Online Advertising Glossary

Published: June 7, 2017 at 1:39 pm

Read Time: 355 minutes

Published: Jun 7, 2017, 1:39 pm · 355 min read

Welcome to our Online Advertising Glossary. Use it to cut through the jargon (and keep ahead of the competition).

We’re constantly updating the glossary with basic definitions, as well as more in-depth explorations of digital marketing terms. However, if there is something you need to know about urgently (or if you think there is anything important missing), please get in touch to let us know.

Please note: The below contains terms related to digital marketing, as well as acronyms, abbreviations, and synonyms.

% Search Exits

In Google Analytics Internal Search report, this is the percent of sessions where someone left immediately after searching (without viewing any search results). The higher this is, the more negative it is.

% Search Refinements

In Google Analytics Internal Search report, this is the percentage of searches where someone searched again immediately after searching.

This implies that their first search was not successful. Therefore this measure implies that the higher % Search Refinements is, the worse organised search results are.

120×60

What is a 120×60?

The 120×60 ad unit is an IAB standard ad unit with dimensions of 120 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall.

This ad size is known as a button, along with the now-defunct 125×125 ad unit. A 120×60 ad unit is most commonly used on listing sites for freemium listings. They are also seen littered across the internet, placed in any spare gap on many websites, although this is not recommended.

120x60s generally do not cost much, as they do not perform very well. They are mostly ideal for co-branding exercises, where one website associates itself intrinsically with another via the use of a button ad instead of a normal hyperlink.

The button dimensions are 120 x 60 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit.

Note: The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

As you can see – it’s tiny!

120×60 Advice for Site Owners

While it is tempting to try and monetise every spare pixel on your website, 120x60s are not very profitable so should not be crammed into every spare space. If you really want one, having one on each page should be more than enough.

120x60s are useful for freemium listings, as they are something you can give away for free to encourage advertisers to spend with you (“buy a listing and get a free button ad worth xx”). This ad unit takes up little space but can give the impression of added value to people who want a competitive edge on a listings site.

120x60s are also useful for co-branding campaigns. For example, if your site gets its coverage on a certain subject from another site, then using one of these buttons to advertise that is a good idea. It takes up little of your website space and looks more official than a hyperlink.

Tip: CPA deals using buttons are rare, however, if you can get one then this is a good way to cookie your users for post-impression sales.

120×60 Advice for Ad Buyers

Button ads have limited use when advertising yourself. Their best use is for co-branding exercises, but as these are ways of linking the brands of two sites, they should not usually be paid for. They are more for when it is in the best interests of both sites for people to associate them in their minds, so consider 120x60s for friendly collaborations more than commercial ventures.

We would not recommend spending any time or effort creating buttons or buying their ad space.

120×600

The 120×600 ad unit is a now-defunct IAB standard ad unit historically referred to as a skyscraper. The skyscraper size was 120 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall. The 120×600 skyscraper ad size was retired in 2011 by the IAB.

The skyscraper ad size has now been changed to 160×600 (which is sometimes called a super-skyscraper or wide-skyscraper). The skyscraper size was changed due to the consistently bad performance of the 120×600 (due to being very small compared with the 160×600).

Whatever the skyscraper dimensions, it is generally placed on the side of a page so as to show to users an ad as they scroll down the page. This makes a skyscraper ad (of both types) somewhat immune to demands for above the fold placements.

This skyscraper ad size however still remains somewhat frequently in use so should not be ignored. It is now more commonly served through a multi-size ad slot with a 160×600 ad unit so that either ad size can appear in the same ad slot. Both the skyscraper dimensions of 120×600 and 160×600 are less popular than 728x90s or 300x250s, yet should still be placed on every page of a site for incremental revenue.

The Skyscraper dimensions are 120 x 600 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit.

The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show. A 120×450 ad unit might also load, which is over two thirds the length of a normal skyscraper.

You can generally expect a quite low CPM for this ad unit. However, it should not be rejected outright due to how common it still is. Add it to a multi-sized ad tag with a 120×450, 160×600 or 300×600 for incremental revenue.

This ad slot is often difficult to fill (whether using a 120×600 or 160×600) due to lack of demand, so having both options available is the best choice. Placing CPA adverts in the skyscraper slot is a good idea, as they will ensure your users have cookies in place for post-impression sales.

We would not recommend using a 120×600 when building your own advertising. Salespeople will often try and convince ad buyers that this unit is good because it remains on a users page for longer. However, the performance does not support this view.

If the cost to you is minimal to create a 120×600 then we always recommend testing everything. You should find your own advertising sweet spot! In general, we wouldn’t expect this ad size to be a winner though.

125×125

The 125×125 ad unit is a now-defunct IAB standard ad unit with the dimensions of 125 pixels wide by 125 pixels tall. The 125×125 was retired in 2011 by the IAB.

This ad size was referred to as a Button, along with the 120×60. It was retired due to a lack of prevalence in the marketplace, however, it was mainly used on listings sites in the past and it continues to be used by them now.

A 125×125 ad unit is most commonly used for freemium listings, and in our opinion looks slightly better than the other Button ad (the 120×60).

125x125s generally do not cost much, as they do not perform very well. However, as they are less prevalent than even the 120×60 ad unit, they are not really very useful at all any more to anyone except freemium listing sites.

The Tile ad unit dimensions are 125 x 125 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

While 125x125s look slightly better than 120x60s, these ads are not recommended to anyone. The only exception to this recommendation is to listings sites which are currently using them, as changing to 120x60s might confuse and irritate your advertising base.

125x125s are only really useful for freemium listings, as they are something you can give away without much cost to you as added value. We would recommend using 120x60s if you are going to go down this path as both units are about equal in their (lack of) value, but 120x60s take less space.

Outside of listing sites, this ad unit generally looks out of place or that it is part of an affiliate link. Either way is not great for your site, so they should be ignored.

Button ad units are not common outside of listing sites, so any other type of site using them probably doesn’t know what it’s doing and should be avoided.

If you have a choice between this ad unit and a 120×60, we would recommend this one as it is slightly larger. However, as 120x60s are much more prevalent, if you are not buying specific ad space, we would recommend creating 120x60s above this ad unit.

We would not recommend either type of button to ad buyers in general.

160×600

The 160×600 ad size is an IAB standard ad unit with dimensions of 160 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall. This ad size is known as a skyscraper ad, a super skyscraper or sometimes a wide skyscraper.

The 160×600 ad size is generally placed on the side of a page, so as to show users an ad as they scroll down the page. This makes skyscrapers (of both types) somewhat immune to demands for above the fold placements.

The 160×600 was brought in to replace the old 120×600 skyscraper ad unit because of its consistently better performance (due to being very large compared with the 120×600). The 120×600 however still remains somewhat frequently in use so should not be ignored.

The 160×600 is still more commonly served through a multi-size ad slot with a 120×600 ad unit so that either ad size can appear in the same ad slot. Both the 120×600 and 160×600 ad slot are less popular than 728x90s or 300x250s, yet should still be placed on every page of a site for incremental revenue.

The super skyscraper dimensions are 160 x 600 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image or 120×600 will show.

You can generally expect a reasonable CPM for this ad unit, however, it will often be lower than the 728×90 or 300×250. If placed aligned with a 300×250 along the right side of a webpage, this ad unit can make up part of a homepage takeover.

We would recommend using when building your own advertising. It will not always be your best performer, however, it does pretty well usually. Salespeople will often try and convince ad buyers that this unit is good because it remains on a user’s page for longer, however, it is not better than a 728×90 or 300×250 in most cases. You should expect to pay slightly less than a 300×250 or 728×90 ad unit for a 160×600.

2nd Order Link

A 2nd Order Link is when you post something (on your blog, social media etc), then someone reads it and links to it from their own site. They are essentially links that you’ve inspired to your site, rather than created and shared yourself.

MPU (300×250)

An MPU is a display ad unit that is 300 pixels wide by 250 pixels tall. It is commonly called a 300×250 or MPU but is also known as a Med Rec, MREC, or Medium Rectangle.

MPUs are the most popular ad unit in online advertising. This is because they typically perform best for advertisers, and therefore earn the most for websites. 300x250s are also highly versatile, being one of the only ad units to look good on both desktop and mobile phone screens. Because of this great performance and versatility you see them all over the web, which increases advertisers’ willingness to invest in them.

This is a real ad. It will refresh every 30 seconds.

Here are some examples of MPUs running on real websites. There is an example of each of the most commonly used placements.

MPU is an acronym, but an odd one as it has a different meaning depending on who you ask. The most common answer nowadays is ‘Mid Page Unit’ but this was not always the case. Unfortunately, the original meaning of MPU is a mystery lost to the ages! However, the different meanings of the acronym each reveal different things about this ad size, and so they are still useful to know:

Mid Page Unit (or very occasionally ‘Mid Position Unit’) is the one you will hear most often. It is called this because MPUs are often used in the middle of long articles – you scroll down and it breaks up the text. This increases the value of having one long page instead of lots of shorter pages. Ads used like this will make/cost less money than their above the fold counterparts.

Multi-Purpose Unit is the second most common explanation of this acronym. It is probably the most accurate, as MPUs are used in so many ways (as opposed to other ad sizes which tend to have only one or two uses). For example: is a rare explanation of this acronym, but one which still comes up. The idea behind it is that an MPU can deliver a message, plus something more. As with ‘Multi-Purpose Unit’, it is simply referring to how useful the MPU size and shape is to launch other units or to contain videos.

Ads perform better when they are above the fold. This means that they are visible onscreen when a webpage first loads. Above the fold is the best position for 300x250s (and all ads) as people will often not scroll down a webpage. By having the 300×250 immediately onscreen it gives this ad unit the most chance of being noticed and engaged with by users. The more frequently an ad is interacted with (and that interaction leads to more valuable goals such as sales), the more valuable that ad is. The fact that an MPU can appear entirely onscreen makes its above the fold placements especially valuable.

An above the fold MPU should ideally be placed in the same position on every page. By doing this it makes them more valuable to advertisers – as then they can then plan how an ad will look on a site. This is especially true when 300x250s are run as part of a Roadblock or Homepage Takeover.

This is because you can generally expect the highest RPM for this ad unit (followed by the 728×90), especially if you position it above the fold. MPUs are widely used and perform well. The fact that so many advertisers use them drives up competition for them and makes them the most essential display advertising size.

They are also exceptionally useful as they will fit in so many places on a website. This means that your design does not have to suffer to accommodate them. In fact, quite the opposite – if you have a long page with no images then an MPU can be used to break up the text and make it more readable.

If you do use a 300×250 within content, make sure to not place them too often. Once every three or four mobile screen heights is ideal. You should also ensure that they only load when on-screen (or almost on screen) so that they don’t slow down your page too much. It should also be noted that this ad unit is often used as part of sponsorships, which are the most valuable type of display advertising.

It is, therefore, also the most expensive. You can use this ad unit for almost anything, however, which makes it a vital part of any display advertising buy. As this unit is so common across the internet, it can be used in both high and low performance placements on the same website.

For example, one website could have: These placements will not perform the same (the first will perform the best). Therefore when buying MPUs check if you can choose ad placement as well as the website they run on. Also, if there are many 300×250’s on the same page make sure that you’re not paying for several of them at the same time (unless that’s your goal of course). Showing your ad 10 times to one person on one page is not nearly as valuable as showing it to ten different people once.

MPUs take up 75,000 pixels of space. This makes them marginally larger than the second most popular ad unit the 728×90 (at 65,520 pixels). They are the second smallest display ad size (out of the 5 most popular ones). While display ad units generally perform better the larger they are, the MPU bucks this trend and generally outperforms its larger counterparts.

MPUs are commonly placed above the fold, meaning that they can be viewed as soon as a page loads. This can either be in the margin of a page or within the content. MPUs can be used for many purposes and can be used to spawn other ad units. For example, if there is a page with an MPU on it, it can be easier technically to launch an overlay from the MPU than directly from the webpage.

300×50

The 300×50 ad unit is an with the dimensions of 300 pixels wide by 50 pixels tall. This ad size is known as a Mobile Banner or Smartphone Banner. It is the little brother of the 320×50, which is known as a Mobile Leaderboard.

A 300×50 ad unit is most commonly used as an ad on mobile phones. They often slide into view as an Anchor Ad on mobile sites, with the ability to close them by sliding back. 300x50s generally do not cost much, as they are so small.

The mobile banner dimensions are 300 x 50 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

A real-world example: A 300×50 isn’t a bad way to monetise mobile inventory on your site. However, it is unlikely to be your largest revenue driver. This is because it is not a very large ad, and cannot contain very interesting messaging. If you receive a good amount of visitors from smartphones it is worth experimenting with adding this ad size to your site.

Give it a few months and see if it makes you any money – and compare that to any loss of visitors you may experience. To avoid annoying your users, it is generally advised to run these ads with a way to close them.

300x50s are one of the smallest ad sizes. They can be effective if used right, and often don’t cost that much to run. They are especially useful as they can hit users at a different point than usual desktop ads. To get the most out of a 300×50, make sure you have a concise message to convey and simple clear graphics. This way you can get your message across in a tiny space.

300×600

The 300×600 ad unit is an IAB standard ad unit with dimensions of 300 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall. 300×600 ads are also known as a Monster MPU, Half Page Unit (HPU) or Filmstrip.

The 300×600 ad can be run in its own ad slot but is more commonly set up as a multi-sized ad slot along with a 300×250. The 300×600 half page unit is a highly successful ad unit in terms of both performance and the eCPM it commands. However, it has not made it onto the standard ad list yet because there are not enough sites that are designed to take it currently (it is on the IAB’s rising star list, however).

The 300×600 ad size is usually placed on the side of a page, in the same place an MPU would be – with the extra height coming from below the 300×250 slot. It can also be run in a 160×600 ad slot with the ad slot expanding left or right to accommodate the HPU.

The Monster MPU, Half Page Unit, or Filmstrip dimensions are 300 x 600 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

You can generally expect a very high CPM for 300×600 ads, more even than a 728×90 or 300×250. This ad unit is rarely used so it is best to have it as part of an expanding multi-sized ad slot with a 300×250. If you are unable to create an expanding ad slot, then it can also be used in a multi-sized ad slot with a 160×600.

If you have a choice about your site’s design then you should leave enough space underneath your 300×250 so that you can deliver this ad into the same ad slot. This ad unit is often used as part of sponsorships, so if used it should be placed on every page.

This ad unit is usually very successful when used well so should be considered. It is however often expensive to purchase ad space in this size compared to other ad units. 300x600s are not very prevalent across the internet, so this ad unit should only be created when there is at least one specific site you intend to run it on. A 300×600 is amongst the largest ad units available, so it should be used for interactive or video ads to get the most out of it.

320×100

The 320×100 ad unit is a top-performing AdSense ad size, which is (surprisingly) not included in the IAB Mobile standard ad units. It has the dimensions of 320 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall. This ad size is known as a Large Mobile Banner and is the big brother of the 320×50 and 300×50 ad units.

A 320×100 ad unit is most commonly used as an ad on smartphones and is the largest of the mobile-specific banner ads.

The large mobile banner dimensions are 320 x 100 pixels. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show. Because AdSense runs this as a multi-sized ad slot, a 320×50 will occasionally appear floating in the space.

A 320×100 is listed as a , so is probably worth trying for websites with a lot of mobile traffic. This fact alone means it should certainly be implemented instead of the smaller 320×50 if possible. It is unlikely to be an especially strong revenue driver as it is not a very large ad. This is because larger ads perform better than small ones.

It is potentially a good way to monetise mobile ad impressions, however. These ads are often run as “Anchor units”. This means they float on top of the webpage at the bottom of the screen. If you implement this sort of ad, make sure there is an easy way to close the anchor unit. If you don’t then you risk overly annoying your users.

320x100s are small ad sizes, but the largest available mobile-specific banner. This makes it likely more effective than other mobile banners, but that effectiveness likely comes at a price. If you are able to buy this ad size at a price that ensures you a positive ROI, then we highly recommend it. If not, then perhaps just stick to 300x250s, which can run both on mobile and desktop devices. To get the most out of a 320×100 you have to make the best use of the small space available to you. This means having a very concise message and call to action, which can fit in the space.

320×480

The 320×480 ad unit is a mobile ad with dimensions of 320 pixels wide by 480 pixels tall. This ad size is known as a Mobile Interstitial. It is generally pretty effective but also pretty annoying. This ad size is intended to be a full-screen ad on smartphones.

The mobile interstitial dimensions are 320 x 480 pixels. Below is an example of this ad unit. that the close button is not on the ad itself but on the background.

The ad size should have been updated as screen sizes grew. However, it persists. This is primarily because 320×480 is still the default setting in many places (such as Google Ad Exchange) when people are trying to build mobile interstitial ads. To make this work, most ad platforms black out the screen behind the ad unit, keeping it as a full-screen ad unit regardless of the screen size.

This ad size is also named incorrectly. It is called a Mobile Interstitial. However, Interstitial technically means an ad that appears between two pages. This means this ad loads when you click a link instead of loading the next page. In online advertising, interstitial is generally used interchangeably with overlay (or floater) to mean an ad that loads on top of the content (but within the same browser window). Most of the time, you will see this ad as an overlay instead of a true interstitial.

If you get a lot of visitors to your site via mobile, you should consider running this ad size. However, as with all overlay ads, you should limit the number of times any user sees this type of ad. This is because they are quite annoying to your visitors. The more often a user has their visit interrupted by an ad type like this: This goal is always to build a large and loyal user base, so annoying them is a mistake. This ad type should be used sparsely, if at all. I would recommend avoiding them. Growth should be your goal.

If you have a large established site, you could consider using them occasionally (once per hour per user). Keep in mind that scarcity drives up prices, so running more of these ads will only get you more money in the short term. Once you run them all the time for a while, their price will drop steeply, and you’ll have to start running a new, more annoying ad type.

320×480 is a good ad size if you can find a site that serves it. This is because they are larger than the most successful ad unit – the 300×250. The general rule of thumb is the larger the ad size, the better the performance. They are also better designed to fit a mobile screen and, as an overlay, will generally perform well. Make sure to include an easy-to-use close button, as accidental clicks from badly designed ads aren’t really worth anything to advertisers. People will click away, but those clicks may still cost you money and give the algorithm bad signals about who is interested in your ad. Also, as noted above, some ad platforms will build a close button on the background (which they will black out while your ad serves). Check before building your ad.

320×50

The 320×50 ad unit is an with the dimensions of 320 pixels wide by 50 pixels tall. This ad size is known as a Mobile Leaderboard or Smartphone Leaderboard. It is the big brother of the 300×50, which is known as a Mobile Banner. A 320×50 ad unit is most commonly used as an ad on mobile phones. It is listed as one of the top performers on AdSense.

The mobile leaderboard dimensions are 320 x 50 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

A 320×50 is listed as a , so is definitely worth a shot for new websites. This fact alone means it should certainly be implemented instead of the smaller 300×50 if possible. It is unlikely to be your largest revenue driver as it is not a very large ad. It is however a very good way to monetise mobile ad impressions. To avoid annoying your users, it is generally advised to run these ads with a way to close them. On Google AdSense, they are set as Anchor ads – meaning they slide into view at the bottom of the page, and can’t be swiped away.

320x50s are one of the smallest ad sizes. They can be effective if used right, and often don’t cost that much to run. They are especially useful as they can hit users at a different point than usual desktop ads, and as they are accepted by AdSense there is plenty of inventory available. To get the most out of a 320×50, make sure you have a concise message to convey and simple clear graphics. This way you can get your message across in a tiny space.

336×280

The 336×280 is an ad unit that has been delisted by the IAB. It has dimensions of 336 pixels wide by 280 pixels tall. 336×280 ads are also known as a Large Rectangle (or LREC). As the name implies, it is essentially the big brother to 300×250 (or Medium Rectangle) ad unit. The 336×280 ad can be run in its own ad slot but is more commonly set up as a multi-sized ad slot along with a 300×250.

The 336×280 large rectangle is a highly successful ad unit on . This is both in terms of performance and the eCPM it commands. However, it is not very common on other ad networks. This is why it was in 2011 in favour of the 300×250 ad unit. An LREC is usually placed on the side of content, in the same place an MPU would be. When no Large Rectangle is available to deliver, AdSense will show a centred 300×250 instead.

The LREC dimensions are 336 x 280 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

If you are using AdSense as your Ad Network, you can generally expect a very high CPM for 336×280 ads, but perhaps less than a 300×250. However as 300x250s can appear within this space, if your site looks good with this ad size it is probably worth pursuing.

This ad unit is rarely used outside of AdSense. This means if you are selling ads to multiple ad networks this ad size might cause you problems. The best way to manage this is to make sure your 336×280 ad slot is used as a multi-sized ad slot with a 300×250 so you don’t have to worry about editing your site. As this ad unit is the same aspect ratio as the very popular 300×250, it wouldn’t be surprising if it made a comeback in the coming years, as increasing screen resolutions will once again mean old sizes seem smaller.

This ad unit is usually very successful when used well so should be considered for an ad buy. It is often reasonably priced as there is sometimes less competition for this ad size. However, in many cases, you can expect to pay the same CPM or CPC as an MPU, as that is what you will ultimately be competing with.

As this ad size has the same aspect ratio as a 300×250, it should be very easy to design. If you are already creating an MPU, it can simply be scaled up. This makes the costs for creating this extra ad unit as minimal as can be.

336x280s are not very prevalent across the internet. This means this ad unit should usually only be created when there is at least one specific placement you intend to run it on. A 336×280 is essentially a large MPU, so it should be used for interactive or video ads to get the most out of it.

468×60

The 468×60 ad unit is a now-defunct IAB standard ad unit with the dimensions of 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall. The 468×60 was retired in 2011 by the IAB. This ad size is confusingly called a banner, which likely stems from it being one of the first ad units, and therefore the show pony of “banner advertising”.

This ad unit was previously generally placed at the top of a page, in the spot currently occupied by leaderboards. It is often used twice on a page, with two banner ads appearing side by side to span the width of the page.

The unit was retired because of its consistently bad performance (due to being too small), yet still remains used somewhat frequently so should not be ignored. It is now most commonly served through a multi-size ad slot with a 728×90 ad unit.

The banner dimensions are 468 x 60 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

A 468×60 is one of the lowest-performing and paying ad units available, so it is not recommended. As much of the advertising industry still creates these units as standard, it should be not be ignored altogether. Place a 468×60 on the bottom of each page for incremental revenue.

The 468×60 as a unit generally performs comparatively badly, so it is not recommended. Due to the small area of the ad, you should only ever create them when you have a very simple message that can fit the space. Many older small sites will still have these ad slots available as their main advertising slots, so occasionally you will have no choice but to use them. If you can buy inventory cheaply for the 468×60, and have one available for use then it might be worthwhile, but watch your ROI.

728×90 (Leaderboard)

A leaderboard is a display ad unit that is 728 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall. It is commonly called a 728×90 or Leaderboard, but can also be referred to as a Leaderboard Banner or Super Banner. A 728×90 ad is usually placed at the top of a webpage so that it will be seen immediately when the page loads. Leaderboard ads are considered to be the second-best ad size (after ) as they generally perform well and are incredibly common.

Here are some examples of Leaderboards running on real websites. Leaderboards are almost always used at the top of webpages. However, we have also included examples of some of the other most commonly used placements for this ad size.

When leaderboard ads appear at the top of webpages it creates the maximum likelihood that it will be seen (and therefore clicked on). Being onscreen when a page first loads are referred to as being “above the fold”. Above the fold ads are the most sought after by advertisers (as they perform best). This is what makes leaderboard ads so popular and profitable.

As shown above, some sites place 728x90s within content or at the bottom of webpages. These placements are both far less likely to be seen by users and so will earn less than top of screen leaderboards.

728×90 ads are also sometimes used as sticky anchor ads (meaning they stay on screen as you scroll). In the opinion of , these are more annoying than they are worth. Large sticky ads may earn a reasonable RPM, but they will also drive away some users who become annoyed by them. Having more people visit your website will always earn you more money than showing an individual visitor more ads.

They fit into the top of webpages so easily and are so prevalent across the internet that they should be used on every page. A leaderboard at the top of a webpage is unobtrusive and will still earn you good money.

As they are so successful, it can be tempting to place one of these ad units at the top and bottom of every page. However, only the above the fold ad unit will earn much money. This is because it is sure to be seen by everyone who visits your webpage. Meanwhile, ads at the bottom of pages are rarely viewed (or clicked on).

We recommend including a leaderboard at the top of webpages. However, if you do use multiple leaderboards on one page, ensure that you are able to differentiate between them when selling advertising space. This is to ensure that you can better monetize the top slot. You can usually do this by labelling the individual placements in your ad platform (you may also need to use different ad tags for each placement).

