<b>The native CTR you're bragging about is a tax</b>

<b>The native CTR you're bragging about is a tax</b>

<b>Myth:</b> A high native CTR means your creative is winning.

Wrong. Native's whole trick is the curiosity gap — the headline withholds the payoff so the click becomes mandatory, not chosen. You're not measuring interest, you're measuring how successfully you frustrated someone into clicking.

The tell: watch the gap between CTR and post-click dwell time. A widget pulling 0.4% CTR with 4-second average sessions isn't converting curiosity into attention. It's renting it back to you at a markup.

Display gets blamed for low CTR and honest numbers. Native gets praised for high CTR and a bounce rate it never reports. Which one is actually lying to you?