What Is a Good Interaction Rate on Google Ads?

Understanding Interaction Rate in Google Ads (and why it’s not always the same as CTR)

What “interaction” means depends on the ad format

Interaction rate is simply the percentage of impressions that resulted in the primary action your ad format is designed to generate. It’s calculated as interactions divided by impressions. The important nuance is that an “interaction” is not always a click.

In accounts that run multiple campaign types (Search, Display, Video, App, and Performance Max), interaction rate is best thought of as a cross-campaign engagement metric. It standardizes performance by counting the main action for each format so you can compare “how often people did the thing the ad is built to drive” after seeing it.

Here’s how it typically maps in practice: for Search and most click-driven formats, interactions are clicks—so interaction rate is effectively your CTR. For YouTube/video formats, interactions are often video views or engagements, so interaction rate behaves more like view rate or engagement rate, depending on the specific video format and objective.

Interactions you’ll commonly see by campaign type

If you’re trying to judge what “good” looks like, first confirm what your account is counting as an interaction for the campaign you’re analyzing. As a rule of thumb: text ads and many image/display executions count clicks; TrueView-style video formats commonly count video views; and some formats count engagements (for example, deeper video engagement behavior rather than a simple click).

This is why two campaigns can show the same interaction rate but represent completely different user behaviors. A 5% interaction rate on a Search campaign generally means 5% CTR. A 5% interaction rate on certain video campaigns may mean 5% of impressions became views/engagements—which is a very different outcome and should be evaluated against different goals.

What Is a “Good” Interaction Rate? Benchmarks that actually help you optimize

The only universal benchmark: “good” is relative to network, intent, and format

A good interaction rate is the one that’s improving in the context of your business goal (profit, qualified leads, pipeline, or incremental brand lift) while staying efficient on cost per interaction and, more importantly, cost per conversion (or cost per qualified conversion).

Because interaction rate can represent clicks, views, or engagements, I strongly recommend you avoid judging it as a single universal KPI across all campaign types. Instead, define “good” in three layers: compared to your own historical baseline, compared to other segments inside the same campaign type, and compared to what the campaign is supposed to accomplish (click intent vs. view intent vs. engagement intent).

Practical “healthy range” guidelines (use as starting targets, not rules)

If you still need a quick gut-check, these are directional ranges I’ve seen hold up across many accounts, assuming decent tracking, reasonable targeting, and no major creative or landing page issues. Treat these as starting points to investigate—not pass/fail grades.

Search (interaction rate ≈ CTR): Non-brand Search campaigns often feel healthy when you’re consistently above the low single digits, while brand campaigns frequently run much higher. If your non-brand is stuck under ~2% for core intent terms, it’s usually a sign of mismatched keywords, weak ad relevance, or poor positioning versus competitors.

Display (interaction rate ≈ CTR for most click-based display): Display is commonly much lower than Search. If you’re driving clicks, sub-1% can still be normal depending on targeting and creative; the bigger question is whether those interactions convert or assist conversions at an acceptable cost. For remarketing and tightly defined audiences, you should generally expect stronger interaction rates than broad prospecting.

YouTube/Video (interaction rate may behave like view rate or engagement rate): For skippable in-stream video, “good” often looks like a meaningful share of impressions becoming views, with improving efficiency over time as the system learns. If you see weak interaction rate alongside weak downstream actions (site visits, engaged sessions, assisted conversions), the usual culprit is the first 5–10 seconds of the creative or overly narrow/incorrect targeting.

Performance Max: Because Performance Max mixes inventory and formats, interaction rate can be harder to interpret in isolation. Use it as a diagnostic signal, but make your optimization decisions primarily on conversion quality and value (and secondarily on cost per interaction and interaction trends by asset group, audience signal, and creative strength).

How to evaluate interaction rate without fooling yourself

Interaction rate becomes actionable when you tie it to what happens after the interaction. For click-driven campaigns, validate that higher interaction rate is correlated with stable or improving conversion rate and cost per conversion. For video/engagement-driven campaigns, validate that stronger interaction rate aligns with growth in qualified traffic, assisted conversions, engaged-view impact, or your chosen mid-funnel event.

• Compare like with like: Search vs. Search, Display vs. Display, Video vs. Video. Don’t average them together and call it a benchmark.
• Trend it, don’t snapshot it: A single week can be skewed by auction volatility, creative fatigue, seasonality, or budget throttling.
• Always pair it with efficiency metrics: Cost per interaction, conversion rate (based on interactions), and cost per conversion (or value per cost where applicable).

How to Measure Interaction Rate Correctly (and build a report you can optimize from)

Use the right columns and a simple “funnel view”

Start by adding interaction-focused columns to the same view where you analyze conversions. At minimum, you want impressions, interactions, interaction rate, cost per interaction (or average cost), conversions, and conversion rate based on interactions. This prevents a common mistake: celebrating a higher interaction rate that actually produced lower-quality traffic.