It is likely to be amongst the most expensive ad units, but it is generally worth it due to its solid performance. This ad unit is generally placed at the top of the page and so is the first thing a user will see. This gives these ad units a natural boost to their potential performance.

However, sites sometimes also put a second 728×90 at the bottom of a page. You should therefore always check that you are able to buy the above the fold version (to the exclusion of the bottom of the page leaderboard).

When designing leaderboard ads, keep in mind that they are long and thin. This makes them good for lines of text, but less useful for images. Consider focussing on a small image and your logo along with your ad copy.

You should also consider that the placement at the top of pages for a 728×90 means your ads will be closer to the logo of the site it is on than other ads. This makes it especially important to consider where your ads run. By having your ad close to another companies logo, you run the risk of another companies brand values getting mixed up with yours. Of course, this can also be of great benefit if you choose your ad placements and design your ads carefully.

Leaderboards take up 65,520 pixels of space. This makes it the smallest of the five top display ad sizes. In general, the larger the display ad unit, the better it performs. However, both the Leaderboard and MPU buck this trend and generally outperform their larger counterparts.

Leaderboard ads replaced the old smaller 468×60 banner ad on almost every website. This replacement process took years, but 468×60 ads are now only rarely seen. Similarly, billboard ads are often now replacing 728x90s on websites as they can earn more money.

Like 468×60 ads before them, leaderboards have not disappeared all at once though and are still used frequently. Unlike 468×60 ads, leaderboard ads still perform very well and have use cases that 970×250 ads cannot fill – so they are likely to stick around for quite a while.

A leaderboard ad is especially good for expandable ads. Their usual top-middle positioning on a website means that they can expand in a practical (and eye-pleasing) manner. Not all websites run expandable ads so ad specs can vary greatly for them. 728x90s typically expand straight down (once clicked), however, and expand between 300 – 800 pixels.

Leaderboards are also often used when other bits of advertising code (such as tracking or overlays/floaters) need to piggyback onto a page, as they generally load first. Because of both of these reasons, Leaderboards should never be placed within an iframe. They should also have a z-index of 999,999,998 (with only overlays/floaters appearing on top of it).

728×90s are one of the horizontal ad units. They can share ad space with any other horizontal ad unit, including a 468×60, 970×90, 970×250, or even a 320×50 or 320×100. It is important that you do not try to combine all of these into one ad space as they will look strange. A tiny ad floating in a massive space will not perform well. If you want to use a 728×90 in a multi-sized ad slot, try to follow these rules:

For a 728×90 and 468×60 combo: This works best in a placement where the 728×90 breaks up content. It is the only combo where you could consider adding a 320×50 or 320×100 into the mix.
For a 728×90 and 970×90 combo: This works best when the leaderboard is floating in 970×90 space with nothing on either side. This combo increases competition for this ad space, increasing its value.
For a 728×90 and 970×250 combo: This works best when floating in an ample designated space (this combo can include 970x90s too). As a 970×250 is so much larger than a 728×90 it can look odd if not designed well.

970×250

The 970×250 is an ad unit which was listed as a Rising Star by the IAB . It has dimensions of 970 pixels wide by 250 pixels tall. 970×250 ads are also known as a Billboards. It is usually used as a type of Pushdown ad. Despite being designated a Rising Star in 2011, the 970×250 ad is pretty rare across the internet. Larger sites often use them to great effect as part of sponsorship deals.

Billboards are sometimes used as regular ad units. They are intended however to go across the top of a site when it first loads, pushing down the content. Ad units which do this are referred to as “Pushdown Ads” and come in many sizes, but Billboards are the most common. Pushdown ad units are essentially a type of overlay.

Pushdown Billboard ads should be entirely closeable via a “Close X” button, leaving only a “Show Ad” button remaining that will expand again when clicked. This is up to the individual publisher, however. Alternately these ads often auto-close after 30 seconds instead.

Publishers often request that 970×250 ads have a 1-pixel black border around them to emphasise the fact that they are an advert. This is not common practice with other ad sizes. As Billboards appear where users would typically expect to see the logo of a site, this demarcation actually decreases bounce rates and reassures users.

Here is a real-world example of a 970×250 being used as a pushdown:

This Billboard ad has pushed down the “Campaign” logo and menu below it down (they would usually be at the top of the screen. In this particular example:

The billboard dimensions are 970 x 250 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit.

Note: The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image will show.

970×250 Advice for Site Owners

If you have a good sales and technical team (whether in-house or at your ad network), Billboard ads can be a great money generator. This, of course, means that they are generally only very useful for larger sites.

A sales team is needed as this ad unit should only be sold for a high CPM or CPD. It is quite an invasive ad unit that should generate good results, and so is worth more than smaller/simpler ads.

A good technical team is needed as Billboards push down the top of a site. This high level of complexity creates a high likelihood of problems arising. Due to this, it’s extra important to get ad tags or assets a few days earlier for testing.

Billboards are generally used as part of sponsorships or homepage takeovers, as they are a high impact unit. Due to this, they should generally only be used on one page of a site at a time (ie the homepage), or at least have a 1/24 frequency cap in place. This is in order to not annoy users.

If you are considering adding more complicated (and expensive) ad units to your site, this is quite a good option. Although not incredibly common, it is one of the more prevalent non-standard ad sizes and so more advertisers will be comfortable buying them.

Note: As it is a very large ad size, they are only available on desktop screens. This means they are not a good option for websites that get most of their traffic from mobile devices.

970×250 Advice for Ad Buyers

Billboard ad units are estimated to only be on about 2% of sites, so this is not usually an ad unit that makes sense for large scale purchases. It is however often used by large and high-quality sites, so can be worth the investment if you are able to create a great ad.

They are also often very expensive – with CPMs hitting between £15-£30. However, the stats for it are pretty great compared to IAB Standard Ads:

Approximately 30% longer viewing time
Approximately 2.5 times higher engagement rate
As they are at the top of the page, they also have an exceptionally high viewability rate

Therefore if you have an excellent creative team or agency and deep pockets it can be a good investment. They work especially well as part of sponsorship or homepage takeover deals.

970×90

What is a Super Leaderboard?

The 970×90 is an ad unit that is one of the IABs new ad portfolio and was listed as Rising Star by the IAB. It has dimensions of 970 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall. 970×90 ads are also known as a Super Leaderboards. It is sometimes used as a type of Pushdown ad. Despite being designated as an IAB Standard Ad, the 970×90 ad is pretty rare across the internet. It was intended to upgrade the 728×90, in the same way that the 300×600 was meant to replace the 300×250. However, while it does offer more space it never became that popular.

Technical Information

Super Leaderboards are generally used as regular ad units in multi-sized ad slots. They can also be used as Pushdown ad units. This means the 970×90 appears across the top of a site when it first loads, pushing down the content. The larger 970×250 Billboard unit is generally used for this however as it is a much more successful ad unit. Pushdown Super Leaderboard ads should be entirely closeable via a “”Close X”” button, leaving only a “”Show Ad”” button remaining that will expand again when clicked. This is up to the individual publisher, however. Alternately these ads often auto-close after 30 seconds instead. Pushdown Example This is how Pushdown Super Leaderboard ad looks:

This Super Leaderboard ad for MailChimp (which is a great service by the way) runs in a multi-sized ad slot in the middle of the page. It shares a space with 728x90s as well as 970x250s.

Live Example The super leaderboard dimensions are 970 x 90 pixels. Below is a live example of this ad unit. Note: The live ad may not always load for technical reasons, and instead a backup image, or possible a 728×90 will show.

970×90 Advice for Site Owners

The 970×90 is around 30% wider than a 728×90 and can be used to great effect across the whole top of a site. However as they never really caught on, it’s best to use them as a multi-sized ad unit as in the example above. They are unlikely to earn a lot of money on their own, even as a pushdown unit. By allowing them as part of a package of ads, you should be able to more effectively monetise your site. Note: As it is a very large ad size, they are only available on desktop screens. This means they are not a good option for websites which get most of their traffic from mobile devices.

970×90 Advice for Ad Buyers

A 970×90 can be quite visually arresting as it is such a long ad unit. If you have something to advertise which fits this format (especially something which can be split into three) then it may be the best ad unit for you. As it is not very common outside of multi-sized ad units, it is also not very expensive. You should expect to pay about the same as with a 728×90 for it, which makes it a bargain in some ways as it is a bigger ad unit. It may also break through banner blindness as people are not used to seeing ad units of this size. If your ad creation budget is limited, then the 970×90 is a luxury that probably doesn’t make sense. However, if you have the time and money to add the super banner to a set of ads you create, it has the potential to perform better and at a reasonable price point.

A/B Testing

A/B Testing (or split testing) is where you show two different variants of something (an ad or webpage for example) to similar groups of people to see which one performs better.

A2A

An acronym for Ask to Answer. On Quora users can request answers to questions from specific users (or categories of people). Their responses will frequently be marked with A2A at the top.

Abandoned Cart

When someone adds something to their shopping cart on a website that sells things but then doesn’t complete the purchase. It can be useful to track abandoned carts. This is because if there are a lot of them it might indicate:

a problem with the checkout process
that people are webrooming
that people are looking for (and finding) the same product(s) at a lower price elsewhere

Many websites email shoppers who have abandoned a cart. However, this type of email is only allowed if the shopper has already logged in (and allowed this sort of email). Abandoned Cart Emails are generally exceptionally effective at driving conversions.

Abandoned Cart Email

An Abandoned Cart Email is an email sent to people who started adding things to their shopping cart on an eCommerce site but then left without completing their purchases. The main idea of these emails is to encourage people to complete the purchases they have already started. Even if this initial set of reminder emails don’t work, then a list of people who abandoned their shopping cart before purchasing is still very valuable. This because these people have demonstrated that they are interested in making a purchase from that specific site, thereby demonstrating that they are at least a potential customer. These types of emails often have very high conversion rates, as they are being sent to such soft targets.

However unless someone has already signed in, the identity of people who have abandoned their shopping cart often remains hidden. On top of this, the legality of these emails is questionable – especially in the European Union under GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations), as the user has not given permission to be emailed. Both of these problems can be circumvented by re-targeting people who didn’t complete their purchases with display advertising. However, this type of behavioural targeting is considered the most annoying type of advertising.

Above The Fold

What does Above The Fold mean?

Above The Fold in online advertising (or ATF) refers to the viewable space on a webpage when it first loads. It is a term taken from print media. The “fold” used to mean the literal fold in a newspaper, but on a computer has come to mean the bottom of a user’s screen before scrolling down. The reason the same term is used is that these spaces both have the same effect. Whether in a newspaper or on a computer screen, whatever is above the fold is seen first by customers.

Being seen more means that Above The Fold ads are more likely to be interacted with. This is why so many ad buyers will insist their ads are Above The Fold. This increase in demand also means these ads can receive a higher CPM than Below The Fold (BTF) ads.

These ads have become so popular, that a new type of Ad Pricing Model has evolved around it — CPVM (which means Cost Per Viewable Thousand Impressions). A Viewable Impression is a term that is still being defined but is generally accepted to mean an ad that appears more than 50% on-screen for at least one second.

As many users will leave a page without interacting at all, ads that are Above The Fold are the only ones that are guaranteed to be Viewed Impressions. This is likely to have a significant effect on web design in the coming years.

Work out the VR of your website with our Viewability Rate Calculator >

Top Tip

Viewability Rate is another informative, but distracting metric. While ATF inventory generally performs better, if you are running an ad campaign keep in mind that actual results count the most.

Other names for Above The Fold (synonyms)

ATF

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Below The Fold, BTF

Not to be confused with

Above The Line, ATL

Above The Line

What does Above The Line mean?

Above The Line (or ATL) refers to conventional marketing techniques using mass media such as TV, Radio, Billboards or the Internet. The term “The Line” came from a specific ad campaign. Back in 1954 Proctor and Gamble apparently paid different rates for different marketing techniques, and so “The Line” would have been an actual line in their accounting ledger.

We think it’s practical to think of “The Line” as being the moral line between obvious and not so obvious advertising. It’s a moral line, as people generally don’t like to be sold to without realising it. “The Line” should also be thought of as being between mass media and one-on-one communications. These are the ways these terms are used most often when being discussed with regard to online advertising.

It is actually often argued that in the days of online advertising the terms Above The Line and Below The Line have lost their meaning (leading to the use of the term “Through The Line” which means both methods). However, the distinctions still stand if you consider it as a moral/mass media “line”.

Display Advertising and Video Advertising still count as Above The Line, whereas Native Advertising, Email Marketing and possibly Lead Generation still count as Below The Line. There is no precise definition as of yet, but this is a reasonable description of the terms general usage.

Other names for Above The Line (synonyms)

ATL

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Below The Line, BTL

Not to be confused with

Above The Fold, ATF, Atlanta

ACCA

ACCA stands for Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction and Action and is a type of marketing strategy used in DAGMAR. The idea is that you create awareness of a brand, increase comprehension of the product, convince them that they need it, and then persuade people to make a purchase (or take an action).

Accelerated Delivery

In ad platforms, this is an option to specify that ads should be delivered as soon as possible. For example, a campaign scheduled for a week with a £1,000 budget could deliver in a single day if this option was chosen.

Acceptable Ads

Acceptable Ads is a set of criteria for placing ads on a website. It was created by the parent company of AdBlock Plus, and is a set of standards that are intended to stop ads from being intrusive and annoying. The point is that if websites live up to this standard then ad blockers may not block ads on them. There are three main parts to the standard:

Ads should not appear within the main content of a page. They are only allowed to appear above or beside content.
Ads should be marked as ads (by having “”Advertisement”” or equivalent written next to them).
Ads must not be too large or take up too high a percentage of the screen.
1. This means ads should take up less than 15% above the fold, and less than 25% below the fold (these are easy to follow)
2. Ads above content can’t be more than 200px tall (this means you should use a 728×90 and not a 970×250)
3. Ads beside content can’t be more than 350px wide (which no standard ads are)
4. Ads below content can’t be more than 400px tall (you shouldn’t put ads below content anyway as they perform badly).

You can find out more about the rest of the Acceptable Ads criteria here.

Should I Join Acceptable Ads?

The Acceptable Ads standard is not that tough to meet, so there is little reason to avoid it. You want your users to have a good time on your site and you don’t want your ads to be blocked, so following these guidelines is not a bad idea. However, in terms of Acceptable Ads itself, there is not a lot of reason to recommend them. If you do follow this standard then by all means join up.

Joining Acceptable Ads is free to publishers with less than 10 million monthly ad impressions. However, you should know that AdBlock Plus users can still choose to block your ads, and other ad blockers aren’t necessarily part of this scheme. In fact, other ad blockers make a big deal about how AdBlock Plus lets through some ads but they don’t.

I’ve also not found any stats to say why this scheme is a good idea. There have been no reports released saying how much extra money sites have made since joining this scheme. This is unsurprising, as an ad-blocking company doesn’t want to talk about how many ads they haven’t blocked, but it’s still not a ringing endorsement.

While I don’t think you will lose money from not using the ad placements they mention, there are setup costs to consider. You may need to go back and mark all your ads with “advertisement” or remove them from your content. The time it takes to do this can be considerable depending on your setup and shouldn’t be discounted.

Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a highly-tailored marketing strategy that targets a specific business. It is usually used by B2B businesses in order to win new high-value accounts, or to increase the business they are already receiving from a high-value customer. ABM means customizing a marketing campaign based on specific characteristics and needs of a target account in order to maximize engagement and drive the highest return from the business.

Account-Based Marketing Example

Imagine your target account is a telecommunication company and you know that their CEO is a huge fan of cheese. You could customize your marketing campaign to mention cheese or be featured on famous cheese websites in order to increase your chances of being seen and approved of by the CEO. The intention is that you would do this while still staying aligned with your campaign objectives.

Why is ABM Important?

Account-Based Marketing is important for B2B companies that have large deal sizes and long sales cycles. ABM is an effective methodology as its approach is designed based on the unique needs and desires of the decision-makers within an organization. In turn, it provides a higher ROI than other marketing approaches. The benefits of ABM are as follow:

Customized Marketing Approach

With the ABM approach, marketers personalize and tailor campaign messages for each target account based on their specific needs and attributes. As a result, this approach generates more engagements and lead conversions.

Alignment of Sales and Marketing

Using Account-Based Marketing, sales and marketing teams can work together to create campaigns that are personalized for the prospects and lead them through the stages in the sales cycle.

Shorter Sales Cycle

The generic B2B marketing approach usually starts with a lower level in an organization and moves towards the main decision-maker. With Account-Based Marketing, the sales cycle is shortened as the decision-makers are all targeted together.

Higher ROI

ABM is known to deliver the highest ROI compared to all other B2B marketing approaches. According to research conducted by ITSMA, 87% of marketers reported seeing a higher ROI with ABM than any other types of marketing.

Efficient Use of Resources

With ABM, companies can save time and resources by focusing narrowly on potential accounts, and therefore, fewer resources are wasted.

5 Key Steps to Implement ABM

ABM is an effective B2B marketing approach that drives the highest return. In order to implement this strategy, follow the key steps below:

Identify your target account.
Conduct the research needed on those target accounts. Some helpful types of research include:
- Market Research: industry, competitors, trends.
- Company: financials, SWOT, culture.
- People: key players, management, buying power.
- Relationship: organizational structure, reporting teams.
Create a customized campaign for the target accounts.
Run the customized campaign.
Measure and evaluate your campaign.

Acquisition

In online advertising, an acquisition means a purchase. It is most commonly used as the A in CPA – which stand for Cost Per Acquisition.

Active Moderation

When a moderator is reading the majority of posts or comments on a website or social network to check for legal infringements (or breaches of Terms of Service).

Active View

Active View is how Google AdSense measures Viewable Impressions. An Active View Viewable Impression is one that appeared at least 50% onscreen for at least one second.

Ad Agency

What is an Ad Agency?

An Ad Agency is a company that handles other companies marketing work, including negotiating with Ad Networks and allocating marketing budgets.

Ad Agency is a broad term so Ad Agencies don’t all do the same thing, but in general, they can create, plan and handle all marketing opportunities across a variety of marketing channels.This is often both convenient and cost-effective as Ad Agencies will not only save on overheads of employing staff but will also often be able to negotiate lower prices than individual companies when buying ad space. This is because their overall budgets (across clients) are much bigger, so they have a lot more bargaining power.

Many companies will start off having their own in-house marketing team when they are small, then branch out to an Ad Agency when they are larger, and then when they are massive have an in-house marketing team to manage their ad agencies.

It should be noted that when dealing with Ad Agencies it is important to review their performance independently, as they literally employ people who are professionals at convincing people that what they say is true (marketers!). Always keep in mind what your goal is, and check their performance against that target.

Other names for Ad Agency (synonyms)

Advertising Agency, Marketing Agency, Creative Agency (just does design work)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

In-House Marketing Team (sort-of)

Not to be confused with

Ad Network”

Ad Blocker

An ad blocker is a piece of software that stops adverts from being shown on websites in a users browser.

Ad Blocking

Ad blocking is the process of blocking ads from appearing in a users browser, usually using an ad blocker.

Ad Bundle

An Ad Bundle is a popular advertising concept in Germany that refers to buying all ad units necessary at once to advertise on any ad screen. This typically includes a 728×90, 160×600, 300×250 and a mobile banner (either a 300×50 or a 320×50). By buying all these ad units together at once, an advertiser can advertise on sites whether they are viewed on Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile phone screens.

Ad Buy

An ad buy is a block of ads being purchased for one purpose.

Ad Buyer

Ad Buyer is a job in online advertising, which refers to someone who negotiates the price of adverts, often for an Ad Agency. An Ad Buyer is also often used as the generic term for an advertiser.

Ad Call

What does Ad Call / Ad Request mean?

An Ad Call or Ad Request occurs when one computer requests an ad from another (typically an ad exchange or ad server). It is a generic term that refers to the request for an ad. “”Ad call”” is helpful for descriptive purposes but can get messy if you chase down everything it refers to. The process is somewhat reminiscent of the old woman who swallowed a fly.

What is an Ad Call?

When you load a webpage on your computer, your computer asks a server to send it the webpage, including the ads on it. Each advertisement on the page is ‘called’, and each ad that fully loads counts as one ad impression.

The actual webpage on the server can also be said to make ad calls. This is because the ads aren’t usually part of the webpage. They are stored elsewhere, which is why they are different every time you load them. What happens is your computer asks the server to see the webpage. Once the webpage is loading, it ‘calls’ the ads from another server. This then sends the ads to your computer to be part of the webpage.

If the website uses an ad server, that is what makes the Ad Call. So your computer asks the server for the webpage, the webpage asks the ad server for the ads, and the ad server makes an ad call and sends them back down the line.

Of course, an ad server is generally used to manage ads from many different places, so it could also ask another server/vendor/platform (some sort of computer) for the ad, which would be the actual original ad call when you load a webpage.

Any of these actions can (and are) referred to as ad calls, and it’s a convenient way to refer to the action. It would usually be said either in terms of statistics (“”the website made 10,000 ad calls this morning””) or troubleshooting (“”there is a problem with the ad calls on the ad servers end””).

Other names for Ad Call (synonyms)

Ad Request, Ad Impression (sort of: a successful Ad Call = an Ad Impression)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

A Broken Ad Call

Not to be confused with

Call To Action, CTA”

Ad Campaign

An Ad Campaign refers to a set ads which are designed to run together.

Ad Exchange

An Ad Exchange is a type of RTB platform in which websites can both put their ads in to advertise themselves, as well as display ads from others. It’s kind of a combination of an SSP and a DSP.

Ad Extensions

In Google Ads, Ad Extensions are extra bits that can be added to search ads. These include phone numbers, addresses, further site links, calls to action and more. It is highly recommended that these are used to increase the likelihood of ads being clicked on.

Ad Impression

What is an Ad Impression?

An ad impression is one successful ad call – one ad loading on a webpage is one ad impression. This is what is meant most of the time when the word impression is used (including when calculating CPMs), however it is important to differentiate from a page impression, which refers to when the webpage itself loads. Although it is simple enough once you get it, everyone struggles to keep this concept straight to begin with. To illustrate – if there are three ads on one webpage when the whole page loads successfully then that would count as one page impression but three ad impressions. Therefore if you have a website with three ads on every page, and a site that has 10,000 page views per month, you could have up to 30,000 Ad Impressions per month.

Note that you could have up to 30,000, as not every ad will load every time a webpage loads. This could be for many reasons, including:

Users closing or moving away from a page too fast for all the ads to load
Ad blockers
Broken Ad Calls (as in no ad is shown for some reason)

It may sound like these are rare occurrences, but in fact, it is likely up to 30% of potential Ad Impressions will be lost this way. On top of that, it is often likely your fill rate will not be 100% either, so you cannot bank on selling every ad impression you generate.

Other names for Ad Impression (synonyms)

Impression (usually, but not always – it’s what meant most of the time), Ad call (sort of – a successful ad call = an ad impression)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Broken Ad Call (sort of)

Not to be confused with

Page Impression, Viewable Impression

Ad Inventory

A set of ad impressions. For example, the total amount of ad impressions a publisher or network has available (this is usually expressed as a ‘per month’ figure).

Ad Line

Ad Line is a term used to mean one line of detail on either an insertion order or within an ad server. As the information on either is usually displayed in the form of a table, an Ad Line is literally one row of that table and will include a set of targeting details for an ad.

Ad Network

A company that sells advertising space for many websites.

Ad Operations

Ad Operations is a job role devoted to some combination of uploading, troubleshooting, managing, optimising and reporting on advertising campaigns. It is also referred to as Ad Trafficking.

Ad Platform

An Ad Platform is a generic term meaning the product a company uses to serve advertising. For example two of Google’s Ad Platforms are AdSense (which websites use to put ads on their site) and Google Ads (which advertisers use to advertise on).

Ad Pricing Model

An ad pricing model is the way in which an advertiser pays for advertising, such as on a CPM, CPA, CPV, or CPC basis. For example if an advertiser was looking to get people to simply visit their webpage, they would choose a CPC ad campaign – meaning they only pay for clicks on their ad. However if an advertiser wanted to drive sales, they would ideally choose a CPA campaign, where they would only pay if a sale was made after someone saw or clicked on an ad.

Ad Rank

Ad Rank is a metric used by Google to decide the positioning of an ad for different keywords on its search results pages. Using a combination of the relevance of the ad to the keyword,the amount being paid and the quality of the landing page,the Ad Rank of an ad will pretty much determine that ads level of success.

Ad Server

The server which ads get sent to sites from. These are used by Ad Networks as well as Ad Agencies (and sometimes Publishers) to ensure ads are delivered correctly – to the right users, at the right time on the right webpages.

