This is probably going to be a hard question to answer, but what sort of CTR should be expected or achieved on a PPC campaign?

We previously used a recognised partner to do our PPC, however we have taken it in-house and have managed to double the CTR.

We have also adjusted some adverts and gotten a better CTR from original versions by changing the ad.

So what is a common target value that people work to, given the ad is seen, it matches your target and keyword.

Our campaigns are rating between 0.9% for a very competitve keyword up to 12% for a more targeted phrase.

The low percentage campaign is for a highly competivite term, that encompasses both low quailty products to very high quality products, that sadly is either a 1 or 2 keyword pharse.

So I guess that leads to a second question, are adwords for single word "common" terms a waste of time, and is it better to concentrate on niche words.

Regarding bounce rates, it varies, some have high bounce rates because the landing page is not designed for a specifc keyword. I can work on that, however at the moment I want to know if I should target 5, 10, 15 or 50% CTR i.e. optimise the advert to achieve a certain CTR.

Yes I realise conversions matter too.