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Engagement Rate

Engagement Rate



Engagement Rate

Quick Description = The rate at which your ads are engaged with after being shown to users

Calculation: No. of Engagements / Views of ad

Referred to as = Engagement Rate

The Engagement Rate is the rate at which users engage with your Lightbox ad as a ratio of the total number of users that saw the ad. In Engagement campaign, you are billed per engagement and so the engagement rate is very important in this campaign type.

How Engagements Work

An engagement is defined as expanding an engagement campaign ad, which is done by either clicking on it or hovering over it with the mouse for two seconds… It is at this point that Google will charge you.

This ad format, and hence this metric, only applies to campaigns using the Google Display Network (GDN). Engagements are the primary metric and the basis for bidding when using any of the following ad formats:

  • YouTube Masthead Lightbox
  • Cross Device Ads
  • Lightbox ads linked to Google Merchant Centre (product engagement ads)

How Engagement Rate Works

Similar to CTR, the engagement rate is calculated by dividing the number of engagements by the number of impressions / views of ad. For example, if you had a campaign that received 100 engagements and had 10,000 views, we would calculate the Engagement Rate like this:

10 / 10,000 = 0.001 = 0.1% Engagement Rate

Engagement Rate is factored into calculating Ad Rank in the same way that CTR (Click Through Rate) is with QS (Quality Score).


Engagements are the key metric in determining ad performance as the ad requires an engagement before the user clicks through to your landing page. Engagement rate is a valuable metric in engagement campaigns as the rate at which users engage can be seen in the same way as CTR, and is a strong indicator of how well your ads are performing.

Other Relevant Metrics

You may also be interested in reading some of the following guides relevant to the Engagement Rate from our metrics knowledge base:

  • CPE (Cost Per Engagement)
  • Engagements
  • Lightbox Ads
  • Engagement Ads
  • Gmail Campaigns


To find out more, please click the link below.