Ad Serving Costs

Ad Serving Costs are any costs accrued from the actual running of an ad. These can include (for example) things like Ad server fees and 3rd party tracking fees. This term does not usually include admin fees (such as paying an ad agency to book ad space). The rule of thumb is that if it costs you more for running more ads, then it counts as an Ad Serving Cost. If it is a flat rate then it is an Ad Serving Fee.

Ad Serving Fees

Ad Serving Fees are charges made for serving ads. These would include upfront fees paid to ad agencies or ad servers for them doing any work at all.

Ad Slot

The space on a webpage where an ad loads. The dimensions are specified as horizontal and then vertical.

Ad Space

A space on a website that is reserved for advertising.

Ad Specs

Ad Specs are the requirements a website/network places on advertisers to allow their ad to run. They will usually include filesize and frame rate.

Ad Tag

An Ad Tag is the piece of code an advertiser gives to a website instead of the actual ads they want to be shown. This code then calls the ad from their ad server. Ad tags usually come as javascript.

Ad Unit

An Ad Unit is the generic term used when talking about a single type of ad.

AdChoices

AdChoices is an advertising industry initiative to ensure that behavioural advertising isn’t rejected by the general public by staying within the law. Ads which are working on a behavioural targeting basis should always have an Ad Choice logo on them,which allows a user to opt-out of the targeting when clicked on.

Added Value

What does Added Value or Value Added mean?

In online advertising, Added Value (or Value Added) refers to extra inventory added to a sale (for free) to sweeten the deal for the buyer. It is a surprisingly common term used to cover any extras a salesperson throws in to close a deal while maintaining the illusion of keeping to a lower price point. For example 10% extra impressions might be added onto a deal as Added Value so the salesperson can claim to have sold at a CPM 10% higher than in reality. This is a strangely legitimate practice. This is often done as compensation for a previous deal that disappointed an advertiser somehow. Also often used to convince an advertiser to take a chance on a publisher or ad network it otherwise wouldn’t consider.

Added Value Advice for Website Owners

Although it can (of course) be a highly effective method of enticing advertisers to buy ad space, it is a slippery slope. Depending on how you run added value impressions, it can increase the likelihood of under-delivery dramatically. The tendency is to run the extra impressions with £0 as their CPM. This is honest, however, it means that most ad servers will favour paid for ad campaigns over value-added impressions. Considering that the whole point of giving inventory away for free is to impress advertisers, this makes no sense. Therefore it is imperative when delivering added value impressions that they are simply added to the main campaign goals. Then give the whole campaign a reduced CPM. This will help your record-keeping as well as your delivery. Just make sure to make a note that you have done this.

Added Value Advice for Ad Buyers

Everyone loves free stuff, but keep your eyes on the prize. Make sure you are only swayed to make a purchase if the extra inventory reduces the eCPM to a price point you are interested in. Similarly, check if the CTR (or other KPI) for the added value inventory is significantly worse than the paid-for inventory. If it is, then it’s not really a good deal for you. In this case, it’s not unreasonable to demand the value-added inventory be re-run so it achieves the same performance as your paid for inventory did.

Other names for Added Value (synonyms)

AV, Make Good (sort of), Value Added

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Recording the true price of inventory (sort of)

Not to be confused with

VAT

Addressable

Addressable refers to the ability to target specific individuals or segments of an audience rather than large anonymous groups. For example, Facebook Ads has an addressable audience, while broadcast television does not.

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash was an animation program that was commonly used for advertising. It was finally retired at end of 2020 for being too resource-intensive and insecure. Before being owned by Adobe, Flash was owned by Macromedia.

ads.txt

Ads.txt is a file that websites can upload which publicly declares which ad companies are authorised to sell inventory on that website. ‘Ads’ is an acronym standing for “”Authorised Digital Sellers”” and .txt is the file type.

AdSense

AdSense is an Ad Platform from Google. It is an easy way to place ads on your site and earn money from online advertising.

Advanced Matching

A feature on Facebook Ads which allows the Facebook Pixel to scan webpages it is on to glean more information about the user of the website (such as information filled in on forms on the website). Facebook Ads will then add this information to the profile they hold about that person so they can more effectively target ads at them. This feature is part of Facebook’s “”Power5″” and was called “”Auto Advanced Matching”” in there. I would not recommend that websites turn it on, as it feels incredibly invasive.

Advergame

An Advergame is a game made by an advertiser. It is a sort of advertisement in that the game will usually be heavily branded, and may even contain offers for the advertiser’s product.

Advertise

To advertise is the process of drawing attention to a something (such as a product, service or company) by paying to have a message (in any format) placed in a public location (whether physical or otherwise). Advertising has three main objectives – to inform, to convince, and to prompt.

Advertiser

An advertiser is a person or company who pays for any form of advertising.

Advertising Rate

Before you can work out how much money your site will make, you have to understand the different types of advertising rates. Unfortunately for you, the advertisers decide the way in which you will be paid for delivering their ads. Although you cannot change how they pay you, it is worth knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each type of advertising rate.

Advertising Rate Advice for Site Owners

Online advertising campaigns pay mainly in one of three ways:

CPM is the best deal for you the publisher. It stands for cost per thousand ad impressions (the M is the roman numeral M which means 1,000). This means that you get paid for every 1,000 times an ad is shown regardless of how it performs. It is the best deal for you because you get paid simply for existing!
CPC (also sometimes called PPC) is the payment type you will mostly receive when your site is new/small. It stands for cost per click which means that you get paid every time someone clicks on your ad. If you have CPC campaigns on your site which perform well, you can earn good money from them. Mostly CPC campaigns are inconsistent as a source of revenue, however, so CPM campaigns should be given preference over them.
CPA is the best deal for the advertiser. It stands for cost per acquisition (or action). This means you get paid if a user buys/does something after seeing/clicking on an ad on your site. It’s very difficult for you to make money out of CPA campaigns unless you have a dedicated team optimising the campaign, so only accept these deals if you have a good ad network in place doing the work (like AdSense for example).

eCPM makes it all make sense

eCPM stands for effective cost per thousand ad impressions. It is the most useful calculation you need to know, as it is the only true measure of how well your ad network is doing for you. It is what the CPM would be if you were paid exclusively on a CPM basis for all your ad campaigns (ie how much is being paid on average for every 1,000 ad impressions from your site). If you are using multiple ad networks (see Advanced Setup) and you want to know which one is performing the best for you, but they are all paying you on a variety of different payment models then you can compare their eCPM. To work out the eCPM you multiply the money you earned by 1,000 and divide that by the number of ad impressions that were used up. If you like equations, here you go: The eCPM equation is basically the same as CPM:

eCPM = (Ad Spend x 1000) ÷ Ad impressions

Top Tips

Out of the three standard ad units – you can usually expect the most out of the 300×250 or the 728×90. Strangely, the internet seems to have several pages on it claiming the 160×600 makes the most money, but this assertion does not seem to be substantiated. When you are a small to medium site. You should hope to be earning about £0.20 – £0.60 eCPM after a month or so. This figure will improve over time as your ad network gets better at selling your site. As each site is different it’s impossible to say how much you will make, so you’ll have to wait and see how much revenue your site can bring in before trying to improve on it. Three months should be enough time to work out your base level of earnings. When you are a large site (over 1,000,000 ad impressions per month) Large sites should get an eCPM of £3-£6 on average. This is for all inventory combined (including that which you don’t sell). It also includes revenue from both brand and remnant networks you are working with. This eCPM range is pretty respectable, although many sites go much higher than this. On top of this, if your site is this large there are many other ways you can make money from it.

Advertorial

Advertorial is a piece of writing made to look like an article, but which is just a written advert. It is distinct from native advertising, in that advertorial is generally marked as such.

Adware

Adware is a type of software that delivers ads onto a computer regardless of an internet connection. Adware is now mostly considered as a sort of virus. Although there are legitimate versions of Adware, most instances involve a program being downloaded without the user’s knowledge and then forces a user to see (dodgy) ads.

AdWords

AdWords is an Ad Platform from Google. It is a place where advertisers can run ad campaigns across Google’s Ad Network in the form of both Search and Display ads. On 24th July 2018, Google AdWords was re-branded to become called Google Ads.

Affiliate Marketing

For websites, affiliate marketing is typically the practice of putting a link to a product or webpage on your site and being paid for each visitor you send to it, or who buys something via that link. Influencers getting a commission for selling products can also be referred to as affiliate marketing.

Age Gate

An Age Gate is a page (sometimes within an advert) that stops a user from continuing until they enter some proof of their age (usually just their date of birth).

Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol

Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol is a change to how conversions are measured by Facebook Ads. Essentially it means that advertisers are limited to tracking a maximum of 8 conversions, and also need to rank them in order of importance. Facebook will then use this ranking to decide how to track conversions from users who opt-out of tracking. If a user who has opted out of Facebook’s tracking makes multiple conversions after clicking on an ad (such as buying something and then signing up for a newsletter), only the highest-ranked conversion will be reported by Facebook. Facebook do this with a solution that they say “”is analogous to Apple’s private click measurement””. This basically means the conversion is tied to the ad, and not the user.

What is Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol?

Apple’s iOS14 was released in late 2020 and came with a raft of new rules for Apps available on Apple devices. This includes a new prompt that all Apps were required to add which allows users to opt-out of data being shared outside of the app and a new tracking framework that apps have to use. Facebook’s response was the Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol (AKA AEM), which is intended to mitigate the effects of this update for users of Facebook Ads.

Aggregated event measurement is a protocol for ad performance measurement which processes web events from opted-out devices to help you run effective ad campaigns while supporting customer choices regarding ad tracking within our Facebook platform. Learn more

The Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol means that all advertisers will now be limited to 8 conversion events. These events will be ordered, and only the top event will be registered by Facebook within the conversion window. Note: Also due to the iOS14 update, Facebook will no longer allow post-view conversions at all. The default post-click conversion window will be 7 days by default. Again in Facebook’s words:

How it works Your domains will be configured with eight events from your existing pixel and Facebook will give your events an initial priority based their historical importance to your business. We’ll apply aggregated event measurement to events for people on iOS 14 devices which will pick the highest priority event to send whenever a customer takes multiple actions during a conversion window. The conversion data will be available for running iOS 14 ad campaigns and for measurement reporting. Learn more

Facebook will initially order your conversion events for you automatically, but you should log in to the Events Manager and order them yourself in order to get the most out of your advertising.

What Does AEM Mean For Your Results?

What this means overall is that there will be less data available to users. If someone who has opted-out on iOS clicks on an ad and completes two conversion events (e.g., buys something and signs up for a newsletter), Facebook will only tell you about one of them.

It will also likely mean that in the short term at least, Facebook’s algorithms won’t work as well as it has less data to work with. This in turn means that results from Facebook ads will get worse. This is doubly true due to the change in conversion windows meaning Facebook will be catching fewer conversions too.

It is important to note however that Facebook recording fewer conversions is not the same as there being fewer conversions. Facebook Ads have always overestimated the number of conversions they cause (as do all ad platforms). Because of this, you should always have a separate system to get your conversion data from, which can track across platforms (such as Google Analytics).

In the long run, we can’t know the effects that Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol will cause. It is very likely that Facebook’s algorithm will catch up and there will be little difference in performance in the long run. It is also likely that the excess of data agreements that users are asked to sign for apps and websites is not sustainable.

I would assume/hope that eventually a different framework of less intrusive tracking will be created so that we don’t have to agree to something every time we visit a website.

What Should You Do To Prepare For Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement Protocol?

If you use Facebook Advertising then there are a few things you should do to minimise the impact on your business.

Firstly, follow Facebook’s advice. Go to Events Manager and verify your domain, and then order your conversion events by their value to you. This will ensure the data you are getting is the highest value, and Facebook’s algorithm will be working towards your most important goals.

If you have an app that uses Facebook SDK for iOS then update to version 8.1 or above as that has iOS14 support.

Other things you might want to do include:

Inform anyone in your business who looks at Facebook Ad Manager that results are likely going to get worse in the short term because the algorithm is going to need time to adapt. Results are also going to look worse in the long term because of the change in conversion window. This means long term comparisons (e.g., Year-on-Year) are not a good idea — until at least January 2022.
Split out iOS and Android in any reports you make about Facebook Ads as there will likely be a difference in performance.
Consider splitting out Android devices and iOS devices when setting up Facebook Ad campaigns. There is already plenty of evidence that the two groups respond quite differently to ads, and this is likely to become more pronounced now. Look in more options under Placements for this targeting.

Add UTM Tracking

The most important thing to do is to make sure that you use UTM tracking on your Facebook ads. This is so that your results are recorded in Google Analytics correctly, even if they are not in Facebook Ad Manager.

UTM tracking is the simplest form of tracking available. It just means adding some variables to the end of a URL that Google Analytics can read, but which don’t change where the URL takes you.

For example, this link will still go to our homepage even with all the extra stuff at the end:

https://searchengineland.com?utm_source=glossary&utm_medium=self-referral&utm_campaign=example

If someone clicks on one of your Facebook Ads and it uses UTM variables, then Google Analytics will add that session into all the correct reports without any trouble. This will help you to keep your tracking straight.

You can generate UTM links using this UTM Link Builder from Google. I would recommend building them directly in Facebook Ads, however, so that you can still use the “Link” or “URL Parameters” columns to sort your ads.

Facebook does a pretty good job of explaining each of the fields, so just follow what it says and you should be ok. You should always add at least the source, medium, and campaign.

One thing I would stress when using UTM tracking is that you need to be consistent with the variables you use. Always call it facebook.com or instagram.com in the source field (you should advertise to these two platforms separately). Always call it paid-social in the ‘Campaign medium’ field.

If you are inconsistent when filling in these fields, then you’ll have problems when looking at this data later as they’ll be filed separately in Google Analytics.

AI Content

Content that is generated by a machine ‘reading’ other content. While AI Content is comparatively cheap and time-saving, Google has said it is against its guidelines for search, and there are also issues around originality.

AIDA

AIDA is a type of sales or marketing funnel where you drive potential customers through four phases: Attention > Interest > Desire > Action.

AIDAS

AIDAS is a variation of the original AIDA model, which is known as one of the hierarchy of effects models. AIDAS stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, and Satisfaction, which are the five different stages a prospect goes through in the process of purchasing a product. Using AIDAS, marketers and sellers can lead a customer through the stages effectively to maximize the overall objective of their marketing or advertising campaign.

Who created the AIDA Model?

The AIDA model was created in 1898 by E. St. Elmo Lewis, an American businessman. The main purpose of AIDA was to explain how personal selling works, especially in the interaction between seller and buyer concerning the product. Lewis’ theoretical explanations of advertising theory are based on extensive experience as he was marketing head and advisor at various companies and organizations involved in the advertising measures concepts and campaigns. He has shared his knowledge across US universities in various forms of publications. After more than 100 years since its first appearance, his legacy AIDA model is still widely used, for example in digital marketing.

How to Apply AIDAS Model?

The AIDAS model helps to explain how consumers’ brand choices are affected by advertising or marketing communication messages. Understanding each stage of the AIDAS principle thoroughly will help you strategize your marketing campaign effectively and achieve optimal results. Here’s how you can implement AIDAS:

1. Attention

In this first stage, it is important to make prospects aware of your products or services. By effectively getting content in front of your target consumers in your brand awareness campaign, you will be able to attract their attention and have them curious about your products or services. Digital Marketing is one method of attracting consumers to your brand. This includes attracting consumers via email, content marketing, search platforms, social media, and more. Using digital marketing, you can cost-effectively and measurably reach an enormous audience.

2. Interest

This stage is all about holding your audience’s attention. When consumers are interested in products or services, they will want to learn more about the brand being advertised. In order to effectively generate interest, it is important that you understand your buyer persona and strategically create contents that deliver persuasive and engaging messages.

3. Desire

Once consumers are interested in the product or service, it is important that you help them realize why they need it. It is necessary to do some research to find out why customers buy and use the research to clarify and increase the desire to meet needs. Some powerful mediums that create an emotional connection and call for desires are messages and images.

4. Action

The next step in this model is to give your audience the chance to act on the product or service. In digital marketing, this is called a Call-To-Action (CTA) – a sentence or statement that is designed to get the audience to do something. It is important to place CTAs where consumers expect to find or can easily connect across emails, websites, landing pages, and so on. One commonly used method is to create a sense of urgency that makes consumers feel the need to take action right away, such as “Limited Time Offers”, “Ends Today”, “This Week Only”, and so on.

5. Satisfaction

This is an additional stage that has expanded AIDA to AIDAS, making the overall success of any advertising campaign. In this stage, it is important to retain customer loyalty after the purchase decision through multi-channel customer support, after-sales service, and so on.

Variations of AIDAS

There are multiple variations of AIDAS, however, they are based on the same principle that a prospect goes through different stages in the process of purchasing a product. Some of the most popular variations of AIDAS are:

AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) model
AIDCA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, and Action) model
AIDEA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Evidence, and Action) model
REAN (Reach, Engage, Activate, and Nurture) model
NAITDASE (Need, Attention, and Interest; Trust, Design, and Action; Satisfaction and Evaluation) model.

Alt Tag

A bit of text that is attached to an image on a webpage appears when the image doesn’t load. Some browsers show this text when the image is hovered-over. Alt tags are good for SEO, in that they help search engines to know what an image is about.

AMA

AMA stands for Ask Me Anything and is a form of question and answer session that originated on the subreddit r/IAmA. The purpose of these Q&As is for people to be able to ask any questions they want of a person who is either an expert in their field or someone with a specific experience.

Important things to know about AMAs

While you can host your own AMA, it is typically a better idea to feature on an existing one so that you can access a wider audience. To be featured on an existing AMA you generally need to:

Have an interesting expertise, experience, or job, or be newsworthy somehow
Be willing and able to verify that you are who you say you are

The point of an AMA is that it happens at a specific time — it is essentially a live event. This means you need to answer a lot of questions in a short time period for it to be worthwhile.

You should also be aware that if you have a bad reputation then an AMA could simply open you up to public ridicule (this has happened many times). Also, if you are boring, use obviously PR-manufactured lines, or are not open and honest when answering questions then you will possibly hurt your reputation.

However, if you are willing and able to answer a lot of questions openly and honestly (and helpfully) in a short period of time then AMAs can be an excellent opportunity. An AMA is not a promotional event (and should not be treated as one) — but if you are likeable that can have positive knock-on effects.

Note: There is also a variation of AMA which is AMAA — which stands for Ask Me Almost Anything. This is a way of showing upfront that you will not be happy to answer every possible question. However, it should only be used when you have an obvious reason for it (such as a lawsuit prohibiting you, etc.) as otherwise it undermines the power of the AMA format.

Amazon

The largest online retailer in the world. Amazon started out selling books and now sells pretty much anything. Amazon also operates a huge Affiliate network, which effectively uses Display Ads to sell its products through other websites.

Amplification Rate

The rate at which an individual post is shared on social media. This is calculated by taking the number of shares of a post and dividing it by the number of followers an account has. ”

Analytics

The measurable statistics of a website or an ad campaign (such as impressions). Typically used to talk about statistics once they have been processed, rather than raw data.

Analytics Platform

A provider of website analytics such as Google Analytics.

Anchor Ad

An Anchor Ad is a type of overlay ad which stays at the bottom of a webpage regardless of scrolling. They often have a way to close them or expand them into larger ad units. These ads are most often used for mobile advertising (although not always) and form part of Google AdSense’s Page Level Ads (along with Vignettes). On mobile, they are generally the size 320×50, and on desktop they are generally 728×90. This is an example of an anchor ad:

7 Ideas & Facts About Anchor Ads

Overlay ads are usually more annoying to users than valuable to websites. Anchor ads don’t break this trend.
Google AdSense includes these as part of their page-level ads package.
This type of ad must have a close button to minimise how much they annoy users.
When this type of ad is used alongside other floaters at the bottom of a webpage (such as cookie policy notifications, or social media buttons) something is bound to go wrong.
If you allow anchor ads in your app, make sure it’s not covering up vital (or any) functionality.
While Anchor Ads can make reasonable money in the short run, they often drive away users in the long run.
Anchor Ads can technically appear at the top of a page too, but it rarely happens due to UX issues. It also stops the name from really making sense.

Anchor Text

Also known as a Link Label. Anchor Text is the text which has a hyperlink attached to it. For example, in the following short paragraph the anchor text is ‘This is a link’:

In this paragraph, there is a link. Can you find it? This is a link. Oh, there it was.”

Anchor Text is important in that it helps search engines to understand what the linked-to page is about. If the anchor text for a link says “vacuum cleaners” then it is relatively safe to assume that the page linked to is about vacuum cleaners.

However, due to chronic misuse, the importance of anchor text has been severely reduced by Google in recent years. To game the system, many people worked to make sure that every link to their site said exactly the same thing over and over again. This, in turn, made Google think that those sites were exceptionally relevant for whatever the anchor texts said.

Due to this, Google penalises sites that have too many occurrences of exactly the same anchor text. The precise amount of times that causes a penalty (or more likely — the percentage of occurrences of a single anchor text which cause a penalty) is unknown. However, avoiding this penalty is simple enough — just don’t work to make sure the anchor text is always the same, and variations will happen naturally.

Black Hat SEO never works out in the long run!

Animated Gif

A Gif that cycles through different images. Gif is an acronym that stands for graphic interchange format.

API

An API is a way to connect two programs together. In digital marketing, APIs are often used to streamline online shops. For example, you input the data in your CMS and all related programs are then also updated. They are also often used for digital marketing analytics. For example, Google Data studio connects with other programs (such as Facebook Ads or Google Analytics) to collect stats so they can be combined in various ways.

What is an API and how does it work?

An API (aka Application for Programming Interface) is a machine-readable interface that connects two applications and allows them to communicate with each other. When an application needs to access data or functionality from another application, it makes a call with an API specifying how the information or functionality are required to be provided. The other application then returns data or functionality as requested.

What are the different types of APIs?

There are four main types of API: Open API (aka Public APIs), Partner APIs, Internal APIs (aka Private APIs), and Composite APIs. Open APIs, aka Public APIs, are available for external users such as developers to access data with relatively few restrictions. Partner APIs are not available for public use but are exposed to the business partners for communication beyond the boundaries of the company. Internal APIs, aka private APIs, are not available for external use and are exposed to different internal teams inside a company or an organization. Composite APIs, the ones that combine multiple data or services, allows developers to access several services at once.

What Is An Example of An API?

An example of an API is when you have an eCommerce store and need to continuously update information such as product SKUs, product descriptions, pricing info, and more from your manufacturers or wholesalers. An API helps you extract that information from the database of products. This interface is called Product Information API.

Are APIs Free?

The initial development of an API typically costs from $15,000 to $25,000, depending on the type of API. Extra monthly operational and maintenance costs range from $150 to $500. However, there are open APIs that are free to use with some limitations. Here are a few eCommerce APIs that are free and open that you can experiment with:

Amazon API (free for 1 million API calls and below).
Shopify API
Ebay API
Magento API

App

App is an abbreviation of Application and is generally used to refer to applications on mobile phones (cell phones).

Applause Rate

The rate at which an individual post is liked on social media. This is calculated by taking the number of likes/favourites/bookmarks of a post and dividing it by the number of followers an account has. ”

Apple Maps

The mapping website from Apple. It can be found here. Businesses with physical locations can add, update, or claim their listings via Apple Maps Connect here.

Apple Maps Connect

Apple Maps Connect is how businesses with physical locations get their businesses on Apple Maps. Find it here: https://mapsconnect.apple.com

AR

Augmented Reality is a way of digitally adding more details to an image recorded on a camera in real-time, which is now commonly used in advertising. For example, you could look at your living room through your smartphone’s camera, and have different items of furniture appear so you could see what they look like before you buy them. AR has always seemed like a novelty. However, it is now a good way for a society that is now cautious of social contact to buy things from their home which would traditionally require an in-store experience.

Arbitrage

Arbitrage is the tactic of buying something at one price and then selling it at a higher price. In online advertising, this typically refers to buying cheap ad inventory and reselling it or using ad space on your own website (which is free) to place affiliate ads.

Aspect Ratio

A way of expressing the relative measurements of a rectangle, often used for video or display ads. For example, an ad that is 200 pixels wide and 300 pixels tall would have an aspect ratio of 2:3.

ATC

ATC is short for a metric called “”Add to Cart””. This is where a user adds something to a cart on an eCommerce site. It is an important metric as it tells you how many people were intending to buy. If there is a big difference between your ATCs and purchases, there may be a problem with your checkout pages.

Attribution

Attribution is the process of judging data to decide which action you will say caused a result. Eg you see (but don’t click) 10 ads then click an email. Did the ads work? Or should the email get all the credit? There are many different attribution models and each changes how success is measured and therefore how budgets are allocated. ”

Auction

An auction in digital marketing refers to the process of how an advertising platform decides which ad to show to a user at any time.

