Myth: Pick the creative with the highest CTR.

Myth: Pick the creative with the highest CTR.

Wrong, and this one's expensive. High native CTR usually signals a misleading thumbnail — shock image, fake play button, curiosity gap so wide the click is reflex, not intent. That click costs you money and converts at nothing.

The metric that beats CTR: click-to-conversion rate, or better, conversion-per-mille (conversions / 1000 impressions). It rewards the creative that pulls fewer but warmer clicks.

Use CTR only as a diagnostic:
— Sky-high CTR, floor-level conversion? You built a clickbait trap, congratulations.
— Modest CTR, strong downstream? That's your scale candidate.

The whole native industry is hypnotized by CTR because the platforms profit from it. Allegedly it measures interest. It measures how good you are at tricking a thumb.