For video-heavy campaigns, build a simple funnel-style table so you can see where performance drops off. A clean version is impressions → engagements → views → clicks → conversions. That ordering helps you isolate whether the issue is creative (low views/engagements), call-to-action (low clicks), or post-click experience (low conversion rate).

Know what qualifies as a view or engagement (so your “interaction rate” interpretation matches reality)

In video campaigns, “views” and “engagements” are not the same thing, and they don’t always trigger at the same thresholds. Views commonly require a meaningful watch (for example, a longer watch duration or completion for shorter creatives) or certain click actions tied to the video experience. Engagements often represent a smaller-but-still-valuable depth of interaction (for example, watching at least 10 seconds, or clicking in specific video-app-promotion scenarios). The practical takeaway is that interaction rate can represent different depths of user intent depending on the video format you’re running.

How to Improve Interaction Rate (systematic fixes that usually move the needle)

Step 1: Fix relevance first (the fastest lever for Search and many click-based formats)

If interaction rate is weak on Search, assume a relevance problem until proven otherwise. Tighten keyword intent, tighten ad messaging, and tighten the landing page promise so the user immediately recognizes you’re the right answer.

In practical terms, this means aligning each ad group (or asset group equivalent) around a single intent theme, writing ad copy that mirrors that intent in plain language, and ensuring the landing page answers the query quickly—especially on mobile. When that alignment is strong, interaction rate improves naturally because users don’t have to “hope” your ad is relevant; they can see it instantly.

Step 2: If interaction rate is low on Display or Performance Max, treat it as a targeting + creative quality problem

On Display-like inventory, low interaction rate is often caused by one of two things: you’re showing great creative to the wrong audience, or you’re showing the right audience creative that doesn’t earn attention. Fix both in parallel.

From a targeting perspective, reduce waste by separating remarketing from prospecting, using more precise audience definitions where possible, and excluding obvious low-quality placements or contexts that don’t fit your brand. From a creative perspective, refresh assets more frequently than you think you need to, rotate multiple variations, and make your first message readable without sound and without relying on subtle visual cues.

Step 3: For YouTube/video, optimize the first 5–10 seconds before you touch bids

When interaction rate is weak in video, most advertisers jump straight to targeting tweaks or bid changes. In reality, the biggest lever is usually the opening: if the hook doesn’t earn attention immediately, the system will struggle to find cost-efficient views/engagements no matter how good your targeting is.

Practical improvements that consistently lift video interaction rate include shortening the ad when possible, testing multiple intros, making the value proposition obvious early, and cycling fresh creatives to prevent fatigue. Once the creative is competitive, targeting adjustments become far more effective, because you’re giving the system something that can win auctions and hold attention.

Step 4: Diagnose with a short checklist (then apply the right fix)

• If interaction rate is low and impressions are high: Your ad is eligible and serving, but not compelling. Improve message-to-intent match (Search) or creative/thumb-stopping value (Display/Video).
• If interaction rate is low and impressions are low: You may be too narrow (targeting, audiences, keywords), limited by bids/budget, or constrained by policy/asset eligibility. Solve reach first, then optimize engagement.
• If interaction rate is improving but conversions aren’t: Your post-click experience or conversion setup is the bottleneck. Validate landing page speed and clarity, conversion tracking accuracy, and whether the “interaction” you’re optimizing for is truly aligned to the conversion you want.
• If interaction rate is strong but costs are rising: Look for creative fatigue, audience saturation (especially in remarketing), or expanding into lower-quality inventory. Refresh assets and review where ads are serving.

The expert rule: optimize interaction rate only when it supports the business outcome

Interaction rate is a powerful diagnostic metric because it tells you whether the market is reacting to what you’re putting in front of them. But it’s not a finish line. The best accounts treat interaction rate as a “front-end health check” and make final decisions using conversion quality, cost per conversion, and (when applicable) conversion value.

‍

A “good” interaction rate on Google Ads depends on what your campaign counts as an interaction (clicks on Search and many Display formats, views or engagements on YouTube, and mixed signals in Performance Max), so it’s best treated as a relative health check rather than a universal benchmark. Compare it against your own historical baseline and against similar segments within the same campaign type, then sanity-check it with what happens after the interaction—conversion rate, cost per conversion, and lead or sale quality—so you don’t end up optimizing for engagement that doesn’t drive outcomes. If you want a more systematic way to spot where interaction rate is low for the “right” reasons (relevance, creative, targeting, or landing-page mismatch) and turn that into prioritized fixes, Blobr connects to your Google Ads account and runs specialized AI agents that continuously analyze performance and suggest concrete actions across keywords, ads, and landing pages while keeping you in control of what gets applied.