It’s called an auction because that’s how it works, just insanely fast. A person loads a webpage on their computer, which makes an ad request to the ad server. In a fraction of a second, a real-time bidding process then occurs.

The ad server then sees which ad it can deliver to that user at that time of day, in that place, on that site. Each ad campaign running on that ad server then ‘bids’ to be delivered, based on those criteria (as well as others).The ad which wins will generally be the one that will make the most money for whoever owns the ad server. This means delivering ads that are most likely to fulfil their goals based on targeting that has been set up.

If a user is likely to click on an ad or to convert, then a CPC or CPA will be delivered. If not, then they will probably see an ad booked on a CPM basis.If no ad campaign wins the auction, then an ad server will fall back to delivering its default ad or switching to a remnant network.

Audience Network

Facebook’s extended ad network of websites where it runs adverts. Similar to the Google Display Network (GDN), but for Facebook Ads.

Avatar

A way of representing yourself with an icon or figure. Reddit launched a new Avatar builder at the end of 2020.

Average Order Value

The average (mean) amount earned per order (in revenue). This is a helpful metric to make topline calculations and forecasts for any eCommerce site. The equation is:

AOV = Total Revenue ÷ Number of Orders

Avg. Search Depth

In Google Analytics Internal Search report, this is the number of pages a user views after doing a search.

AVOC

AVOC stands for Audible and Visible on Complete. A metric measuring the number of video views where the video was on screen and the sound was turned on upon completion. It’s an improvement on the metric “”view-through”” as it shows a video to be completely engaging.

AVOC Rate

AVOC Rate is the percentage of video ads that are audible and visible on complete (they have the sound on and are on screen). This is an improvement on the metric ‘view-through rate’ as it not only measures if an ad was watched to the end, but by also including sound too it measures whether the ad was focussed on by the user.

AVOD

AVOD stands for Advertising-Based Video on Demand (I don’t know why the B disappeared). It refers to any advertising-funded video on demand platform, such as YouTube, Crackle, etc.

B2B

B2B stands for Business to Business and refers to a business whose customers are other businesses (such as office furniture suppliers for example). Selling to businesses (as opposed to consumers) is very different, and a whole different set of tactics and strategies are needed for this type of business.

7 Things To Know About B2B

It is estimated that 72% of businesses primarily serve other businesses.
B2B buyers are much more focused on ROI than B2C. Make sure you make your marketing include details about value for money where possible.
According to DemandWave, over half of B2B marketers say that Email, Social Media, and Search (both Organic and Paid) drive leads for them. Try these channels first!
80% of B2B buyers will visit your website before making a purchase, and 60% of buyers will check you out on Social Media first. Make sure both are on point.
The rules around emailing for B2B purposes are slightly different if you are emailing a generic address (eg [email protected]) as they don’t contain personal information.
According to Blue Corona, over 80% of B2B buyers view 5 or more pieces of content during the purchasing process. More than 50% view 8+ pieces. Therefore make sure your content marketing is comprehensive.
Know your target market. Create a buyer persona, and research your customers. Find out what they want, and give it to them!

B2C

B2C means Business to Consumer and refers to a business whose customers are the general public (such as a supermarket for example).

B2D

B2D stands for Business to Developer marketing. B2D marketing is coming to the fore due to the software as a service industry continuing to grow rapidly, and developers being key decision-makers when companies invest in software.

B2E

B2E stands for Business to Employee marketing. This refers to all the internal marketing tactics a company uses to keep employees happy and up to date, as well as ways of attracting new employees.

Backlink

A backlink is a link from another website. Backlinks are different to inbound links, which are simply links from another webpage (whether or not they are on a different website).

Backup Ad

A Backup Ad is an ad that serves when an Ad Tag fails to call the intended ad. These can be set up for a variety of reasons, including just being cautious, but also when behavioural targeting is being used and the user does not match the requirements.

Backup Gif

A Backup Gif is the Gif version of an ad that is provided alongside a more complicated version of an ad (typically made in HTML 5). These are intended as a Backup Ad, for users who are unable (for whatever reason) to see the ‘real’ version of an ad.

Banner Ads

Banner Ads’ is the generic term used to describe image-based online ads such as 160x600s, 300x250s and 728x90s. Not to be confused with the 468×60 ad size which is known as a banner.

Banner Blindness

Banner Blindness refers to the idea that most people don’t even notice display ads anymore. Whether by consciously avoiding looking at them or by subconsciously ignoring them, the majority of people simply don’t notice most ads. This makes sense when considering that the majority of clicks on ads are undertaken by 1% of people. Ignoring for a moment that 1% of the entire population of the internet is still a huge amount, this means that for the other 99% of people there is simply no reason to look at those ads. I’ll put it this way – if someone on the street hands you a flyer for a zoo (but you hate animals for some reason), you’ll likely just throw it away without looking at it. This wastage occurs in all forms of advertising, but like with all things digital, it’s just easier online. After seeing thousands of websites each, we all know where online ads are usually placed, and so it’s easy to just not look.

Baseline

Baseline’ in online advertising generally refers to the unoptimised set of stats you get when first running a campaign. These are useful to compare optimising efforts against.

BAU

BAU is any work that takes place as part of the standard functions of a business (and are not part of some change). Work that is part of a change in normal business is known as project work. Post-pandemic it is likely this type of work will increase dramatically compared to the last couple of years.

Behavioural Advertising

Advertising that is based on working out users interests by what websites they have visited, usually via the use of cookies.

Behavioural Segmentation

Behavioural Segmentation is the process of splitting people by their activity (or lack of it). For example, you could create an “”Audience”” in Facebook Ad Manager of people who visited your profile page but hadn’t made a purchase in order to identify soft sales targets. Or else you could segment your email marketing list to separate out people who never open your emails so that you could test out different subject lines on them.

Behavioural Targeting

This is a term used to describe targeting based on data that is gathered on a user. This can be as simple as age or gender as entered on a site in your login details, or just your recent web browsing habits.

Below The Fold

The term Below The Fold (or BTF) means the space on a webpage that can only be seen once a user scrolls down. Ads placed here are usually less interacted with by users than above the fold ads, so command a lower CPM.

Below The Line

Below The Line (or BTL) refers to unconventional marketing, which in online advertising could refer to native advertising for example.

Benchmark

A benchmark is a statistical point of interest used for comparison. They are usually expressed as an average across an industry, country, or type of advertising (or all three combined). These averages (or benchmarks) are then used as goals to beat. For example, if you had a website about helicopters, you might want to make sure that your adverts outperformed other vehicle companies. You would therefore look up the average CTR (or CPC or CPA, depending on your goals) for the vehicle industry, and use that figure as your benchmark to improve upon.

Use our helpful benchmark tools to compare and contrast your results with thousands of others >

BERT

What Does BERT mean?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. BERT is used as part of Google’s search algorithm introduced in 2019 in order to understand what people actually mean in searches. It is essentially an update which helps Google understand context when you search.

BERT Example

Here is the example Google gave when introducing BERT:

Here’s a search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa. The word “to” and its relationship to the other words in the query are particularly important to understanding the meaning. It’s about a Brazilian traveling to the U.S., and not the other way around. Previously, our algorithms wouldn’t understand the importance of this connection, and we returned results about U.S. citizens traveling to Brazil. With BERT, Search is able to grasp this nuance and know that the very common word “to” actually matters a lot here, and we can provide a much more relevant result for this query.

Top Tip

There is really nothing you can do to optimise for BERT. Its simply improves SERPs relevance to queries, and the relevance of your content to queries should already be a given when you are working on SEO!

7 Things To Know About BERT

BERT is a neural-network-based technique used for Natual Language Processing. This basically means that BERT is learning how people talk (or at least, how they search) and using that information to improve search results.
According to Google, BERT has changed the results shown from about 1 in 10 search queries, making them far more accurate.
While BERT has had a huge impact on search, there isn’t actually much to be done in terms of SEO for it, as it’s simply improving Google’s understanding of what people are searching for.
BERT is a ranking signal in amongst hundreds of ranking signals. While it’s important, it’s certainly not the only thing informing how webpages are ranked in Google search.
BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (although knowing this will almost certainly not help you to understand why it’s important, or what it does!)
BERT was introduced in October 2019 and was the largest change to Google’s search algorithm since RankBrain.
If BERT hurt your search rankings, then you were probably ranking for the wrong things anyway!

Better Ads

Better Ads is a display advertising standard that publishers and ad networks sign up to in order to make display ads on sites less annoying. The idea is to reduce the usage of ad blockers by irritating people less.

Bing

A search engine made by Microsoft.

Bing Ads

Microsoft’s answer to Google Ads, Bing Ads is where you can run search ads on the Bing search engine. As Bing is a much smaller search engine than Google, the reach of Bing Ads is much smaller than Google Ads. However, as Bing Ads is less used than Google Ads they are also cheaper. As of April 2019, Bing Ads is called Microsoft Advertising. Before being called Bing Ads, it was called Microsoft adCenter and before that, it was called MSN adCenter.

Bing Maps

Bing Maps is the mapping website from Bing (Bing is the search engine from Microsoft).

Bing Places

Adding a business to mapping services is a key part of local SEO. Bing Places is how businesses with physical locations get their businesses on Bing Maps. With Bing Places you can add details of a business including:

Address
Phone number
Opening hours
A logo and pictures of the business

It should be noted that Bing Maps will try to create listings of every business regardless of whether that business is registered on Bing Places. Therefore it makes sense for every business to create their own listings so they can control the information on there (and make sure it’s correct). Top Tip: You can import locations from Google My Business with Bing Places, so you should set up your Google My Business listing(s) first.

Bitmoji

An emoji that is intended to look like you, and is used as your avatar on many social platforms.

Black Hat

Black Hat refers to dodgy (or even illegal) methods of practice. In digital marketing, it is most often used in reference to SEO but you can be a black hat in any type of digital marketing.

Blacklist

A list of (usually permanently) banned people or things. For example, users who break rules repeatedly could be blacklisted from posting on a site, or websites that are untrustworthy could be blacklisted from ad platforms.

Blog

A journal-esque set of web pages. They are often written in a personal style and used to publicly chart the progress of life, ideas, skill-sets, knowledge or projects. Shortened from the word weblog, the name for every blog in existence (all together) is the Blogosphere. Blogs were originally used mainly by individuals as personal online journals, but are now a mainstay of companies marketing strategies, and are considered very effective.

Blogger

A person who writes a blog. Blogger is also the name of Google’s blogging platform.

Blogging

The process of writing a blog.

Blogosphere

The informal collective name for all blogs.

BookTok

The informal name for any book-related content on TikTok. Notable for the fact that this trend has been driving sales spikes of old books and so is a powerful form of grassroots word of mouth social media marketing.

Bootstrap

A business that pulls itself up into success without little or no external (or internal) funding. With the pandemic causing so many people to start their own side-projects, tales of bootstrapped companies are increasing rapidly at the moment.

Bots

A bot is a computer program that does something online, but which another computer will see as a user (unless it has been taught not to).

Bottom of Funnel

In digital marketing, BoFu means “”Bottom of Funnel”” and refers to content that drives conversions (such as an optimised sales page), as well as content that helps retain existing customers (such as help pages). The funnel in question is the marketing funnel and is the journey people take from becoming aware of your website to undertaking an action (such as making a purchase). BoFu, or Bottom of Funnel in this sense means the point just before someone undertakes the action you hope they will. This could be a sales or sign up page for example or even just a page with a prominently placed phone number on it. Optimising these pages is often seen as the most important thing in order to improve conversion rate, however, without preparing the way with ToFu and MoFu content, even a good BoFu page can often fall flat.

Bounce

The term bounce is used in digital marketing is used in both Websites Analytics and in Email Marketing.

Bounce Definition For Websites

A bounce is when a user visits a webpage, doesn’t do anything that can be measured (click on anything for example) and then leaves. It’s not necessarily a negative thing. For example, if a webpage is only intended to provide information and that information is at the top of the page then a bounce is actually the desired behaviour of users.

Bounce Definition for Email Marketing

A bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered and is returned to the sender (usually through an error email). There are two types of bounces:

Hard-bounce

Hard bounces refer to when the email address or the domain name don’t exist. They can also occur when the recipient’s email server has blocked delivery.

Soft-bounce

Soft bounces refer to what are usually temporary issues – the recipient email inbox is full, the email itself was too large etc.”

Bounce Rate

What does Bounce Rate mean?

Bounce Rate is the percentage of users who visit a site but leave immediately. There are various definitions, but typically a user is thought to have ‘bounced’ if they only visit one webpage. The term comes from the idea of a user being reflected rather than accepted by a webpage – they bounce off one site and onto another which they like better.

Bounce Rate Formula

The bounce rate equation is the number of users who came and left a page without interacting, divided the total number of users who went to that page. As this is expressed as a percentage, the whole formula is multiplied by 100 for convenience.

Bounce Rate = (Single Page Visits ÷ Total Visits) x 100

Technical Information

Technically bounce rate isn’t actually about only visiting one page, but in fact about only visiting one page and doing nothing on that page. For example, Facebook wouldn’t be considered to have a high bounce rate, even though its infinite scroll means that many users don’t actually go onto a second page. For a user not to be considered to have bounced, they simply need to have interacted with a page in some measurable way — which on most sites would mean having gone to a second page.

Reducing the bounce rate is important for any website, as a high bounce rate means low engagement. Websites are usually punished for high bounce rates by search engines — as in a webpage with a high bounce rate for a certain search term will appear lower in SERPs. Similarly, on some SEM ad platforms (such as Google Ads), ads that have a high bounce rate will be displayed less, as the ad/landing page combo will be considered irrelevant to the user.

It is possible, however, that a user will enter a site and find the information they want immediately and then leave. When this happens, although the bounce rate remains high, the site will not be punished by search engines (as this is considered a long click). This is what search engines ultimately want to provide — useful information on the first link a user follows.

Average Bounce Rate

In May 2020 we ran a poll on X (Twitter) and asked: “”What was the Bounce Rate of your website in April 2020?”” The categories were designed based on what we had seen reported across the internet, with 70% being the threshold between good and bad Bounce Rates (although the truth is much more complex than that). While average bounce rates will be different depending on the industry a website is in, and the type of website it is, the results we gather should be helpful to put your own bounce rate into some amount of context. As you can see:

Around a third of websites polled report a Bounce Rate under 50%
A quarter of websites polled report a Bounce Rate over 90%
Just over half report a bounce rate under 70%

As with all metrics, the key is always to be improving. If your bounce rate is 85% or 55%, try to make it better rather than worry what the average is. You may not succeed, but tirelessly trying to improve engagement is a worthy goal for any site owner.

7 Things To Know About Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate only takes into account people who entered on that page. All ‘bounces’ are ‘exits’, but all ‘exits’ are not ‘bounces’ (as some ‘exits’ came from people who started on a different page).
For pages with a goal (like making a sale, or increasing engagement) lowering the bounce rate is the first step to increasing the conversion rate.
A webpage that is only meant to convey information (like a ‘Find us’ page with an address) will have a high bounce rate (and that’s not a problem).
Bounce rate isn’t the best measure. If someone enters a page, loves it and stays for hours but never clicks another link, it will still count as a bounce.
You can lower the bounce rate of any page (and make it more accurate) in Google Analytics by adding more events (for form completions, scrolling, or even time on page).
Bounce Rate should be thought of as a way of measuring engagement for a webpage.
If someone doesn’t like what they find on a webpage (or at a party), they bounce.

Not to be confused with

Exit Rate, Email Bounce Rate

Brand

The distinguishable identity of a company, product, or even of an individual (ie their personal brand). The value of a brand is generally what makes certain products or services more expensive than others.

Brand Advertising

Brand Advertising is when advertisers pay to improve the value of their brand. This can be via having their ads placed on “premium” sites, with the idea of connecting their brand with the site’s brand in a users mind. Brand Campaigns do not focus as much as Performance Campaigns on the performance of ads, but advertisers will still expect good user interaction rates.

Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness generally means how memorable a brand is under different conditions. It is not a standard measure however and is defined differently by different organisations.

Brand Buy

A Brand Buy is an ad buy for brand advertising purposes.

Brand Campaign

A Brand Campaign is an Ad Campaign where the focus is increasing the value of a brand. For example, this can be via having their ads placed on “”premium”” sites, with the idea of connecting their brand with the site’s brand in a users mind. Brand Campaigns do not focus as much as Performance Campaigns on the performance of ads, but advertisers will still expect good user interaction rates.

Brand Network

A Brand Network is an advertising network which only deals with “premium” websites, and will therefore attempt only to attract brand campaigns.

Brand Spend

A Brand Spend is an advertising campaign designed to increase the value of a brand (as opposed to directly driving results). For example, this can be by placing ads on “”premium”” sites, with the idea of connecting their brand with the site’s brand in a users mind. Or else with ads that are primarily about extolling a brands virtues or values.

Breadcrumbs

A hierarchical way of describing to a user where they are on the site (usually with hyperlinks).

Broad

Broad’ is a colloquial way of describing a method of running social media ads where little (if any) targeting is added by the advertiser (eg “”The targeting is as broad as possible””). The idea is that social media algorithms can deliver conversions more efficiently when fewer restrictions are placed on them. In Facebook’s Power5, this is referred to as “”Account Simplification””.

Broad Core Update

A type of algorithm update from Google which works to improve search results based on pre-existing ranking factors. Broad Core Updates happen once or twice a year and do not change the ‘rules’ around SEO, simply change how the ‘rules’ are enforced in order to close loopholes and better hit pre-existing goals.

Broad Match

When targeting keywords in Google Ads for paid search, broad match means inputting the keywords without anything around them (eg free soap). By doing this, not only is the keyword itself targeted in Google Search (eg free soap) but if the keyword is used in a sentence (eg where can I find free soap), as well as searches that are very close to the keyword (eg free soaping for my dog).

Broad Match Modifier

Broad Match Modifier was a keyword match type that was retired by Google on 18th February 2021. Phrase Match was expanded at that point to cover more searches. This is how Broad Match Modifier worked: When targeting keywords in Google Ads for paid search, broad match modified meant inputting keywords with a plus sign in from of them (eg free +soap). By doing this the same rules applied as for broad match keywords with the addition of the following for the word with the + sign in front:

misspellings
abbreviations
synonyms
singular or plural versions

For example the keyword: free +soap Could target the searches including:

free soaps
free saop
free handwash

Broken Ad Call

A broken ad call is when an ad tag fails to retrieve an ad, and so nothing is shown on screen.

Browser

A browser is a piece of software that allows users to view web pages (you are using one right now!). Examples include Firefox, Internet Explorer (now called Microsoft Edge), Google Chrome and Safari.

BTL

Below the Line (or BTL) refers to unconventional marketing, which in online advertising could refer to native advertising for example.

Budget

A budget refers to a set amount of money put aside for a specific purpose. In online advertising, it would usually mean the amount an advertiser has to spend on a specific ad campaign.

Budget Flighting

Splitting your advertising budget into “”flights”” (or periods of time) in order to maximise its effectiveness. For example, if you sold lots of cookies during the day but not at night, you might set your ads to only run during daily hours.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling tool.

Bulletin

Bulletin was Facebook/Meta’s email newsletter product.

Bullish

An attitude of aggressive confidence. Used in digital marketing to describe someone focusing excessively on a channel because they feel very confident of success. For example “”I’m bullish on TikTok ads””.

Button

Button historically referred to the ad sizes 120×60 or 125×125, however is usually used now to refer to a call-to-action graphic (eg a “”Submit”” button at the end of a form). The most commonly used type of these CTA buttons across the web are social media sharing buttons.

Buy-To-Detail Rate

Buy-To-Detail Rate shows the percentage of people who bought an item on a website, after viewing that product’s page. It is a Bottom of Funnel metric in Google Analytics (when using the enhanced eCommerce module). It essentially shows how successful a product page is at turning a potential buyer into an actual buyer.

The metric can be used to optimise an eCommerce site. By looking at the BTDR of multiple pages, you can see which product pages are the most (and least) effective at generating sales. By reworking product pages with comparatively bad Buy-To-Detail Rates, a website can improve its conversion rate.

This form of Conversion Rate Optimisation can be especially effective as it is so close to when someone is about to buy. If someone is already on a product page, then they are only a few clicks away from an actual purchase!

Buy-To-Detail Rate Formula

The BTDR Equation is:

Buy-To-Detail Rate = (Purchases x100) ÷ Product Page Views

Top Tip

Always record the Buy-To-Detail Rate before reworking a product page, and then check on it again after a few weeks. By doing this you can see if your new page has improved your conversion rate or not.

C2C

C2C stands for Customer-to-Customer. A business model where your customers buy and sell with each other. For example eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

Cache-Busting

Cache-busting in online advertising is the process of stopping an ad from being stored on a users computer so that it isn’t loaded every time a page is. This is important so that ad impressions can be counted correctly. The process varies from ad server to ad server.

Call To Action

Call To Action (or CTA) refers to sentences which direct a user to do something (such as “”Buy Now!””, “”Get your Free Sample Today”” etc). It is generally considered best practice to include them in all marketing campaigns.

Call Tracking

What Is Call Tracking?

Call Tracking in digital marketing is the process of attributing phone calls (and any conversions which happen through the phone calls) to a channel. The simplest form of call tracking is done by putting different phone numbers on different channels (or ads), so that advertisers can know for sure what caused the phone call.

Call Tracking Example

A lawnmower company uses both display ads and emails to advertise. As most customers need further information before making a purchase, most sales are made over the phone. Therefore the company’s ads prominently display their phone number in order to close sales more effectively.

To work out where to focus their marketing budget, the company needs to know where most sales (and leads) are coming from. Therefore in their Display Ads they put the phone number 555-0111, while in emails they always use 555-0112. These phone numbers both go to the sales department. However, tracking is put in place so that conversions that come through each phone number are recorded separately.

Technical Information

One version of Call Tracking that works very well is on Google Ads. Google Ads has an ad extension for paid search ads called a “Call extension” where ads can feature phone numbers. As Google Ads often appear on smartphones, people can directly click the phone number and make a call. Then calls that are made directly through these ads are tracked as a type of conversion.

However, in other cases, Call Tracking can work less well. This is because someone may see an ad (or email, or post, etc.) and then go and look up that company separately to call them. When this happens it is hard for the company to know why the individual contacted them.

Despite this systemic problem, Call Tracking is still very important. In digital marketing, under-attribution happens in large part because of online ads causing offline actions (which can’t be tracked). Therefore any system which helps to attribute more conversions (and thereby help direct marketing budget more effectively) is very useful.

CamelCase

Also known as Title Case. Camel Case means capitalising every word in a sentence. This is used frequently when writing paid search ads as ads in Title Case generally perform better than those in sentence case. CamelCase is also used for hashtags that contain multiple words as it helps screen readers to read them properly.

Campaign Budget Optimization

Campaign Budget Optimization is a feature on Facebook Ads where you set the budget at campaign level rather than by Ad Set. Your campaign will then deliver budget where it is most effectively hitting the goals you set.

CAN-SPAM

A national standard in the USA for sending emails, which legislates around SPAM emails and pornography. CAN-SPAM is an acronym that stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. It was introduced in 2003.

There are seven main requirements from the CAN-SPAM act:

Don’t use false or misleading header information.
Don’t use deceptive subject lines.
Identify the message as an ad.
Tell recipients where you’re located.
Tell recipients how to opt-out of receiving future emails from you.
Honour opt-out requests promptly.
Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.

You can read more about this law from the FTC here.

Canonical Link

A Canonical Link is a link added to the metadata of the code of a page which indicates what the “main” version of that page is in order to focus link equity on one page and to stop duplicate content penalties. For example, if a website sells shoes and uses lots of different ways to categorise them, then the exact same page might appear multiple times on a site — e.g., men’s Reebok trainers could appear in the category for men’s shoes, Reeboks, and trainers.

When this happens it is best practice to designate one version of the page as the canonical version (which is the version that will appear in search results) and to add a canonical link tag to versions of the page pointing to it.

You should also add the canonical link to the canonical page itself (i.e., Page A having a canonical link pointing at Page A). Many people argue for every page to have a canonical link, and targeting these at the page they are is referred to as having a self-canonical link.

Many CMS have an option to add a canonical link. If you need to add it manually, add the following code within the <head> section of your HTML:

<link rel="canonical" href="[URL of the page]" />

Canva

A popular and simple design tool that can be accessed through a browser. Canva has a large set of assets that anyone can use (such as photos, templates, icons etc) and is commonly used by social media managers to create images.

CAPI

CAPI is short for Conversion API. It is a cookie-less way to directly send conversion data to Facebook Ads. Using CAPI should improve reporting accuracy & performance, and (theoretically) be better for privacy too as you can choose what you send to Facebook. There is considerable technical setup compared to the Facebook pixel, as this method requires you to connect your server directly to Facebook’s server.

