I’ve been asked continuously over the last twenty years “what’s a good click through rate, bounce rate, time on site, etc.” and more recently, “what’s a good IVT (invalid traffic) rate?” My answer has always been that industry wide digital advertising benchmarks are meaningless because they are not actionable, even though it is very tempting to compare yourself to them. Let me explain why.

Comparing Apples to Cherries

Let’s take simple things like bounce rates, time on site, and number of pages per session; all of these are readily available in Google Analytics. A “good” bounce rate, time on site, and number of pages per session is entirely different depending on the nature of the site or the industry vertical to which it belongs.

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