driven a category's purchase decision is. Toys and Gaming both rely on visual, video-native creative that plays naturally in a video feed — a toy or game trailer is content people click toward, not away from. Restaurants and Household Essentials, by contrast, sell low-consideration, frequently-purchased products where a video ad interrupts rather than adds to what someone's watching, which depresses click-through regardless of creative quality.

CTR by Industry

• Toys: 1.00% CTR, the strongest industry tracked
• Gaming: 0.90% CTR
• B2B: 0.28% CTR, the weakest among industries with meaningful volume — reflecting how few B2B purchase decisions start from a video ad impression
• Government and advocacy groups: 0.07% CTR
• Household essentials: 0.045% CTR
• Restaurants: 0.04% CTR, the lowest tracked industry

CTR by Ad Format Matters Almost as Much as Industry

• In-feed (Discovery) ads: the strongest paid format at 1.0% to 3.0%+ CTR, since these appear alongside organic search and browse results rather than interrupting a video
• TrueView in-stream ads: around 0.8% CTR on average
• Shorts ads: the weakest format at 0.1% to 0.5% CTR, consistent with how quickly viewers swipe past Shorts content generally

Why Comparing Format and Industry Together Matters

A B2B software company running Shorts ads is stacking two of the lowest-performing variables in this benchmark set at once. A 0.28% industry baseline combined with a 0.1% to 0.5% format range means a B2B advertiser on Shorts should expect CTR near the bottom of both ranges — not because the campaign is poorly run, but because neither the industry nor the format favors high click-through in the first place. The same advertiser switching to in-feed placements would likely see a meaningfully higher CTR purely from the format change.

Why Low-CTR Industries Still Run YouTube Ads Profitably

A Restaurants campaign posting 0.04% CTR isn't necessarily wasting budget — video ads in low-CTR categories are frequently bought for brand awareness and reach rather than direct click-driven response, and a restaurant chain measuring success by foot traffic lift or brand recall studies may see healthy results from a campaign whose CTR looks poor by cross-industry standards. Judging a low-CTR-industry campaign purely on click-through rate risks canceling a channel that's actually working as intended for its stated goal.

Bottom Line

Don't benchmark a YouTube Ads campaign against the 0.5% to 1.5% platform-wide range without first checking where your industry and ad format land inside it — a Restaurants or Household Essentials campaign near 0.05% CTR may be performing normally for its category, while the same number for a Toys or Gaming campaign would signal a real problem.

Source: MegaDigital, "YouTube Ad Benchmarks by Industry: Measure Campaigns in 2026."