Captcha

A captcha is a way to distinguish human users from bots. As such a large part of internet use is made up of non-human traffic, it has become essential to be able to create walls where bots cannot go. This is especially helpful in terms of web analytics. Captchas often take the form of hard to read words or simple puzzles which bots cannot work out. They are generally placed as a block at the end of a form to stop spam comments or automated entry into a site. Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Cart-To-Detail Rate

Cart-To-Detail Rate is a metric in Google Analytics (when using the enhanced eCommerce module) which shows the percentage of people who put an item in their shopping cart on a website, after viewing that product’s page. This can be useful in determining how effective a product page is.

Cashtag

A version of hashtags on X (Twitter) that are used for stocks. Instead of the #, Cashtags use $ – for example, $Goog refers to Google stocks.

CASL

Legislation around email marketing in Canada which requires express permission before emails are sent (in order to stop SPAM). CASL is an acronym that stands for Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation. You can find out more about CASL from the Canadian government here. ”

Charm Pricing

Charm Pricing refers to the practice of pricing items at $4.99 or $9.99 etc for example. Charm pricing is a way of subconsciously making people believe something is cheaper than it really is.

Chat Bot

A chatbot is a program that talks to the public on a companies behalf. They can be used to answer simple questions from customers, filter queries to the correct departments, as well as to sell products. They are can be used on any platform, but are still rising in prevalence on social media.

Click

What is a Click?

When it comes to online advertising, a click refers to a user clicking on an ad. This is the goal of the majority of online advertising (especially CPC campaigns) and has been since ads first became clickable in 1994. Although things have moved on considerably since then, clicks continue to be used to compare campaigns using the CTR metric.

In 2009 5,300,000,000,000 (5.3 trillion) display ads were served, with an average CTR of 0.1%, meaning around 5,300,000,000 (5.3 billion) clicks were recorded. That’s about fourteen and half million a day, or 10,000 a minute, all year long (and that’s just for display ads!). Considering the ad industry has more than doubled in size since then, it’s surprising we’re not all being deafened by mouse noises at this point.

Unsurprisingly, the word click comes from the noise a mouse makes when you press one of the buttons. Like the disk-shaped save icon, or the term “Hang up the phone”, the word itself is likely to become an anachronism soon, which only older people understand.

It’s important to remember too, that before clicks we had nothing. The effectiveness of ads was based on guesses or excessively complicated (but ultimately untestable) maths. Advertisers would put up a billboard poster, buy some radio or TV time and run your spot and then wait. If your profits went up, you would assume your advertising worked, but you wouldn’t know for sure. With the measurable nature of clicks (and conversions), now we can know for sure whether ads are driving customers to us.

Who Clicks?

What is curious about clicks in online advertising, is that they are so uniform. If you show the same ad to two separate random groups of 1,000 people, it is very likely that roughly the same amount of people will click on them. We all like to think we are unique, but when considered in groups, we all respond to adverts in a fairly predictable way.

The good news for online advertising is that the global trend for CTR has been slowly rising since the start of 2015. This means more clicks for advertisers and more advertising revenue for publishers and networks. Whether this has been caused by better ads or better ad tech, it’s good news for everyone with a website.

We do not all click on every ad type the same amount, however. MPUs get around a 0.34% CTR overall (in 2016), whereas leaderboards only hit around 0.08% on average. It’s even worse on smartphones — research suggests that about 50% of clicks on mobile ads are unintentional.

We also do not all click on any ads at all — 54% of people don’t ever click on display ads due to a lack of trust. Although this sounds like a lot, back in 2009 8% of users counted for 85% of clicks, so 46% of users getting involved in online advertising is a big increase.

There is also a huge discrepancy from country to country. According to Google Display Benchmarks, New Zealand has a CTR of around 0.87% whereas the UK and US hover around 0.1%, meaning Kiwis click on ads almost nine times as often as Brits or Americans. And it’s not just because that’s the trend down under — Australians’ CTR hovers around 0.2%.

Technical Information

Measuring Clicks

There is an industry-standard way to measure clicks, as well as audits that take place to counteract click fraud. The technical details are long and boring, but basically, boil down to not allowing multiple clicks from a single ad impression in too short a period. This is to try and avoid any technical errors, accidental clicks, as well as counteract click fraud. Google explains the process in detail for Google Ads here.

CPC – Cost Per Click

The way a CPC (or PPC) ad campaign works is that every time an ad gets clicked on, the advertiser pays the agreed amount. Average CPC rates were apparently at about $1.50 in 2015, however, this will differ vastly depending on where you get your information.

CPC = Cost ÷ Clicks

Avg. CPC

In RTB ad servers (such as Google Ads) instead of being told the CPC of a campaign, advertisers are told the Avg. CPC. What this means is that for each click the advertiser is paying a different amount, as the clicks are bid on (like on eBay. The Avg. CPC (average cost per click) is how much an advertiser is paying for clicks when all the costs and clicks are added up (and averaged).

CTR – Click Through Rate

CTR is the number of clicks on an ad, per ad impression (as a percentage). It is a useful way to compare the performance of ad campaigns. Instead of just looking at the volume of clicks, you can see the number of clicks each had, taking into account the opportunity to gain clicks they had. The average CTR across the internet hovers around 0.2% (which means 2 clicks per 1,000 ad impressions) but generally fluctuates somewhere between 0.1%-0.3%.

CTR = (Clicks ÷ Impressions) x 1000

Click Tracking Discrepancies

When someone clicks on an ad, the ad server the ad came from records a click straight away. This is because the way online advertising works is that when you click on the ad, first of all, a message will be sent to the ad server that the ad was clicked on. Then secondly the URL the ad wants you to go to will be sent to the user’s computer. Due to the order of this happening, it is not unusual for something to go wrong in this second action. Therefore the number of clicks an ad received will generally be at least a little higher than the amount of traffic a website receives from an ad. This can also occur simply because people are not patient enough to wait for a webpage to load, so will click on an ad, but then close the window before the page loads.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is a measure of interest in a webpage. For a user to have bounced, they must load a page, but take no further actions before leaving it again. This is important for online advertising, as ad servers such as Google Ads will take the bounce rate of ads into account when deciding whether or not to show an ad. If a user clicks on an ad and leaves a page immediately, this is an indication that the information on that page was not relevant. Therefore the ad will be shown less.

Bounce Rate = (Bounces ÷ Visitors) x 100

Long Click

A long click is when a user searches for something, follows a link (via an ad or an organic search result), and then doesn’t search for that thing again (or go back to the already open SERPs and clicks a different link). The goal of search engines is to provide relevant information to users for their searches, and a long click indicates success. A long click will reverse the negative effect of a user bouncing, as it implies the user’s request was fulfilled.

Click Fraud

Click Fraud is when an ad is clicked on for any means other than finding information. This includes:

An advertiser clicking on competitors ads to cost them money
An advertiser clicking on their own ad to improve results
A publisher clicking on ads on their own site to increase their revenue
An ad network clicking on an ad to hit targets
A bot being used to click on an ad for any reason

In some countries, these things are illegal, in others they are not. Most ad servers will ban people for any of these practices, and none of them is ever a good idea. It is highly likely these types of fraud will be detected, and the benefits will almost never outweigh the costs.

Clickable

Anything that can be clicked on, where that click causes a response. For example, clicking on a link and going to another page, or clicking on a video to pause it.

Close Rate

Close Rate is the percentage of leads that turn into conversions. You calculate it simply by dividing your conversions (from your leads) by all the leads you had (and then multiplying by 100 to turn it into a per cent. Close Rate is a phrase that comes from sales but can be applied to digital marketing. A low Close Rate can indicate that either there is a problem with how your BoFu content drives people to convert *or* the quality of your leads. Unqualified leads will generally have a lower Close Rate than Qualified Leads.

7 Things To Know About Close Rate

Close Rate is also known as Lead-To-Close Rate or Closing Ratio.
A closed lead doesn’t technically mean that you “”won”” – it also includes deals that you lost out on. However, Close Rate is generally used to be synonymous with “”Win Rate”” (except in Salesforce).
According to HubSpot, average sales close rates are between 15%-30% depending on your industry. Across all industries, it’s about 19%.
Gathering leads via a sign-up form is fine. Qualifying those leads with some sort of follow up questions is better.
If you want to know whether it is your sales efforts or your leads which are a problem, check out the Open Rate and CTOR of your emails. If they’re good, then your leads are probably good too.
Close Rate can be split down into two further rates – Lead-To-Opportunity Rate and Opportunity-To-Deal Rate.
Close Rate is essentially the conversion rate of only your leads. Conversions can come from anywhere though.

Other names for Close Rate (synonyms)

Lead-To-Close Rate, Closing Ratio

Clubhouse

An audio-chat social network app which launched in 2020. Users of Clubhouse can listen to and/or join in with conversations, interviews, and discussions on different subjects in virtual rooms or ‘clubs’. Unlike most social networks, content on Clubhouse is not permanent as conversations are not saved when they end. People can, of course, still record the conversation outside of the app. The experience has been likened to a live podcast or a conference call with a small set of people talking while everyone else listens. The app has been used by many celebrities, which has contributed to its cult-like status. It is currently only available on iOS and by invite. The creators have reportedly said they will open the app out to everyone eventually.

Not to be confused with

The Clubhouse project management tool.

CMS

CMS stands for Content Management System. It refers to any program that is used to manage a website (such as WordPress for example).

Co-Branding

When one brand tries to link itself intrinsically in the minds of the user with another, often by placing its logo on another site. Common examples of this would be coverage of a specific event on one site being labelled as “brought to you in association with” another site.

7 Things To Know About Co-Branding

Brand Partnerships involve 2 or more brands working together. By sharing their brand names, they are also sharing their fans/audiences which can result in a huge boost in reach and brand value for everyone.
For websites, working with another brand on a section of your site can be very lucrative, provided thata) the content is great b) the brand has values similar to yours
Make sure the brands you partner with have similar values to yours. There is no point in getting their audience to like you more if your own audience hates you for it.
Co-Branding *isn’t* the same as co-marketing. Co-Branding means a collaboration between brands to make/do something new. Co-Marketing simply means working together to promote something.
Milk & Cookies Peanut Butter & Jelly Socks & SandalsSome things just go together. Some things don’t.
Sometimes a brand partnership has a senior partner and a junior partner. For example, think about ice cubes in a drink. You want the drink, but the ice cubes make it better.
Brand Partnerships shouldn’t be entered into lightly. If you partner with a brand with a scandalous past, then people will (rightly) question why you think that their behaviour is ok.

Other names for Co-Branding (synonyms)

Brand Partnership

Companion Ad

Companion Ads are two or more ads that are delivered together. Due to the way these work, there will always be one ad that is served first, and then another which loads afterwards. The second ad is the companion ad, and it will generally get fewer impressions than the main ad.

Completion Rate

Completion Rate is a metric meaning the percentage of people who completed a task, out of those who started the task. Generally used for surveys or onboarding, this is a good way to measure whether your survey or onboarding process is engaging enough.

Conditional Content

Conditional Content is content on a webpage or email that only appears when certain criteria are met (eg a user is logged in etc). It has been used in email marketing for a long time, but websites are also capable of showing conditional content.

For example, a website could show a welcome block to first time users. Or have different links displayed in the sidebar if certain searches are made on the site. Conditional Content can be technically quite complicated to implement. It can also be difficult to report on the individual components unless you really think through how you are going to track each component in advance. However, it is an extremely practical solution for improving the performance of a webpage or email.

By using conditional content you can create a bespoke experience for each user, taking advantage of whatever you know about them to tailor their user journey more directly. You needn’t have gathered any data about your users individually to do this.

You can create content that only shows depending on session data such as referring URL or email for example (eg if they came from a price comparison site, treat them like they are ready to buy).

7 Things To Know About Conditional Content

Basic examples are things like using someone’s name in an email or the language of your site based on browser settings. The sky is the limit with conditional content though!
Plan your analytics in advance. Think: what is the purpose of each conditional block? How can I measure if it worked compared to pages/emails without that block?
Make sure that you always have a default page/email in place for anyone who doesn’t hit *any* of the criteria that you set for your conditional content. No-one should see blanks.
Most email providers will let you use conditional content. Read their specific guides on how to do it before you get started.
People are more likely to donate to charity when reminded that they have been generous in the past. Mentioning previous donations can be a great way to personalise content.
Pro-Tip: Write/draw your plans before getting started to stop yourself from getting a muddle. It *is* a complicated process! Don’t be a hero & try to keep it all in your head!
Don’t overuse the data you have on your users to personalise content. People want a tailored experience, but go too far and they’ll think you’re a creepy stalker.

Confirmation Page

A confirmation page is the page a user sees after completing an action that confirms that action has occurred. For example, when ordering a pizza online, it’s the page that says your order has been confirmed and the pizza will be delivered.

Consent Management Platform

A Consent Management Platform (CMP) is how websites track and record whether people have given their consent to cookies or various forms of marketing. This is now necessary for all websites in Europe since the introduction of GDPR and PECR.

Consumption

A consumption is a metric Facebook uses, which basically means the number of clicks on any of your Facebook posts.

Content

Content is a generic term for stuff on the internet, such as posts, articles, videos, pictures etc.

Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is advertising that targets the content of the page it is displayed on. For example, a page about cats could be targeted by cat food manufacturers. This is as opposed to behavioural advertising, which is based on what the user visiting the page has been up to, or programmatic advertising which takes a lot of factors (such as user behaviour, trends of similar pages etc) into account. It can be very effective and has the added bonus of not requiring any cookies to be dropped on a users computer. Media.net is a popular contextual advertising ad network.

Conversion

What is a Conversion?

Conversion is the generic term used for an action or acquisition completed on a CPA campaign. Basically, if you are trying to track something like how many sales an online ad has generated, a conversion is when the thing that you want to happen, happens. The term comes from the idea of converting a potential customer into an actual customer. The word sale isn’t used, as it can mean anything that an ad was trying to get a user to do. This includes a sign-up for an email list, a purchase of a product or a download of an app. There are words that specifically refer to the different types (eg in the previous examples: lead, sale, download), but conversion is the umbrella phrase used.

Work out the CR of your campaigns with our Conversion Rate Calculator >

Technical Information

You often need a Conversion Pixel in place for tracking purposes. This can often be a bit fiddly because it requires putting code directly on to a site’s confirmation page to work. Tracking isn’t as simple as seeing how many people clicked on an ad and then immediately made a purchase either, unfortunately. This would be unfair to the publisher hosting the ad. This is because many people are convinced by ads to make purchases (for example). They do not always make the purchase at that exact moment, however.

This is why Post-Impression and Post-Click Windows are usually agreed upon between the publisher and advertiser. These refer to the amount of time after an ad is seen or clicked on (respectively) that an ad still counts as having made that conversion.

Of course, many users will see an ad multiple times on multiple sites before making a purchase. It wouldn’t be fair for the advertiser to have to pay multiple times for a single sale. The rule of thumb is that the last website an ad was clicked on or seen usually gets paid. This attribution model is known as “”Last Click””. Therefore advertisers usually get the final say on how many each publisher has actually made. They do this by putting all the data they have about where every lead, sale, download etc have come from through a process called de-duplication. Publishers can try and increase how likely ads on their site(s) are to generate leads, sales, downloads etc by optimising towards CR. However, this is often quite a fraught process, due to the nature of CPA campaigns.

Other names for Conversion (synonyms)

Acquisition, Action

Not to be confused with

Version

Conversion Pixel

A conversion pixel is a 3rd party piece of code placed on a website that allows an advertiser or ad platform to track conversions. Conversion Pixels are typically placed on confirmation pages, but can also be placed on landing pages, or throughout a site. A conversion pixel is an image file that is 1 pixel tall and 1 pixel wide that is hosted outside of the website being visited. As the pixel is so small, it cannot be seen by the naked eye meaning users don’t notice when they load. The conversion pixel is hosted on a server used to track ads and therefore every time the pixel is loaded, that server can record it. Other information is sent along with the pixel request from the user’s computer – and this is used to match the user back to advertising.

Example of how a Conversion Pixel works

Here is an example of how a conversion pixel can work. There are many variations of how tracking works, so this is a broad-strokes example only:

Julia clicks on an ad for scarves on Facebook and goes to the advertiser’s website.
Facebook records that Julia clicked on the ad.
- It can do this in a variety of ways, by recording things such as IP address, device ID, username etc
Julia sees a scarf she like on the advertiser’s website and makes a purchase.
After the sale, Julia is taken to a confirmation page that contains a Facebook conversion pixels code.
The conversion pixel loads from Facebook’s server and the request for the pixel is sent with Julia’s device ID
The device ID is matched by Facebook to the list of people who interacted with the ad.
The advertiser is charged by Facebook for their ad leading to a sale.

There are several things to note about this example:

Facebook’s pixel is more complicated than this and can scrape information from a page. It is also typically placed on every page.
Pixels often drop cookies, which can also be used to track conversions.
The information stored by the ad platform should be anonymized so they can’t tell who you are, only that someone who saw or clicked on the ad converted.
Whether or not you interacted with an ad on the original site (Facebook in this case), the pixel is loaded when you make a purchase. This means that your information is sent to the site the ad was on regardless. This is a major reason why people dislike advertising tracking.
Ads are often run on multiple websites at the same time, meaning that each purchase can trigger multiple conversion pixels. This in turn means that after any purchase on the internet, many companies that you have never interacted with will be informed. Even if your information is anonymised by all of them, this is obviously far from ideal.

Top Tip

Websites should not drop any cookies or pixels on a users computer unless permission has been given by the user to do so. This is due to cookie regulations in many countries, as well as common decency.

Conversion Rate

The Conversion Rate (CR) of a campaign is the number of conversions achieved per click. It is mainly used to optimise CPA campaigns but is actually rarely used as it is such an inconsistent measure, even within a single website (see the example under Top Tips below). The Conversion Rate of a campaign is the percentage of people who clicked on an ad and then completed an action/purchase/conversion. For example, if one person made a purchase after an ad had been clicked on 100 times, that will give a CR of 1%.

Work out the CR of your campaigns with our Conversion Rate Calculator >

What does Conversion Rate mean?

The Conversion Rate, as with CTR vs clicks, is theoretically a better metric to use than just conversions. This is because it helps you work out the speed at which inventory is causing conversions. In this way, it is easier to compare campaigns/publishers which are running different amounts of impressions. A conversion is a catch-all term for an acquisition (sale) or action which results from a CPA campaign. It comes from the idea of converting a non-customer into a customer. Conversion Rate is an inconsistent measure, unfortunately. This is because generally CPA campaigns are used to mop up remnant inventory. Remnant inventory quality can change significantly depending on what other campaigns are running.

Conversion Rate Formula

The Conversion Rate formula is:

Conversion Rate = (Conversions ÷ Clicks) x 100

Top Tip

As clicks are part of the CR equation, it may seem reasonable to optimise towards CTR to improve conversions. However, the below example demonstrates why this isn’t nearly foolproof.

For example…

If in January a nutrition website with 1,000,000 impressions per month only has 200,000 Run Of Site ads appearing, then a CPA campaign for fruit on the site would have access to 800,000 ad impressions. This would likely include some on the homepage and the sections about fruit. The CPA campaign would likely get a lot of clicks. This is because the subject of the ads (fruit) lines up with the subject of the site (nutrition). However it would also likely get a lot of conversions as it would have good access to the site’s users, and at the point at which the users were most interested in the subject of the ad (on the fruit sections and homepage).

However, in February the same site only has two campaigns running. The first is a homepage takeover for the whole month. The second is a sponsorship deal across the fruit section of the site, which in total makes up 200,000 impressions.

The fruit CPA campaign would still have 800,000 impressions available, however, the best pages (and users) would be gone, so it would likely convert a lot less. It may not get a relatively different amount of clicks, as the ads and the website line up quite well, however, it will likely get many fewer conversions.

This means…

The above example is why advertisers can’t care too much about conversion rates. They want to keep ad impressions down to reduce ad serving costs, but they have to accept that sites have other deals going on and so the inventory they get will be of variable quality. Advertisers, therefore, focus on the number of conversions they get in total usually. For publishers/ad networks, however, the conversion rate can be much more useful in that they can calculate it for placements, and try and push more CPA ads there. Moving inventory around like this is the key to maximising revenue for a site (this process is often called yield management).

7 Things To Know About Conversion Rate

A conversion is a broad term for any online action that is a goal (such as a sale).
According to Adobe, 40% of marketers say their conversion rate is less than 0.5%. Consider this a low benchmark to beat.
What percentage of clicks on your ads lead to a sale? Work it out, then try and improve it.
You can (and should) calculate the conversion rate of anything online – an ad, post, email, website, or webpage.
If 5% of clicks on an ad led to a conversion in the past, you can assume that anyone who clicks on it has a 5% chance of converting as well.
CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation & means testing things in order to improve your Conversion Rate. It can result in huge gains.
According to EyeView, adding videos to landing pages can increase conversions by 86%.

Other names for Conversion Rate (synonyms)

CR, CVR

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Conversion Rate Optimisation is the process of working to increase the speed (or likelihood) of gaining conversions. For example, an online flower shop might notice that they sold flowers more often when they mention that they were grown locally on each page. Adding this text would be optimising their conversion rate, as it is seeing what makes sales more likely and implementing it. Other classic examples of CRO are abstract changes like testing different button colours, or more direct changes like trying out different CTAs (eg “”Learn more”” vs “”Discover how””).

Conversion Rate Optimisation Top Tips

Here are some of the simplest Conversion Rate Optimisation tips:

1. Use images with human faces on your website.

A website without any actual people on it can tend to feel “scammy” or impersonal to the average visitor, as they have no one to relate to when visiting your site. When you’re building a website with the aim of generating a high conversion rate, it’s a good idea to include images of real people performing actions related to the nature of your business. If your budget allows it, you should use original photos. Otherwise, stock images are a good backup option, so long as you choose photos that aren’t too generic or have been used by more established websites before.

Make sure your images aren’t too large without lowering their quality.

You may have taken care to include some high-quality images on your website, in an effort to avoid disappointing its visitors. However, they’ll end up disappointed anyway if your website is taking too long to load – a surefire way of losing what could’ve been your customers. It’s understandable if you’re initially hesitant to use compressed images, as they can at times be grainy. But you can make high-definition images smaller without any kind of remarkable drop in quality using an image optimization tool.

Use the right fonts for your website.

If you’re aiming for your website to be taken seriously and you’ve presented its textual content using a font such as Comic Sans or Papyrus, chances are your website visitors are going to make a judgement based on that font choice and may leave and look for a better, more credible looking website to check out rather than yours. When building your website, you should make sure that the font you choose for the text is as professional-looking as possible, whilst still feeling relevant to your market. With so many font choices available nowadays, it’s entirely up to you which fonts you choose to use on your website as long as they mix and match together. You can use a font pairing tool to make the mixing and matching of fonts easier.

Ensure your website is as clutter-free as possible.

If your website is too full of call-to-action buttons, images and text, its visitors may feel that you’ve done a sloppy job of building your website. This, in turn, can cause them to decide to visit your competitor’s website instead. Thus, you should ensure that your website has just the right number of call-to-action buttons, images, and text in it, so that you’re able to get your point across without overcrowding the page. It’s also advisable to make use of whitespace in order to reduce website clutter.

Use the right colours for your website.

Every colour has a specific meaning. There’s a risk that if you use the wrong colours for your website, you may inadvertently drive visitors away. Picking the right colour scheme for your website can be challenging. One way that you can make the process less difficult is to perform A/B testing. The idea here is that you show website visitors two versions of your website with different colour schemes and establish from the data collected which version is driving a higher conversion rate. You can use tools like Google Optimise to achieve this.

Make your website mobile-friendly.

With more and more people using smartphones and tablets to access the internet, ignoring these users while building your website could be the worst business decision you make with your website. While smartphone and tablet users can technically still access your website if you’ve only designed it with desktop users in mind, they will have a much harder time navigating it and viewing its contents. On the other hand, if you’ve gone to the effort of optimizing your website for mobile devices, there won’t be any need for smartphone and tablet users to zoom in to find your call-to-action button, as they will be able to easily see it after a few scrolls – or even immediately after the page has loaded.

Converted

In online advertising, a converted user is someone who has seen or clicked on an ad and completed the action the advertiser wanted from the ad.

Cookie

A cookie is usually a way for a webpage to store a small amount of information on your computer that will improve your experience with that website – such as your language preference or other settings. In online advertising, cookies are often built into ads and generally contain information such as where, when and how many times you have seen an advert. This can be useful for attribution and optimisation.

Cookie Policy

A policy that explains which cookies are dropped by a website, and what they are being used for. This is a legal document.

