Digital Advertising Glossary
- A/B Testing
- Comparing two versions of an advertisement, email or web page to see which
one performs better.
- Ad Recall
- Measure of ad effectiveness in which a sample of respondents is exposed to an
ad and then at a later point in time is asked if they remember the ad.
- Banner Ad
- Web ad typically featuring animated graphics and text available in various sizes
and positions.
- Benchmarking
- Measurement of the quality of an organization’s policies, products, programs,
strategies, etc., and their comparison with standard measurements, or similar
measurements of its peers.
- Click-through Rate (CTR)
- Ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it.
- Clickbait
- Content, especially that of a sensational or provocative nature, whose main
purpose is to attract attention and draw visitors to a particular web page.
- Content Marketing
- Approach to create/distribute valuable and relevant content to attract and
retain a clearly-defined audience and drive profitable customer action.
- Contextual Marketing
- Model in which people are served with targeted advertising based on terms
they search for or their recent browsing behavior.
- Conversion Rate
- Percentage of users who take a desired action.
- Cost Per Action (CPA)
- Pricing model where the advertiser pays for each specified action. Also ratio of
actions taken of those who click your ad.
- Cost per Lead (CPL)
- Pricing model where the advertiser pays for an explicit sign-up from a
consumer interested in the advertiser’s offer. Also ratio of leads produced of
those who click your ad.
- Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
- The price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one webpage.
- Database Marketing
- A form of direct marketing using databases of customers/potential customers
to generate personalized communications to promote a product or service.
- Direct Response
- Designed to generate an immediate response from consumers, where each
consumer response (and purchase) can be measured and attributed to
individual ads.
- Display Advertising/Display Media
- Advertising on websites, including many different formats such as text, images,
flash, video, and audio.
- Drip Campaign/Marketing
- A communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages
(usually via email) to customers or prospects over time.
- e-Commerce
- Any type of business, or commercial transaction, that involves the transfer of
information across the Internet.
- Effectiveness
- The degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result.
- Email Marketing
- Directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email.
- Engagement
- Often measured by observing and numbering the different consumer
interactions beyond the “traditional” click for a given ad.
- Growth Hacking
- Process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels to identify the
most effective, efficient ways to grow a business.
- Hyperlocal Marketing
- Marketing to a defined local geographic area, usually a small area such as a
region, city, neighborhood, zip code or even a block.
- Inbound Marketing
- Activities that bring visitors in (e.g. providing high quality content), rather than
marketers having to go out to get prospects’ attention.
- KPI (Key Performance Indicators)
- Set of quantifiable measures that a company or industry uses to gauge or
compare performance in terms of meeting their strategic and operational goals.
- Long-tail keywords
- Three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you
are selling.
- Market Research
- Any organized effort to gather information about target markets or customers.
- Market Share
- Percentage of a market (defined in terms of either units or revenue) accounted
for by a specific entity.
- Mobile Optimization
- Process of ensuring that visitors who access your site from mobile devices have
an experience optimized for the device.
- Native Advertising
- Material in an online publication which resembles the publication’s editorial
content but is paid for by an advertiser and intended to promote the advertiser’s
product.
- Native Advertising
- Type of advertising, usually online but feasibly elsewhere, that matches the
form and function of the platform upon which it appears.
- Newsjacking
- The art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story so you
and your ideas get noticed.
- Paid Search/PPC (Pay per click)
- Advertising model used to direct traffic to websites in which an advertiser pays
a publisher when the ad is clicked.
- Paid-Earned-Owned Media
- Refers to company’s media: Paid = ads (e.g. PPC, display ads, social ads);
Earned = sharing (e.g. organic social, shares, reviews); Owned = web properties
(e.g. website, videos, blogs).
- Pre-Roll
- Online video advertisement that plays before the start of a video that has been
selected for viewing.
- Programmatic Advertising
- Typically refers to the use of software to purchase digital advertising, as
opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations and
manual insertion orders.
- Re-targeting/Re-marketing
- Reaching people who have previously visited your website or used your app.
- Relationship Marketing
- A facet of CRM that focuses on customer loyalty and long-term customer
engagement rather than shorter-term goals like customer acquisition and
individual sales.
- Responsive Design
- Web design providing optimal viewing and interaction experience—easy reading
and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a
wide range of devices.
- ROI (Return on Investment)
- Measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the
efficiency of a number of different investments.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Form of online marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing
their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and
advertising.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a
website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a
search engine (SERP).
- Segmenting
- Dividing a target market into subsets that have common needs, interests, and
priorities, and then designing and implementing strategies to target them.
- Social Media Marketing
- Process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.
- Targeting/Target Customer
- A group of customers a business has decided to aim its marketing efforts and
ultimately its merchandise towards.
- Web Analytics
- Measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of
understanding and optimizing web usage.