COPE

COPE is an acronym that stands for Create Once, Publish Everywhere. It is a strategy to increase the value of content creation by focusing on distributing the content in many different forms. For example, if the content created is a great infographic then:

a blog post could be made explaining it
it could be posted on social media (possibly in small snippets)
it could be sent to an email list
the content could be turned into a video version.

By focusing on multi-channel distribution you can massively increase the value of creating new content.

Core Audience

On Facebook Ads, a Core Audience is one that is defined by using Facebooks data on their demographics, geographic location, and interests (and more).

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics introduced by Google in 2019 that were meant to become ranking factors for Google Search in 2020. There are three metrics included:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) – how long until the majority of the page loads
FID (First Input Delay) – how long until a page can be interacted with
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) – how much page content shifts after loading

These are an interesting set of metrics as they focus so intently on user experience. Google refers to these as being about loading, interactivity, and visual stability, but I would characterise the first two as being about page speed and the third one as not annoying your users.

A new section of Google Search Console has been added to help measure these Core Web Vitals, including three tiers of performance for each – Good, Needs Improvement, and Poor.

While a big deal has been made of these new ranking factors, they are not expected to be the dominant way in which web pages are measured in any sense. On top of that, measurement of all three of these metrics is generally considered to be quite harsh – with very few sites actually scoring good across the board. I would highly recommend doing what you can to score well for all three of these metrics as they will create a better user experience which can have a positive knock-on effect. However, keep in mind that scoring perfectly on these metrics is no guarantee of ranking well on Google. If you want more details, Google has a great page explaining everything here.

COS

A Content Optimisation System (COS) is a platform that optimises content for individual users. This typically includes making content fit any screen size, as well as some level of personalisation (sometimes based on what a site knows about the user, and sometimes based on their browsing habits to the point).

Cost

Cost is a catch-all term in online advertising that refers to budget or payment. It is used to describe all sorts of advertising payment models such as Cost Per Click, Cost Per Action etc.

Cost Per Expansion

Cost Per Expansion is a type of advertising rate. It is a specific type of CPE campaign (which usually means Cost Per Engagement) in which the only engagement which is paid for is when a user expands an ad.

Cost Per Land

Cost Per Land is a type of advertising rate. It is basically the same as Cost Per Click. It just means that publishers only get paid when a user fully loads up the landing page after clicking on an ad, as opposed to just having to click on it (there can be some discrepancy between these two figures due to loading times). Note: CPL usually stands for Cost Per Lead.

Cost Per Result

Facebooks version of CPA, which also includes any goal of a campaign. By making it a goal-neutral metric, it means users can look at it in Facebook Ads and see how much their CPC, CPL etc is, all in one column.

CoTweets

A way for two accounts on X (Twitter) to tweet together (the Tweet will say it’s from both of them). Useful for co-branding exercises or partnerships.

CPA

What does CPA mean?

The CPA price is the amount that gets paid when an ad leads to a sale (or action). This means that a CPA advertising price can seem quite high compared to CPM or CPC. This is because conversions (sales) are quite rare comparatively.

For example, you book an ad campaign on a website and agree to pay £150 CPA every time an ad leads to a sale. The website will then show an unlimited number of adverts trying to make those sales. You (as the advertiser) will then report back to the website how many sales are made, and pay £150 for each of them. The website will likely show your ads after all the ads which pay on a CPM or CPC basis. It is entirely up to them how many ads they show, however. Generally, the deal will not be to make a specific amount of sales, just to try and make as many as possible.

This is the most advantageous type of deal for advertisers to make in most cases.

Work out the Cost per Acquisition of your campaigns with our CPA Calculator >

CPA Definition (Cost per Acquisition or Cost per Action)

CPA means cost per acquisition (or sometimes cost per action) and it means paying for ads only if it leads to a sale (or another goal). It is one of the three most common ad pricing models used along with CPM and CPC. Most sites will not take CPA ads as they are a risky proposition, but there are many times when they can be very profitable for both site and advertiser. An acquisition (or action) in a cost per acquisition deal is referred to as a conversion, as the ad has converted a user into a customer. This type of deal is generally about making sales. However, CPA advertising is also known as cost per action advertising as it can also be used to get users to do any action. Actions could include donating money to charity or signing up for a supermarket club card.

CPA Formula

The equation for CPA ads is:

CPA = Ad Spend ÷ Conversions

Technical Information

There are two types of conversion:

Post-click conversions – This means a user has clicked on an ad and then made a purchase/completed an action.
Post-impression conversions – This is when a user sees the ad, and then at a later date completes a purchase/action.

In the majority of deals, the conversion does not have to happen immediately. How it works is that when the cost per acquisition ad is shown to a user it will drop a cookie on the user’s computer. This cookie then starts a countdown. If the user completes a purchase/action before the countdown finishes, then the website the ad was on gets paid. For post-impression conversions, the window is often 15 days. For post-click conversions, the window is often 30 days, although this, of course, varies from deal to deal. Of course, an advertiser may run the same ads on many sites, and it won’t pay out many times for one conversion (if the ad was seen by the same user on many sites). Only be the last site that a user clicked on, or saw an ad impression will get paid.

Average CPA rates

CPA rates are too variable to list. They will depend on the ROI of an advertiser, which will depend on the value of the conversion they are chasing. Due to this, you can expect to pay/receive anywhere between £0.50 and £50!

CPC

What does CPC mean?

The Cost Per Click price is the amount paid every time a user clicks on an ad. When booking a Cost Per Click campaign a certain amount of clicks are promised, the CPC is paid out for each click delivered. If you book 1,000 clicks for a €10 CPC for example, then you owe €10,000 if they are all delivered. A cost per click campaign provides the most certainty for an advertiser. This is because you get what they pay for – a specific amount of users coming to your site.

Work out the Cost Per Click of your campaigns with our CPC Calculator >

CPC Definition

CPC means cost per click and is often referred to as PPC (pay per click). It is one of the three most common ad pricing models used along with CPM and CPA. This is perhaps the most commonly used ad pricing model. It is simple to set up and is a reasonable compromise between the uncertainty of CPM campaigns and the complexity of a CPA campaign. Running these campaigns, however, continue to require a fair amount of optimising work by the website or ad network. They also provide a level of uncertainty as to how much inventory they will eat up. These campaigns actually pit the advertiser and website against each other more than other types of campaigns. This is because the website will want to get as many clicks as easily as possible, without any regard for the quality of the clicks. The website owner will also want to deliver that many clicks and no more. With both CPM and CPA campaigns, however, there is no upper limit to performance.

CPC Formula

The Cost Per Click equation is:

CPC = Cost ÷ Clicks

Average CPC Rate

There doesn’t seem to be any concrete data on this. On Google Ads in 2012 the average cost per click was $0.35 (approx £0.20), which seems about right. However, across the internet Average cost per click rates were apparently at about $1.50 in 2015. If you pay more for clicks, you will probably get access to better inventory, however, so there isn’t really a great benchmark for this.

Technical Information

In Google Analytics, Paid Search is marked using CPC as the medium. This is because Paid Search historically only worked on a PPC basis, however, clicks can be bought using many types of marketing.

CPCV

Cost Per Completed View. This is a metric used for video advertising. It is not that common as usually a video ad is used to encourage people to take a further action, rather than simply get people to watch the whole video. ”

CPD

What does CPD mean?

The CPD price is the amount that gets paid for every day that an ad is on a webpage/site for the whole day. For example, if you book an ad campaign on a car website and agree to pay £500 CPD for 10 days for their Ford page, then you will pay £5,000 in total and receive every ad on the Ford page for 10 days.

Work out the Cost Per Day of your campaigns with our CPD Calculator >

Technical Information

CPD means cost per day and is usually a sponsorship, which means that the ad appears all the time and that all the ads on that page/site are from that advertiser. The days usually run consecutively (as in 10 days in a row), but this is not always the case. A special version of this sort of deal is a Homepage Takeover (HPTO), where an advertiser buys all the ads on the homepage for a set period. The purpose of this sort of deal is usually branding, as users of a website are not likely to click on the same set of ads over and over throughout a day. Therefore what the advertiser is really doing is searing their message into the brains of users of that site/webpage, and creating a mental connection between the site’s brand and the advertiser’s brand.

CPD Formula

The CPD equation is:

CPD = Ad Spend ÷ Days

Average Rates

This is too variable to list. The value of a site/page per day entirely depends on the site! Not only the number of impressions but the value of the brand to the advertiser too, as well as the complexity of the deal. All in all, it could be anything.

CPE

What does CPE mean?

CPE stands for Cost Per Engagement. The CPE price is the price that gets paid when an ad is engaged with. An engagement can be anything from pausing or muting a video to submitting contact details. So depending on what the ad is about, these campaigns can pay either very poorly or very well. For example, imagine you build an ad that can show three different cleaning products when swiped by a user, and then book an ad campaign with a $0.20 CPE for 100,000 engagements. This means that every swipe or click a user makes costs you $0.20 and in total, you will owe $20,000 for the campaign.

Work out the Cost Per Engagement of your campaigns with our CPE Calculator >

CPE Definition

CPE means Cost Per Engagement and is a strange combination of a CPC and CPA campaign (and not in fact a mega-romantic subsection of advertising). An engagement is a catch-all term that means any interaction with an ad and therefore is a strange thing to be paying out on. The theory is that the biggest hurdle for advertisers is to get users to notice their ads in the first place, so if they are clicking on ads and taking any action at all, that is a positive. Some advertisers are very careful with this sort of campaign, and will only pay for engagements with some sort of meaning (like playing a video). Others will pay for all engagements including pausing, muting or closing an ad. CPE can also stand for Cost Per Expansion (on expandable ad campaigns), but this is really just a subset of Cost Per Engagement, as the CPE price is paid out on user expanding an ad in this case, which is a type of engagement.

Cost Per Engagement Formula

The CPE equation is:

Cost Per Engagement = Amount Spent ÷ Engagements

Average Rate

Cost Per Engagement can mean too many things to many people, so there isn’t really enough data that is comparable to average out. It’s usually not much, however. According to Quora, it can be about $2, and according to Reddit, you can pay around $0.01. Both of these answers are problematic however as it depends on what engagements you are paying for. As is always the case, you should test to see what works for you. Going for the cheapest engagements you can find is almost certainly not the answer though. If you pay for cheap engagements, you’re probably going to get them from bad leads. And that is ultimately what engagements are about – getting leads to start to be interested in you.

Technical Information

Measuring Cost Per Engagement has become more popular due to the rise of social media. The important thing to note is that you are measuring cost per engagement rather than paying it. Gaining engagements is now often seen as a side-effect rather than a goal. If you are paying on a CPC basis, you may see a column saying you have a CPE that is lower than your CPC. This is because all clicks count as engagements, but engagements aren’t necessarily clicks. Your Cost Per Engagement will always be equal to or lower than your Cost Per Click because of this. For example, if a user clicked the like button under your ad, they will have created an engagement. It’s probable that a user who liked your ad on social media, will then also click on it. This creates two engagements but only one click. As you only pay for the click, in this case, your CPE will be half as much as the CPC.

	Total Cost	Clicks	Cost Per Click	Engagements (inc. Clicks)	Cost Per Engagement
Example Ad 1	$2.50	1	$2.50	2	$1.25
Example Ad 2	$25.00	10	$2.50	25	$1.00

Due to this, it can look tempting to try CPE advertising instead of CPC. However if what you really want is the click, then paying on a Cost Per Engagement basis may mean you end up paying for lots of people to pause your ad instead! It’s best to think of it this way:

With a CPE campaign, you have no control over how many clicks you get.
With a CPC campaign, other engagements with your ad come for free!

Note: If the only engagement you are tracking on a CPE campaign is clicks, then you are actually running a CPC campaign.

CPI

What does CPI mean?

The CPI price is the amount paid per installation of an app on a mobile/cell phone. For example, if you booked a campaign to have your app installed 800 times at a CPI rate of $8 then each install would cost you $8 and in total you would pay $6,400.

Work out the Cost Per Install of your campaigns with our CPI Calculator >

CPI Definition

CPI stands for Cost Per Install and is essentially a type of CPA campaign for apps. It is a new type of pricing model specifically designed to track installations on smartphones of apps. CPI is sometimes used to mean cost per impression but as that is a pretty meaningless value, CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is used far more often. Note: Payments are triggered on installs, not on users getting to an installation page. Therefore the CTR is not a good way to optimise these campaigns, as the Install Rate is between 1-4% (which means only 1-4% of clicks lead to an installation. This makes this type of deal kind of harsh for mobile publishers, however, it is still mostly better than the alternatives (CPM rates on mobiles can be rock bottom).

CPI Formula

The equation to work out the cost per install couldn’t be simpler:

CPI = Ad Spend ÷ Installs

Average Rate

The average Cost Per Install is over $3 apparently, and because of this many mobile ad networks have re-positioned themselves to focus on this type of advertising.

CPL

What does CPL mean?

The CPL price means that every time the advertiser gets a lead (a potential customer’s contact details), the CPL price is paid. For example, if you ran a CPL campaign paying $4 to gather a list of 1,000 people who were interested in buying a PlayStation, you would pay $4,000 dollars once you had 1,000 contact details.

Work out the Cost Per Lead of your campaigns with our CPL Calculator >

CPL Definition

CPL means Cost Per Lead and is a variation of a CPA campaign. A lead is a person who is likely to make a purchase or complete an action. So instead of advertising on a CPA basis and paying for everyone who completes the action, a list of contact details is gathered for use in future marketing.

CPL Formula

The CPL equation is:

CPL = Cost ÷ Leads

Technical Information

Having a list of leads can be more useful than just getting the sales through, as the list can be used time and again for multiple purposes, and even sold onto other companies. A list of customers could, of course, be generated from sales via a CPA campaign (at the advertisers end the data would be anonymised in the ad server so only the website would have this list), however leads can, in fact, be more valuable.

Customers who purchase are signalling their interest in the product in quite a simple way. However, finding people who might buy if they are coaxed a bit more is much more difficult as they won’t necessarily ever signal their interest. That is where CPL campaigns come in.

A CPL campaign generally takes the form of an ad taking a user to a landing page where some sort of action collects their details for the advertiser. This can be in the form of a free sample or trial of a product (if they enter an email address), encouraging signing up to a service for free, or even just asking for their contact details to find out more later. CPL campaigns used to often ask for email addresses in the actual ad itself, however, this is much rarer now as people are more suspicious of advertising.

Note: CPL can also occasionally mean Cost Per Land. Cost Per Land is basically the same as Cost Per Click – it just means that publishers only get paid when a user fully loads up the landing page after clicking on an ad, as opposed to just having to click on it (there can be some discrepancy between these two figures due to loading times).

Average Rate

This is difficult to quantify as it depends on what the lead is for. High value leads for high-value sales will be worth a lot, but that doesn’t mean the CPL rate will be high as the conversion rate might be low. It also depends on who wants who is booking the campaign – if it’s the company that is going to use the lead then a reasonable amount might be paid. If it’s a lead generation company, then they will need to sell the leads on, so will pay as little as possible.

7 Things To Know About CPL:

Find people to buy what you’re selling.
According to Belle Strategies, you can cut your CPL in half (or better) by using Facebook lead gen ads. [Ed – I’ve personally seen CPLs under £2 on Facebook]
Not all leads are created equal. Paying a high CPL for leads that are more likely to lead to a sale makes a lot of sense.
According to Marketing Charts the overall average CPL is $200, ranging from $43 for nonprofits to $370 for IT.
As a lead is not a sale your CPL should be used to work out the effectiveness of your lead gen activity, not the effectiveness of your marketing campaign as a whole.
Cost Per Lead is a subtype of CPA marketing (where the conversion you are buying is a lead). This means you can optimise these campaigns in much the same way.
According to Visitor Queue, Tradeshows/Events have *by far* the highest average CPL, coming in at over $800.

CPM

What does CPM mean?

CPM is an ad pricing model used to buy advertising space, most commonly for display advertising or paid social. It is the amount an advertiser pays per 1,000 ad impressions. Typically for this ad pricing model, a specific amount of ad impressions is booked at a set CPM price (rather than working on a pay-as-you-go model).

So for example, if you purchase 1,000,000 ad impressions at £3 CPM you would pay £3,000 for it. This is because for every £3 you spend, you are getting 1,000 ad impressions.

CPM is the most advantageous type of advertising deal for website owners (in most cases) as you are simply selling ad space, and it doesn’t matter how it performs. Consequently, it’s also usually the worst type of deal for advertisers.

Note: Due to this ad pricing model, 1,000 ad impressions are essentially considered to be one unit of advertising. It’s a convenient measure, as one click in 1,000 ad impressions comes to a CTR of 0.1% which is the overall display advertising average of the internet.

CPM Definition

CPM stands for cost per thousand (as M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). It is one of the three most common ad pricing models used along with CPC and CPA. The impressions referenced are ad impressions — which means one load of an ad. The equation can also be used for page impressions, although that is far less common.

This ad pricing model is the basis of valuing all ad inventory. This is because the best way to compare campaigns (which are using a variety of different pricing models) is to work out an eCPM for each one. eCPM stands for Equivalent Cost Per Thousand and means using the CPM formula to work out the CPM cost of non-CPM campaigns.

Consequently, it makes sense to think of eCPM as the price per kilo of the online advertising world (e.g., an easy way to compare prices across sites and platforms).

Work out the Cost Per Thousand Impressions of your campaigns with our CPM Calculator

The History of CPM

CPM banner advertising was launched in 1995. This was the same year the Internet Advertising Council (now the IAB) launched. This fairly easy-to-understand ad pricing model coupled with easily scale-able ad serving technology meant everyone could get in on the online advertising game. CPM advertising forecasting only depends on inventory levels. Consequently, this meant website owners could now predict how much money they could make fairly easily.

Of course, they weren’t taking into account problems like fill rate or latency, which is why over-estimations of potential profitability were commonplace at the time. This is probably what led to the great dot-com crash, but that’s another story.

Fun Fact: CPM is often reported by other sites as standing for Cost Per Mille. However, we think we might have accidentally made up this definition on an early version of this site! We have since found older sources referring to the M in CPM being there as the Roman numeral for 1,000, however, we have never found someone who said it stood for Cost Per Mille before we first did (in 2012).

CPM Formula

The Cost Per Thousand equation is calculated as:

CPM = (Ad Spend ÷ Ad Impressions) x 1000

Alternate Equations

You can also calculate CPM in the following ways:

Ad Spend multiplied by 1,000, then divide the result by Ad Impressions.
Weird version: CTR multiplied by CPC multiplied by 1,000.

Technical Information

While CPM is the amount paid by advertisers, it is not the amount received by websites. RPM (Revenue Per Thousand) is the website’s revenue equivalent. The difference occurs because of the associated ad serving fees and costs from an ad campaign.

Note: CPM is still often casually used as meaning the same thing as RPM, so always check what someone is referring to if you are confused.

Average CPM Rate

There don’t appear to be any official CPM benchmarks, but unofficially people generally quote between £1–£6 (or approx. $1.50 to $10) for display ads.

Not to be confused with

CPVM — Cost Per Viewed Thousand. This is where viewed impressions are used instead of ad impressions (viewed impressions are ones that were definitely on-screen).
CPV — Cost Per View. This is the price per individual view of something (usually a video). If this was used for display advertising, it would mean paying for each individual ad impression, rather than per 1,000 ad impressions.
RPM — Revenue Per Thousand. This is the amount of revenue a website receives per 1,000 impressions, rather than the amount an advertiser pays. The difference is detailed in the “Technical Information” section above.
eCPM — Equivalent Cost Per Thousand. While this is essentially the same as CPM, the difference is that this is a measure used to compare non-CPM campaigns, and is not an ad pricing model but a metric.

CPV

What does Cost Per View mean?

CPV means the price that gets paid when a video ad is played. In general, the video doesn’t have to be watched the whole way through to cause a payout – just started. In some video advertising models, this price is also paid when someone clicks on a video ad. For example, if you pay $0.25 CPV and book 1,000 views on a site, then you would pay 25 cents every time your video was played, and $250 in total.

Work out the Cost Per View of your campaigns with our CPV Calculator >

CPV Definition

CPV (meaning Cost Per View) is where you pay to have video adverts played. The term Cost Per View has been co-opted by video advertising from its previously dodgy origins. It used to be that Cost Per View referred to Adware – software that would show you ads on your computer (not on the internet). Sometimes this was legitimate and happened during the loading or installation screens of software. Often however the Adware was downloaded without the user realising, which would lead to them being forced to view ads at random times. This practice is thankfully becoming increasingly rare. CPV now refers to video advertising, and in most cases just means the amount you pay to get someone to watch your video. In some cases, it can refer to videos within standard ad units, but it mostly means VOD. Video networks like YouTube are where the majority of this advertising takes place, and like with all focussed ad platforms, they generally offer great service and analytics.

CPV Formula

The equation to work out the cost per view couldn’t be simpler:

CPV = Cost ÷ Views

Average CPV Rate

On YouTube, the average Cost Per View is apparently between $0.10-0.30.

CPvM

What Does CPvM Mean?

Also known as vCPM and CPMv. CPvM advertising is where the CPvM price is the amount that gets paid when an ad is viewed 1,000 times. Viewed is the significant word here, as at least 50% of an ad has to appear on a users screen for one second it to be paid for. For example, if you booked a campaign for 1,000,000 viewed impressions at a CPvM of £4 then for every 1,000 ads that were viewed you would pay £4, and in total you would owe £4,000.

Work out the Cost Per Thousand Viewed Impressions of your campaigns with our CPvM Calculator >

CPvM Definition

CPvM means Cost Per Viewed Thousand (with M being the Roman numeral for 1,000). It is a variation of the CPM ad pricing model. It means that an advertiser only pays when an ad is actually seen 1,000 times, whereas CPM means the advertiser pays for every 1,000 times the ad is loaded. The difference between the two comes from the fact that many ads are placed below the fold, and so if a user does not scroll down, they may not actually see the ad even though it is loaded. This is a relatively new form of ad pricing model, which was intended to solve the problem that CPM ad buys don’t guarantee any level of quality (just quantity). However, while they are commonly used by some ad networks, CPM is still the far more common form of pricing. This is mainly because the definition of a viewable impression is still being argued over. It is also because if this ad pricing model was generally used then websites would be designed with more ads above the fold, and people generally don’t want that!

CPvM Formula

The equation for CPvM (or vCPM) is:

CPvM = (Cost ÷ viewable impressions) x 1000 (it could also be expressed as: CPvM = (Cost ÷ ad impressions) x 1000 x % viewed)

Average Rate

This ad pricing model isn’t widely enough used to have reliable averages. You should expect them to be up to 50% higher than CPM rates, however.

Other names for CPvM (synonyms)

vCPM, Perviewed, CP-VM, CPV M

Not to be confused with

CPV, CPM, VPN

Crawling

Crawling refers to the process where an automated program goes through a website and maps it out for a search engine.

Creative Agency

A Creative Agency is a company that creates advertising on behalf of other companies. They are often a part of larger Advertising Agencies or even Advertising Networks.

Creator Mode

A way to manage posts and assets on LinkedIn for creators.

CRM

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A tool or platform that helps manages a company’s relationship with customers by keeping all relevant data in one place (eg every time they have made a purchase, and every time you have contacted them etc).

Cross-Device Conversion

A way of measuring when someone visits a website on one device, but then only completes a conversion (such as a sale) when on another device. This is useful as many people will research using a phone or tablet, but then make a purchase on a desktop computer.

CSAI

CSAI is when a streaming device (such as a smart TV, gaming console, or streaming USB stick) inserts an ad into a TV show. This only happens on ad-supported streaming channels. This form of ad insertion (where it happens on the device) is susceptible to ad blockers.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a programming language used to make websites.

CT

CT is short for Click-Through. A rarely used acronym, which clever marketing folk think they have invented periodically. A Click-Through is when someone clicks on a link on one webpage and goes to another webpage.

CTOR

CTOR is the acronym for Click-To-Open Rate. It is used to calculate the percentage of people who opened an email and then went on to click a link within it. CTOR is a useful measure of how interesting the content of an email is, specifically in relation to the subject line and preview text of that email. CTOR is often used as the CTR of email marketing, however, this comparison is not quite right for many reasons. The most important two reasons are:

CTOR is the result of clicks on any link in an email, meaning it is essentially many CTRs combined.
People who have opened an email are already ‘open’ to the message within the email. This makes CTORs generally much higher than CTRs in other types of digital marketing.

Note: Opens are specified, as it could instead be Click-To-Delivered Rate (for example). By using Opens, the Click-To-Open Rate is examining whether anyone who had the chance to click, did in fact click.

Work out the CTOR of your emails with our Click-To-Open Rate Calculator >

CTOR Formula

This is the Click-To-Open Rate Equation:

Click-To-Open Rate = Total Clicked x 100 ÷ Total Opens

Technical Information

Since the iOS15 update, Apple Mail opens all emails and also removes the tracking on all link clicks from emails. This has a doubly negative effect on CTOR as it increases the opens, but also reduces the attributed clicks. Apple Mail has a market share of about 12%, so while the effects may be limited it is likely you will notice them in your results.

7 Ideas & Facts About CTOR

Click-To-Open Rate is a way to measure how interested people are in the content of an email (in relation to the subject line and preview text).
CTORs take into account any unique click on *any* link within an email, meaning it is essentially many CTRs combined.
When someone clicks a link in an email, they must have already opened that email! This means they have already shown interest in the email, and this is why CTORs are often so high.
As Click-To-Open Rate is related to the number of times an email is opened, a low Open Rate can inflate your CTOR. Due to this you always need to monitor Open Rate and CTOR together.
While clicks are nice, conversions are always more important. Conversion Rate is, therefore, a much better measure than Click-To_Open Rate for success.
CTR counts all clicks. CTOR counts all clickers (as in people who have clicked – not multiple clicks per person).
Smaller batches of emails often have higher Click-To-Open Rates as they can be more targeted and personalised.

Other Names for CTOR (synonyms)

Clicks per unique opens

CTR

What does CTR mean?

CTR stands for Click-Through Rate. It is the percentage of clicks on a link or ad out of all the times that people saw that link or ad. More formally, CTR is the number of click-throughs divided by the number of impressions (as a percentage). For example, if you get 5 click-throughs from 100 ad impressions that will give you a Click-Through Rate of 5%.

CTR is a common digital marketing metric that can be used for everything from display to search to social to email. It measures performance, but more specifically it measures interest. Out of all the times that someone saw your link, how likely were they to click on it? Used for this purpose it is an incredibly simple and effective way to compare the performance of different channels, campaigns, ads, emails etc.

Why use CTR?

Click-Through Rate is a much better measure of performance than just clicks. If you want to compare campaigns that have had different amounts of impressions, then it is unfair to just look at which had the most clicks. This is because more impressions will usually mean more clicks. Using the Click-Through Rate allows you to see what different campaigns could have achieved if they had the same amount of impressions.

For Example:

Ad One: Seen by 1,257,548 people, and clicked on 748 times
Ad Two: Seen by 555,665 people, and clicked on 611 times

While Ad One received 137 more clicks, it was also seen by 701,883 more people. As a percentage of the number of people who clicked through, Ad One had a CTR of 0.06% while Ad Two had a CTR of 0.11%. Theoretically, if Ad Two had been seen by as many people as Ad One, then it would have received 1,383 click-throughs (635 more).

If the goal of a campaign is to get people to a webpage or app, then CTR is the best way to measure that. This goal is common for brand advertising.

When shouldn’t you use CTR?

If the goal of a campaign is something other than webpage visits then CTR is not the most useful measure to use. You should always focus on your end goal. So if you are running a campaign looking for sales (or any conversion) you should focus on conversion rate, CPA, or ROI (or ROAS) instead. That being said, CTR can still be informative in many cases.

For example:

You run a social media post meant to bring in sales. It receives: 1,400,000 reach, 100 clicks, and 10 conversions.

As this is a conversion-based campaign, it makes sense to look at conversion rate as the primary metric. Social media posts are free, so there is no CPA or ROI to consider. Conversion rate is calculated as conversions divided by clicks — so, in this case, it is 10%. That is not a bad conversion rate. If your reporting stopped there it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

However, the post also had a reach of 1.4 million (which is pretty high) and yet only delivered 10 conversions. If we look at the CTR of this post, we can see that it was only 0.01% (100 divided by 1,400,000 as a percentage). This is very low.

So if you were analysing this campaign you could say that the post was good as it reached so many people. And the landing page was good, as a high percentage of people who arrived there converted. However, the use of a link was poor as very few people who saw the post clicked on it. In this case, Conversion Rate is the primary metric, but as you can see — CTR can still be useful.

Work out the Click-Through Rate of your campaigns with our CTR Calculator >

What does CTR mean?

CTR is a very specific form of engagement rate. In almost all platforms a click counts as an engagement. So while engagement rate is all engagements (including clicks) divided by impressions, Click-Through Rate is only clicks divided by impressions.

The engagement rate is useful to see how interesting a piece of content is. As clicks are arguably the most valuable form of engagement, CTR takes this idea a step further. A good CTR is equivalent to a high engagement rate but it implies more than that. People who click through are interested enough to more than just engage with your content — they are also happy to leave the platform they are on to do it. With most big platforms doing everything they can to keep users from leaving, this is a big step.

A good CTR also implies a high level of trust. While someone might click on something they find interesting, they are much more likely to click if they think there are no nasty surprises waiting at the other end. As internet users are much more likely to buy something from a site they trust, any click is a great first step for trust.

As with all rate metrics, there are three ways to think about CTR:

Retroactively: The percentage of people who clicked.
For Planning: See how long it will take you to hit a target number of clicks.
Level of Interest: If you show this link or ad to someone, how likely are they to click?

CTR Formula

The CTR equation is:

CTR = (Clicks x 100) ÷ impressions

How to Calculate CTR

In general, CTR can be defined as click-throughs divided by impressions. However, what counts as an impression differs depending on the context.

Search

Organic Search Results: An impression is when one of your links loads on a search results page. There can be multiple links from the same site on a search results page, so there are two forms of CTR for search — Site CTR and Page CTR.

Page CTR is the percentage of clicks on a specific result out of the number of impressions it received.
Site CTR is the percentage of a click on any result from the same website from a specified set of search results or queries.

Search Ads: An impression is recorded each time one of your ads loads. As there is only ever one search ad from an advertiser on any one page, it is simply clicks divided by impressions.

Display

Display Ads: An impression is counted any time an ad loads. The CTR for a specific ad is the number of clicks it received divided by the number of ad impressions. As there can be multiple ads on a page, ad platforms often also report a “Page CTR”. This means the percentage of clicks on any ad on a page divided by page views.

Video Ads: An impression is recorded each time a video plays, and so the CTR is the number of click-throughs on a video divided by video views. Some video ads will have click events built in to choose an option of how the video proceeds. These clicks are different to click-throughs — a click-through is only recorded when someone leaves the page they are on. If there are multiple click-throughs on a video (or in the description), you can either measure them all together or individually (there are no standard names for either of these).

Social

Organic Social Media: The measurement of impressions differs slightly depending on which social media platform is used. X (Twitter) will measure an impression when a tweet is loaded (even if it is off-screen), while LinkedIn only measures post impressions if a post is at least 50% on-screen for 300 milliseconds. Regardless, CTR is always measured roughly the same — the number of click-throughs divided by the number of impressions (however they are measured).

Social Media Ads: Social media ads are once again quite simple — if an ad loads it counts as an impression. So social media ads’ CTR is click-throughs divided by impressions.

Email

Email: Email typically uses CTOR rather than CTR as a measure. However, if you are using CTR for email then it is measured as clicks divided by delivered emails. It is generally measured by link, as well as overall (although there are no specific names for either of these). CTOR is clicks per open instead — which makes it more in line with the other measures of CTR.

Content

Blog Posts: CTR is rarely used as a measure for blog posts, but if you want you can use it by simply dividing clicks by page views. This can be for individual links or by adding all the outbound link clicks together.

Note: A click-through does not necessarily mean that someone arrived at your website, all it means is that someone clicked at the other end. For various technical reasons, there will almost always be a discrepancy between people who clicked and people who visited your site.

Average CTR (Benchmarks)

What makes a good Click-Through Rate is different depending on what medium you are talking about, as well as what industry you are in.

To give you a general guide, here are some rough overall Click-Through Rates:

Paid Search Benchmark: 2.5% is the minimum you should aim for on platforms such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. 5%+ Click-Through Rate is very good.
Display Ads Benchmark: The overall average for Display ads is around 0.3%, however, that number is skewed by the vast majority of Display ads doing terribly! If you can beat 0.3% then you’re doing something right. Over 1% is very good.
Video Ads Benchmark: 10% is ok for a video ad — and you could honestly expect 20–30% for most reasonably well-made ads.
AdSense: Apparently most blogs get between 0.5–3% CTR from AdSense, so therefore a good Click-Through Rate is 5%+.
Paid Social Benchmark: The overall average is about 1% for Paid Social. However, there are so many types of ads on different platforms this is a very rough benchmark. For most advertisers, a click-through rate of 2%+ could be considered good. Honestly, though it is not out of the question to see 20%–30% on Facebook Ads.
Email Marketing Benchmark: With emails, CTOR is used instead (which measures clicks against opens instead of delivered emails). A good CTOR is between 20–40%. This is much higher than most Click-Through Rates simply because it’s a biased metric — for someone to click on a link in an email they have to have already opened the email. This means they are already interested in what you have to say, so clicks are much more likely!

Other names for CTR (synonyms)

Click-Through Rate, Click Rate

Not to be confused with

Clicks, CTOR, View-through Rate, Crash Team Racing

CTV

Any time video is streamed to a big screen (eg a smart TV). This term is useful in determining the type of video ad that should be displayed.

Cumulative Layout Shift

Cumulative Layout Shift is one of Google’s Core Web Vital metrics, which is to be used as a ranking factor for Google search. CLS measures how much content unexpectedly moves after a webpage loads. This is one of the most annoying problems on the internet, and is explained by this gif from Google: Cumulative Layout Shift is the easiest to understand out of Google’s Core Web Vitals. However, there are some nuances in how it is measured. Google’s guide on CLS can be found here.

Cumulative Layout Shift Definition

CLS measures the unexpected movement of content after a page begins to load. The key point here is that the movement has to be unexpected. Animations and smooth transitions are not counted by this metric. If a piece of content loads, and then is moved from its initial position by another piece of content loading, then this counts towards CLS. In order to quantify this, Google combines two other metrics: Impact Fraction and Distance Fraction. Here is the formula for Cumulative Layout Shift:

Layout Shift Score = Impact Fraction x Distance Fraction

Impact Fraction Definition

Impact Fraction measures the percentage of a page which is affected by the layout shift. This image from Google explains how it works: In the image, the piece of content on the left is moved down the screen by something else loading. The Impact Fraction is where the content originally was, plus where the content moves to. The red dotted line shows this. The impact fraction is the percentage of the screen (expressed as a decimal) within the red dotted line. In this case, 75% of the screen is affected, so the Impact Fraction is 0.75.

Distance Fraction Definition

Distance Fraction is how far content is shifted (from where it first appears) by other content. The distance is measured as the percentage of the screen which the content moves from when it first loads. Again, here is an image from Google explaining it: In this image, a piece of content loads and then is shifted down the screen by other content loading. The arrow in the right image shows how far the content has been shifted down – and this is the Distance Fraction. In this example, the content has moved 25% down the screen, so the Distance Fraction is 0.25. Google originally only used Impact Fraction for CLS, but added distance fraction to take into account large piece of content moving only a small amount.

Levels of CLS Performance

As with all Core Web Vitals, Google has created three tiers of performance for this metric:

Good = Up to 0.1
Needs Improvement = Over 0.1 and up to 0.25
Poor = Over 0.25

Google categories performance by considering what occurs for the 75th percentile of users.

Technical Information

Outside of the equation for CLS, it is a fairly straightforward concept – don’t let things move after they load. This can most easily be achieved by setting

or containers with the specified height of items that load late. It should also be noted that:

Items that change size or load late but which do not move other pieces of content do not contribute to your CLS score
Using the ‘transform’ CSS property will exclude items from being counted as part of a CLS score
CLS is about unexpected shifts in content. To this end, shifts that occur with 500 milliseconds of user input do not count. That is to say if someone clicks on something and it expands then that is fine!

Top Tip

Take this seriously! Content moving after a page loads is a serious blight on the internet. We have all read articles that keep flicking up or down as ads appear in content off-screen, so you should know how annoying this is. Annoying websites drive away visitors.

Customer Acquisition Cost

The amount it costs to gain a new customer (the total sales & marketing costs per customer gained). CAC is an important metric to ensure profitability (ie customers must earn you more than they cost).

DAGMAR

DAGMAR stands for “”defining advertising goals for measured advertising results””. While it was a method that was created in 1961, it has incredible relevance to online advertising, especially with less targeted (and measurable) advertising options becoming more popular.

Daisy-Chaining

Daisy-Chaining in online advertising is the process of passing ad calls from one Ad Network to another via the use of defaults. The order in which the Ad Networks are used is often referred to as “”The Waterfall”” as in “”that network is doing well, so we should move them up in the waterfall””.

Dark Patterns

Dark Patterns are techniques used by websites and apps to trick their users into taking an action they wouldn’t have otherwise taken. There are many simple examples of dark patterns that you have probably experienced yourself:

A single purchase in fact being a subscription so you are charged monthly instead of just once
Tickboxes to opt-in to another form of marketing communication using confusing language (eg “”untick this is you don’t want to not receive an email””)
Parts of the screen moving at the last moment so you click on the wrong thing
Close buttons so small that you click an ad when you are trying to close it

Dark Patterns can be considered the Black Hat version of UX design. As with all Black Hat plans, they prioritise short term victories over long term growth. You may be able to trick some people into doing what they don’t mean to, but those people:

will be annoyed by you
will use your website or app less
won’t recommend you to others

Communities and reputations are hard to build but easy to destroy. Don’t use dark patterns. You can find out more about dark patterns here.

Dark Posts

A post on social media that is not published to your feed or timeline, but is used as an ad. This means it is not searchable (outside of ad libraries).

Dark Social

Traffic from social media platforms that doesn’t contain any referral information so cannot be categorised by analytics programs. For example, when someone clicks on a link on an Instagram profile it is reported as “”Direct”” traffic in analytics programs.

Dark Traffic

Dark Traffic means traffic where the referrer is unknown. It includes links from secure sites and any source which doesn’t include information about where it came from (such as links in SMS messages, or links copied directly into the browser bar).

Dayparting

Dayparting refers to optimising by the hour of the day (splitting a day into parts).

Deduplication

Deduplication (or de-duping) results is an action that occurs to the reports for CPA campaigns and means ensuring that two different companies don’t both get paid for the same sale. For example, if a user sees an ad on two different sites, one after another, and then goes and buys the product, assuming the advertiser is paying on PI conversions, then theoretically both sites have earned commission. Advertising Agencies, therefore, have to de-dupe the data to ensure that only the last place a user saw the ad gets paid.

Default Ad

A Default Ad is an ad that shows when no other ad is available from an ad server due to targeting restrictions, or even just because no ads are available. They are commonly used for House Ads, Remnant network code, or PSAs.

Delisted Ad Unit

A display ad unit that is no longer commonly in use to the point where the IAB no longer lists details about it.

Deliverables

The specific tangible results of a project. In marketing, deliverables can mean things like images, ads, strategies, videos etc. When working with a third party (such as an influencer) it is a good idea to specify the deliverables so that everyone knows what is expected.

Demand Generation

A type of marketing that focuses on increasing demand for a product or service, rather than marketing the product or service directly. For example, an email newsletter about the importance of car maintenance would increase the demand for tune-ups at car garages.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic Segmentation refers to splitting up an audience by their demographics. This is useful when trying to target a specific demographic – eg you are selling a moustache comb so want to target males over 18.

Demographics

Demographics are factors such as age, race, gender, sex, location which are often used to break statistics down in order to find trends.

Detractors

Detractors is a term used when calculating Net Promoter Score. It refers to people who have been asked “”on a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend a product (with 10 being the highest)”” and have scored 0-6. These people are referred to as detractors, as they are likely to tell other people about how bad they think the product or service is.

Device Targeting

Device targeting is the process of making ads deliver on a specific type of computer – be it mobile, desktop or tablet.

DFP

DFP stands for DART for Publishers and was Google’s Ad Server. There was a version for large ad networks, as well as a free version (DFP small business) for small sites. In June 2018 Google announced it was combining DfP with its Analytics 360 platform to launch Google Marketing Platform.

Digital Content Next

Digital Content Next (DCN) is the new name for the OPA. A non-profit trade association for the digital content industry.

Digital Marketer

A person who undertakes marketing activities via the internet. This can include:

Email Marketing
SEO
Paid Search
Display Advertising
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing
Digital Analytics
Influencer Marketing

And more…

Digital Marketing

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing simply means any type of marketing which is done online. It is a rough grouping of channels that started because when the internet was new, a more technically savvy type of marketer was needed to get things working online. The term persists because digital marketing is still not quite the same as marketing in general. Let me explain. Digital marketing is a subset of marketing, and marketers should all have digital in their mix at this point. But being a digital marketer is a specialism. Marketing is about convincing people to do something.

Digital marketing is also about convincing people, but it has a much stronger focus on how a message is delivered than marketing in general. This is because algorithms and settings within platforms are a much bigger part of how digital marketing works. The medium used for marketing has always been important of course, it’s just never been so complex before.

I’ll put it this way – a great marketer can craft a great message that will convince anyone of anything. A great digital marketer can take a mediocre message and make it compete with that great message.

Types of Digital Marketing

Please note, this is an incomplete list. Partially because digital marketing keeps growing and changing, and partially because marketers in general like making up new words for old things!

Affiliate Marketing
Analytics
Behavioural Targeting
Branding
Cause Marketing
Charity Comms
Content Marketing
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
Digital PR
Display Advertising
eCommerce
Email Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Lead Generation
Local SEO
Mobile Marketing
Native Advertising
Paid Search
Paid Social
Podcast Advertising
SEO
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
User Experience (UX)
Video Advertising
Viral Marketing
Web Design

Direct Mail

A type of marketing where a letter or piece of promotional material is sent through the post with a specific ask attached. For example, a charity sending a letter explaining how it needs funds for a project. Many organisations also refer to emails as direct mail (or DM), although this is not strictly accurate.

Direct Message

An internal message on a social network (such as Twitter). Often abbreviated to DM, it is now commonly used to simply mean privately contacting someone (as opposed to publicly on a social network). For example, if you posted on a company’s timeline about a problem you were having with their service, they might request that you DM them to discuss it further.

Discord

Discord is a chatroom app popular with gamers, which is often described as a social media platform.

Discovery Ads

Discovery Ads are native ads from Google Ads that appear on YouTube, Gmail, the Google App, and the homepage of Google.com (on mobile).

Discrepancy

Discrepancy Definition

Discrepancy means an unexpected (or unexplainable) difference between two sets of information. Unfortunately, in digital marketing, a discrepancy is always to be expected between any two sets of analytics platforms.

What does a discrepancy mean?

A discrepancy between the results between different analytics platforms does not mean much in and of itself. In fact, it is generally to be expected, as all analytics programs work slightly differently and so will record different results. You would expect discrepancies between platforms to stay roughly steady. If the discrepancy changes dramatically then you should start to be concerned. For example, if you are tracking links the difference between results from Google Analytics and Bit.ly is 10% every month, but then shoots up to 20% then you should investigate. In this way, a discrepancy can be useful.

What causes a discrepancy

Discrepancies are to be expected in digital marketing because, although they often use the same terminology to describe a stat (eg “”Page View””) different analytics programs will often measure these items slightly differently. For example, one platform may measure when a page starts to load while another will measure when a page finishes loading. If all goes well, these two platforms will record the same thing. However, with such a huge combination of websites, browsers, computers, etc there is huge scope for things going wrong.

This means that while all tracking may work for most users, it is very unlikely it will work perfectly for all users. A user may leave the page before one set of tracking loads, or one set of tracking may be blocked. When these small issues are measured across a large number of users, the difference in stats will become large.

Technical Information

If you’re still wondering why a discrepancy is occurring between your analytics platforms, there are simply too many reasons to list them all. It is certainly not the case that there is always someone to blame. Many times a discrepancy occurs simply due to a unique set of circumstances. In general, you would expect discrepancies between different analytics platforms to remain somewhat stable. This doesn’t mean that month-on-month you should see exactly the same discrepancies occurring, but there should be a stable range (5-10% for example). However, if you start seeing this range dramatically change, then there is likely a problem that needs addressing. Here is a list of some (but not all) reasons why discrepancies might occur:

A user leaves before a page fully loads
One or more set(s) of tracking is incorrectly implemented
Tracking doesn’t work on some devices/browsers
A changing element of the site (eg advertising) affects tracking, meaning it is disrupted sometimes but not others
Geo-targeting means some element of tracking is occasionally disrupted
An update to some part of the system has broken some tracking
A large increase in traffic to a site has overwhelmed servers
Ad-blockers
Two sets of tracking interact oddly
A tracking service is being blocked by some ISPs
A large image (or another element) means a page loads slowly and times-out
An analytics platform is sampling data and making educated guesses as opposed to measuring every user

Advice For Website Owners

Choose an analytics platform and stick with it when reporting. If you report Google Analytics one month, make sure you use it again next month. Otherwise, you are adding in a level of randomness for no reason. The platform you choose should be accurate enough that you can consider it your ‘single point of truth’. No platform is 100% accurate, but consistency is the key here.

When selling advertising, again use consistent stats for reporting. In most cases the advertiser or ad network will have a preferred method (often Comscore) for reporting, so make sure you consistently use that. The advertiser’s stats will also be inconsistent with yours. You should ensure that you get reports sent over from the advertiser throughout campaigns (from within one week of launch). On top of this make sure you agree beforehand which (and whose) stats you are using to record information. This will help you make sure you do not think you are hitting all your targets, only to find out the advertiser is refusing to pay for anything as their analytics don’t work.

In the USA it is standard to use advertisers’ reporting for payments, but in the UK it is still mostly standard to use publisher or ad network stats. There are exceptions to the rule in both cases. Advertisers will, of course, want to use their stats, and agreeing to do so can help you close deals. However, if you do agree to this, you should plan in at least a 20% buffer zone (as in sell 20% less inventory than you think you have). Keep checking their stats against yours throughout any campaign and adjust delivery accordingly. This is the only way to make sure you don’t under-deliver.

You should note that conversion data is especially prone to discrepancies. This is because the advertiser will be de-duping data, whereas you will not. This means the advertiser will almost always be recording fewer conversions than you are. Sharing reporting is therefore especially important in CPA campaigns.

Advice For Ad Buyers

Ask for regularly scheduled reports from anywhere you advertise to minimise discrepancies. It is, of course, advantageous for you to insist that any campaigns you run are paid out based on your own third-party reporting. This can be a large concession for website owners/ad networks so treat it as such — you are essentially asking for up to a 20% bump in inventory. This is because while your reporting may more accurately record how many times your ad is shown or clicked on, it will likely have lower numbers than the publisher records. This is because your tracking pixels will load after the publisher’s in most cases.

It should be noted that demanding to use your own statistics for billing will also hamper publishers’ optimisation efforts. If they are optimising towards clicks, for example, they won’t be able to optimise towards the clicks you record, only the ones that they do. To try and keep campaigns running as well as possible, you should definitely provide as much reporting as you are comfortable with. This includes broad stats from other people you are advertising with (if you are happy with that) as this helps create competition between the publishers you are working with.

It may seem like getting this extra inventory is a nice bonus, but if you take advantage of the system too much it will backfire. Publishers and ad networks will be measuring their own eCPMs to check if your campaigns are worth it. Trying to pull a fast one on the people you work with (especially if they provide good performance) is not a good business strategy.

Please note: Conversion data is especially prone to discrepancies, as you will be de-duping data, whereas the publisher will not. Therefore sharing reports is especially important, as you want the publisher to be working towards as many conversions as possible.

Other names for discrepancy (synonyms)

These are some other words people might use to mean discrepancy:

Variance
Difference
Disparity
Deviation

Display Advertising

The generic term used to describe image-based online advertising such as the use of 160x600s, 300x250s and 728x90s. Also known as Banner Advertising. This is a term taken from print advertising.

Disqus

A commenting plugin that can be used on any website which requires users to create profiles. Often described as a social media platform.

DMP

A way to combine data from multiple sources to analyze and segment it. These are becoming more commonplace in marketing since the clampdown on cookies has meant Google Analytics and other data sources are becoming less reliable.

Dogfooding

A phrase referring to the idea of Dog Food makers should test their own dog food (presumably on their dogs). For Digital Marketing this means testing out content and messaging internally before releasing it to the public, which can help avoid embarrassing mistakes.

DOM Ready Time

The amount of time it takes for a browser to actually receive the HTML code (pre-loading the page).

Double Opt-in

An Opt-In process where after a user has entered their details, they have to take a further action to confirm. For example, after submitting an email address to receive an email newsletter, being emailed by the same company with a confirmation email that contains a link that must be clicked before you are actually on their email marketing list. While this is an annoying system, it does lead to much better email marketing lists. By forcing a confirmation process, mistyped email addresses are automatically excluded, and bots have a much more difficult time.

Downweight

Downweight is a term used when optimising ads. It means reducing the appearance of an ad on badly performing ad placements so as to improve the overall performance of a campaign. The opposite of downweighting is upweighting – moving more budget to better performing ad placements.

Downweight Example

An ad for a new and revolutionary type of cheese is running on 5 different websites. After a month the budget for the ad spend is being reviewed, and the following results are reported from the 5 sites:

cheddar.com – conversion rate = 3.4%
brie.com – conversion rate = 2.2%
montereyjack.com – conversion rate = 4.7%
baluchon.com – conversion rate = 4.1%
paneer.com – conversion rate = 5.2%

Note: It should go without saying – these results are not real. Apologies to any of these websites if they are real. To improve conversion rates, cheddar.com and brie.com are downweighted – meaning budget is moved away from them to better-performing sites. In this case, brie.com would probably be cut out altogether, while cheddar.com would at least be given a smaller budget. By doing this, the conversion rate will (almost certainly) improve simply because less money will be spent on bad performing sites.

Top Tip

When possible, tell a website that it is performing badly before cutting its budget. Often a threat of losing money will encourage a site to pay more attention to your campaign and work out ways to improve performance. This works doubly well if you share your performance target with the site, so they have something to aim for.

7 Ways To Think About Downweighting

Don’t keep spending money on bad ad placements.
It’s not just for websites, you can downweight categories, hours of the day (or days of the week), devices – ANYTHING that isn’t performing well should get less budget.
Before cutting your ad budget for a website, tell them they are underperforming. It’s amazing what the threat of losing money can (sometimes) do to your performance.
It’s one of the simplest and most effective ways of optimising ad campaigns.
Before cutting advertising budget to a site, try things like tightening targeting to ATF placements, or adding a frequency cap.
Downweighting works best when you apply it as granularly as possible (eg – don’t stop advertising on a whole site, just on the pages or sections that aren’t working).
More colloquially known as “”trimming the fat”” off of an ad campaign.

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)…

Upweight

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a type of business that doesn’t manage any stock directly, but instead manages sales and marketing, while outsourcing the manufacture and distribution.

DSP

A DSP (or Demand Side Platform) is a type of RTB Ad Network in which Ad Agencies input how much they want to pay for an ad campaign, and then publishers come and bid to get the business.

DTC

DTC stands for Direct-to-Consumer. A type of business that markets & sells directly to its customers (as opposed to going through a middleman such as a physical retail store). eCommerce businesses often use this model.

Duck Duck Go

A search engine with a focus on privacy in that it doesn’t personalise results, and doesn’t track users behaviour.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It was updated from E-A-T in December 2022 to include Experience. E-E-A-T (or double E-A-T if you like) It is a concept that Google’s Quality Raters use when testing the search results to judge whether a website and the author of a page knows what they are talking about. Quality Raters are the workforce who manually check Google search results in order to see if their algorithms are doing what Google hopes it is doing. While E-E-A-T is mentioned repeatedly in the Quality Rates Guide, there is no consensus as to whether it is actually a ranking factor. All that can be said for certain is that if you don’t demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, then the pages you write may be marked as low quality. This won’t directly affect your ranking (as Quality Raters don’t manually change rankings) but does mean you are susceptible to losing ranking when there is an algorithm update.

Top Tips

One simple way to check your E-E-A-T is to Google your name along with your area of expertise (e.g. “”Albert Einstein”” Physics) and see how many high-quality and relevant sites mention you, and how many news articles mention you. In both cases, more is better! On top of that, you should make sure your website makes it clear who is responsible for the content, and that ads and other functionality don’t make the site hard to use. E-E-A-T is especially important for YMYL sites (Your Money or Your Life), which mainly include medical, legal, and financial-based websites. However, the actual definition of YMYL sites in the Quality Raters Guide is any site that gives any important advice or sells anything (as they handle credit card details), meaning that most websites come under the YMYL definition.

7 Things To Know About E-E-A-T

It’s not enough to be an Expert on a subject according to Google, you also have to be listened to by your niche AND trusted.
Quality Inbound links are one of the best ways to improve your E-E-A-T.
There are thousands of Quality Raters employed by Google, and they can’t be expected to know about every subject. E-E-A-T is a method that lets them assess how good a site is on a topic without knowing about it.
E-E-A-T has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until Google’s “”Medic Update”” in 2018 that it really came to the fore, when Google de-ranked medical experts whose expertise was questionable.
Trustworthiness also encompasses technical security. Having a site with a security certificate (https://) is a big step in the right direction.
If you allow Guest Posts, make sure they are experts on their subject matter. “”Content Writer”” as a job title doesn’t imply any expertise on any subject (other than Content Marketing).
According to the Quality Raters Guide, a slightly negative reputation can really damage your E-E-A-T. Be nice!

EARL

A metric on Facebook Ads which uses surveys to see whether people remember seeing an ad within the past two days. This can be helpful when trying to use ads for branding purposes.

Earned Media

Also known as Free Media, Earned Media is advertising that was inspired rather than placed or paid for. For example, a press release could inspire websites to write stories about an advertiser. In digital marketing, a 2nd order link is a prime example of earned media.

EASA

EASA stands for European Advertising Standards Alliance which is a self-regulatory body for advertisers across Europe.

eCommerce

eCommerce refers to buying or selling goods or services online, as well as online transactions. Sometimes written as e-commerce, it can also refer to:

Online shops themselves (eg “”Amazon is an eCommerce site””)
The business model of buying/selling/paying online (eg “”We are funded by eCommerce””)
Analytics related to financial transactions through a website (eg “”Our eCommerce conversion rate increased 10% Week-on-Week””)

While online transactions represent a much easier way for consumers to buy things, it is not so simple from the seller’s side (at least at the beginning). There are many technical challenges around setting up an online store, as well as intense digital marketing challenges due to how competitive the online space is. Due to this eCommerce is considered a unique strand of digital marketing in and of itself.

Top Tip

Sites that sell things are categorised as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) – which means that Google’s Quality Raters will take a close look at your E-A-T credentials. This is a core part of SEO for eCommerce.

7 Key Points About eCommerce

Early adopters don’t necessarily win with eCommerce. Pizza Hut has been selling online since 1994, while Blockbuster subscriptions started in 2004.
26% of shoppers will abandon their cart if forced to register with that site as part of the checkout process.
Almost half (46%) of consumers rely on recommendations on social media when making a purchasing decision. 90% rely on online reviews!
Almost three quarters (71%) of shoppers believe they can get a better deal online than on the high street.
88% of shoppers say that detailed product description pages are extremely important, and 70% prioritize being able to zoom in on products.
More than 2/3rds of eCommerce traffic comes from smartphones.
According to research, when three abandoned cart emails are sent to consumers conversions more than double (+131%). Note – you should only send abandoned care emails if you have permission from the user.

eCommerce Conversion

An online sale. A subset of conversion in general, which don’t have to be sales or money related (eg newsletter signups).

eCommerce Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of online sales (as opposed to other types of conversions).

ECPC

In Google Ads, ECPC stands for Enhanced Cost Per Click and is a setting where clicks are targeted, but clicks that are likely to gain conversions are given priority. It is a kind of halfway option between CPC and CPA advertising.

eCPE

Effective Cost Per Engagement. This term is used when a cost per engagement is being calculated for anything where an engagement was not directly paid for. It helps to compare CPE and non-CPE campaigns effectiveness when engagements were the goal.

eCPM

eCPM is like the cost per kilo of online advertising pricing. It is effectively what you would have paid for advertising if you were using a CPM model. If you want to compare different ad pricing models, then you should work them back to an eCPM to see which one is best. By doing this you are working out what the best price you can get for 1,000 impressions is. (ie if you are running a CPC, CPA and CPM campaign altogether, you translate them all into their eCPM value and then you can see what is making you the most money).

Work out the effective CPM of your campaigns with our eCPM Calculator >

What does eCPM mean?

It stands for effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions (with M being the Roman numeral for 1,000), or sometimes equivalent Cost Per Thousand (they are the same thing). To work it out you need to know how many ad impressions have been used, as well as the total cost. For both, these are the total values used (see below).

eCPM Formula

The effective cost per thousand equation is basically the same as CPM:

eCPM = (Ad Spend x 1000) ÷ Ad impressions

Average Rate

The average CPM rate for 2015 is around $3 (about £2) – between £1 – £6 (approx. $1.50 to $10) is probably a reasonable range for display ads.

Top Tip

Some ad networks will try and reduce the number of impressions they say they have used. They do this by telling you their fill rate to inflate their eCPM. Don’t let them off the hook that easily! If you give an ad network 1,000,000 impressions, even if they only filled 10% of them, use the full 1,000,000 to work out their effective CPM. Similarly, for the amount of money you made, be sure to always calculate the money you are paying/receiving after any fees/commission have been taken by the ad platform. Otherwise, you are comparing apples with oranges.

7 Things To Know About eCPM

If you are paying for different bits of advertising in different ways, use eCPM to directly compare costs.
Don’t be confused when being paid for clicks, conversions, and video views at the same time. Translate how much everything costs into an eCPM so you can compare them directly.
If you are being paid for different bits of advertising in different ways, use eCPM to directly compare who is paying the most.
Don’t be confused when running CPA, CPV, CPC, & CPD campaigns at the same time. Translate how much everything costs into an eCPM so you can compare them directly.
eCPM can be used as an acronym for Effective Cost Per Thousand, Equivalent Cost Per Thousand, Equal Cost Per Thousand, or even sometimes (foolishly) as Electronic Cost Per Thousand.
The existence of eCPM implies that eCPC, eCPE, eCPA etc exist also, but no-one uses any of those other phrases.
eCPM can be used interchangeably with CPM at this point. There used to be a reason to differentiate between the two, but that time has long past.

Other names for eCPM (synonyms)

effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions, equivalent Cost Per Thousand

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Not to be confused with

CPM

Efficacy

Efficacy means somethings ability to produce the intended result. In online advertising, it is virtually synonymous with effectiveness. The difference between efficacy and effectiveness is that efficacy is whether or not something worked (eg drove sales), whereas effectiveness is how well it works (eg drove more/fewer sales).

Email Bounce Rate

Email Bounce Rate is the percentage of emails sent which weren’t delivered. In general terms – the higher the bounce rate, the worse your email marketing list.

What Does Email Bounce Rate Mean?

When an email bounces it means that the recipient email address has not accepted the email. This can happen for many reasons. Email providers will count all of the bounces that occur and show them as a percentage of all the email addresses that you attempted to contact. This is your bounce rate. Note: Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among email platforms for what we should call the total number of attempted emails sent. Some platforms call it “”Attempted”” and some call it “”Sent”” but the majority seem to avoid using any word at all. We shall be using ‘attempted’ in the below definition.

Work out the Bounce Rate of your emails with our Email Bounce Rate Calculator >

Email Bounce Rate Equation

Here is the formula to calculate the bounce rate for emails:

Email Bounce Rate = (Bounces ÷ Attempted) x 100

What Does “”Bounce”” Mean For Emails?

What the error message looks like will change depending on the email provider of the recipient, as well as the reason for the email not being deliverable. However, this is an example of a bounced email. If you are sending emails via an email service provider to many recipients at once, they will group all of these bounces so they can report on them. There are two types of bounces that can occur: Hard Bounces: This type of bounce tells you that you cannot email this address anymore. The problem which ‘bounced’ your email is likely permanent:

the email address has been shut down
the domain name the email address is using doesn’t exist
your email address has been blocked (by the recipient or their email server),

Soft Bounces: This type of bounce can be thought of as being a temporary problem. Common reasons for soft bounces include:

The email addresses inbox is full and can’t accept your email
Your email was too large for the inbox to accept
The recipient’s email server was temporarily down

Keeping Your Email Marketing List Tidy

The size of your email marketing list is often a KPI of a business. Email marketing is one of the most powerful forms of digital marketing, and the size of your email list determines how many people you can contact. If your emails are not being delivered, however, then there is likely something wrong with your email marketing list. Emails that hard bounce are ones that you cannot contact. Including them on your email marketing list is at best self-deception, and at worst self-destructive. To understand how well you are doing, you should know how many email addresses you can actually contact. Keeping email addresses on your list which you cannot contact is meaningless. Worst than that, continually contacting email addresses that bounce can have your domain marked as spam, meaning that even fewer of your emails will actually be delivered. You should periodically “”clean”” your email marketing list of all hard bounces to stop this from happening.

How To Use Bounce Rate To Optimise Email Marketing

By monitoring the bounce rate of your campaigns you can get a sense of whether your email list is working well or not. Assuming you ‘clean’ your email marketing list of hard bounces then the number of hard bounces you receive should be going down (and therefore your bounce rate). If it isn’t, this means that your emails are likely being marked as spam. To stop this from happening, you should re-examine the format and subject lines of your emails. Do they sound spammy? You should also make sure that you are only contacting people you definitely have permission to contact. For soft bounces, the main thing you can do is ensure that your emails aren’t too large. Optimise images by compressing them both in terms of dimensions and file size. Don’t add too many images in the first place either! If you are using code to format your email, keep it to the minimum. A bad bounce rate is a serious problem for email marketing, so monitor it and keep taking action to push it down.

Email Bounce Rate Benchmark

According to Mailchimp, the average soft bounce rate is 0.58% and the average hard bounce rate is 0.4%. Most email marketing platforms only provide a single figure – meaning the overall bounce rate would be 0.98%. The best benchmark is always your own previous performance, so you should try to improve your bounce rate from email to email. However, if you are looking for a way to compare yourself to others, having a bounce rate of under 1% is the thing to aim for.

Email List

Often referred to as an Email Marketing List. A list of email addresses that a company gathers (and keeps) that they can email for one reason or another. Since the introduction of GDPR, when collecting email addresses from Europeans you need to get explicit consent for what that email address is to be used for. This means that you may not ask for an email address in order to confirm a sale, but then email them with marketing messages. You must only use emails gathered for the things the user has given consent for, and you must always use opt-in consent – not opt-out (as in people must actively agree to something, not untick a box to say they don’t want it).

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is the process of sending out emails en masse with a marketing message. It is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, and is also still one of the most successful.

Email Service Provider

In marketing, an Email Service Provider (or ESP) is a company that offers email marketing services. The main difference between an ESP and an email client is that an Email Service Provider allows a much larger quantity of email to be sent for marketing purposes. Basic functionalities of an ESP include:

email templates
subscriber list management
message distribution
statistics and reports

Some Email Service Providers also offer advanced functions such as message automation, responsive layout, advanced list maintenance, and more.

What are the benefits of using ESP?

Some benefits of using ESP include:

1. Protect you from being blacklisted.

When emails are sent in bulk, you are at risk of being marked as a spammer. Major ISPs will block your entire company domain from sending any future email if you are identified as a spammer and that will cause interruption to your email marketing campaigns. One of the biggest advantages of using an ESP is that it will prevent you from facing these types of problems.

2. Help you stay in compliance with email regulations

Another benefit of using Email Service Provider is that it helps you stay in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, an American law that sets rules for commercial email. Most ESPs are in compliance with such email regulation and will help prevent you from facing any CAN-SPAM Act related violations and penalties.

3. Assist in subscriber list management

Email Service Providers give you tools to manage your mailing list automatically. When people subscribe or unsubscribe to your newsletter, the tool will help update your mailing list. Moreover, some ESPs offer functions that can segment your subscribers to better assist your email marketing campaign.

Work out the Bounce Rate of your emails with our Email Bounce Rate Calculator >

4. Provide campaign tracking and analytics

Another benefit of using an Email Service Provider is that it will help you analyze the overall performance of your email marketing campaign through its tracking and analytics tools. You will be shown the percentage of subscribers that opened, forwarded, clicked, or exited your marketing messages. When emailing from your own email address, bounces can be particularly difficult to address. ESPs will group bounces into different categories, and make them easier to understand (and fix).

5. Provide creative templates

Most ESPs provide visually appealing templates for you to craft email campaigns that will get your subscribers’ attention. This will save you both time and work.

Top Free Email Service Providers

Here are some of the top free email service providers to get you started:

Sendinblue
ConvertKit
Mailchimp
AWeber
MailerLite

Synonyms for Email Service Provider

Email Marketing Platform. Email Marketing Service Provider

Emoji

A standard set of small images that can be added to messages and posts that is used to express an idea or emotion.

End User

The person who actually uses a website, product, or service. It is important to keep a focus on End Users as they will ultimately decide on success or failure.

Engagement

An Engagement is any sort of interaction with content. For example on a video it would include pausing the video, resizing the screen or changing the volume. It is mainly used as a Social Media metric but is also used with traditional online advertising.

What does Engagement mean?

The term engagement within marketing is over 100 years old. It is part of a sales strategy that is popular to this day called AIDA. This stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (now sometimes expanded to AIDAS). The strategy comes from a time when salespeople had to inform customers what a product was before encouraging them to buy. This would involve several stages of engaging people to get them into the right mental place to make a purchase of something they had literally never heard of before (such as a vacuum cleaner).

The term has moved on repeatedly since then. In online advertising, engagement is intended as the tool through which advertisers entice users to connect to their brand. The IAB defines engagement as “”a spectrum of consumer advertising activities and experiences—cognitive, emotional, and physical—that will have a positive impact on a brand””.

For most digital marketing practices (social media, SEO, display advertising etc), engagement simply means clicking on the thing which the marketer wants you to click on. By simply giving attention to something in any form, a relationship has begun to form between the user and the brand. Or at least that this the idea. Marketers have in general taken this idea to the extreme by including muting an ad or expanding a tweet (as well as numerous other seemingly inconsequential actions) as being valuable interactions. While there is an argument to say they mean something, it is generally likely that they are not equal in value to actually visiting an advertisers website.

Work out the ER of your campaigns with our Engagement Rate Calculator >

Main Types of Engagement

How Different Social Networks Count Engagements

In Display advertising, an engagement typically means *any* user interaction – including negatives like closing an ad or muting or pausing a video. On social media, things are a bit different. What counts as an engagement on social media has (mostly) been narrowed down to just positive interactions. Each social network is a little bit different though, so here is an overview of the biggest social networks:

Facebook

While Facebook is odd when it comes to calculating Engagement Rate, when it comes to measuring engagements themselves they are actually very traditional. Considering they rename every digital marketing metric they can (presumably to spite Google), they have really kept it together when it comes to engagements. Facebook count every single positive interaction with a post or ad as an engagement, including reactions, shares, comments, and clicks (on links, videos and images). They don’t include negative interactions such as hiding or reporting posts, or unfollowing pages, however.

If you run an Engagement campaign on Facebook then these positive engagements are what you are paying for. All of this is good stuff in terms of engagement, and so if you are building consideration they are worthwhile. Clicks are probably the most valuable of these – but then if you want clicks run a CPC campaign instead.

You can read Facebook’s own definition of Post Engagements here

Instagram

Instagram straight up pretends not to have an Engagement Rate, which I think is frankly ridiculous. However they are part of Facebook, and so if you run an Engagement campaign on Instagram you’ll be getting the same things.

So for ads, Instagram counts reactions, shares, comments, and clicks on links, videos and images as engagements. However, for posts, Instagram only (publicly) considers Likes + Comments + Saves as engagements. So if you want to work out the CPE of a post, then you should possible just use these three.

Again this is all valuable stuff in terms of consideration. Each of these will push more people to see your posts, or people to care more about your posts.

Twitter

X (Twitter) goes as broad as it can for engagements and includes all user interactions with Tweets. This means retweets, replies, follows, likes, and clicks anywhere on a Tweet (including to expand the tweet or on links, hashtags, or your profile).

They don’t include interactions with the three dots in the top corner of a Tweet, as that is pretty much all negative. All of these engagements do imply that people think you are a trustworthy source of information, but I personally don’t think Tweet expands have much inherent value, and clicks on hashtags are similarly not generally that useful to you.

You could, of course, fix this by not adding hashtags to the posts that you promote (which I highly recommend), and writing Tweets that don’t need expanding (although this is slightly pointless).

LinkedIn also goes broad for engagement, although it goes its own way for engagement rate (via a different sort of impression). For engagements though, LinkedIn just counts all clicks on posts as engagements. These clicks include link clicks, likes, comments, and shares. Also, bookmarks presumably, although I can’t find them listed.

One bonus from LinkedIn is that I think that (technically) if someone follows your page from an ad then that isn’t counted as an engagement for Cost Per Engagement ad purposes. They list followers from your ads a free extra in your reports anyway.

Again, these are all solid points of engagement, so if you are looking for consideration these are worth paying for.

YouTube

YouTube is a freak of a social network in many ways (so much so that many consider it a search engine instead). It doesn’t break this odd streak when it comes to engagements either as it counts engagements in a very odd way. I suspect that this is because publicly their main metrics are views and subscribers, but their algorithms actually promote videos with higher engagement rates (which for them is engagements divided by views).

Their official count of engagements is all clicks as well as 10 seconds or more of a TrueView (their viewing counter). By all clicks, they actually mean subscribes, likes, dislikes, comments, and shares (not including embeds). That’s right – they count dislikes too apparently. I wouldn’t recommend paying for engagements on this social network – go for views or clicks.

Other Social Networks:

As there are too many social networks to list here, you should generally just assume that any click on a post counts as an engagement. If they don’t provide you with an engagement metric and you are desperate to know then find the analytics section, and see what they list. Analytics reports from social networks will usually include impressions, reach and/or views – so ignore those columns. Basically, add the rest together though – every click-based event is technically an engagement. If you want to exclude negative clicks (like unsubscribes etc) then that makes a lot of sense, although not every social network would agree. As TikTok is cloning Facebook’s Ad Manager so closely I would expect them to copy how they measure engagement too. This trend might continue across all the smaller and new social networks as they grow.

Top Tip

Like with clicks, engagement on its own is not a great measure of success. Engagement Rate is a much more fair way of comparing multiple ads, as it shows how users would react given the same exposure.

Engagement Rate = Engagements x 100 ÷ Impressions

Engagement Advice for Site Owners

If an advertiser wants to buy ads on your site on a CPE basis (Cost Per Engagement), make sure that your tracking is in place so engagements can be tracked at your end. Engagements are not sales (or even clicks necessarily). As a result, each engagement probably won’t pay that much. It is therefore extra essential that you can optimise towards them. Also, make sure you define what counts as engagement so you know what you’re being paid for.

Engagement Advice for Ad Buyers

When planning an engagement campaign, be sure to think hard about which engagements actually mean something to you. Also, make sure you can differentiate between them in your reporting. It is a risky business to lump high and low-value engagements into one CPE buy. Therefore strong reporting is the only way you will be able to effectively optimise your purchasing decisions.

Other names for engagement (synonyms)

User Interaction (this has fallen out of fashion)

Not to be confused with

Getting married
Engagement Marketing (which is about developing a brand with user help)

Engagement Rate

Engagement Rate (or ER) is the percentage of people who saw a piece of content or ad and engaged with it. For example, if one person interacted once with an ad after it had 100 ad impressions, that will give you an ER of 1%.

What does Engagement Rate mean?

An engagement is any interaction with content. For example, engagements on a video typically include:

Pressing Play
Clicking through to another page
Making the video fullscreen
Unmuting

As well as ‘negative’ or neutral interactions such as pausing the video, muting a video, resizing the screen, or changing the volume. Engagement is mainly used as a social media metric but is also used with traditional online advertising.

Engagement Rate defines how much, given the chance, users are engaging with ads. It is a helpful measure to gauge users’ interest in ads, as it shows that users have noticed the ad.

Although this is a very small win for advertisers, it is essential to building a relationship with a user. A higher ER means that people are more interested in a piece of content – or at the very least, they have noticed it more often. Note: The number of measurable engagements alone is not as useful as the ER. This is because different amounts of impressions give different numbers of opportunities for engagement.

Work out the ER of your campaigns with our Engagement Rate Calculator >

Engagement Rate Example

ER tells you how content with equal opportunities can perform. Consider this example: Ad ONE – seen 1,000 times and engaged with 30 times. Ad TWO – seen 10,000 times and engaged with 275 times. As you can see, Ad TWO has had far more engagements than Ad ONE. However, it has also had ten times more opportunities for engagements. If you multiply Ad ONE‘s engagements by 10 (so both ads had an equal opportunity for engagements), it would have had 300 engagements. This shows why it isn’t fair to judge ads simply by engagements. Therefore you can use ER to compare pieces of content that have different amounts of impressions. Instead of doing complicated maths to equalise the number of impressions, you can divide the engagements by the impressions to get the ER. In this case, we would get: Ad ONE – seen 1,000 times and engaged with 30 times. ER = 3% Ad TWO – seen 10,000 times and engaged with 275 times. ER = 2.75%

Engagement Rate Formula

As this metric can be used for either ads or content, the type of impressions used in the equation below means views. This metric is occasionally used as the percentage of engagements per user; in this case, you would replace impressions with users in the equation below.

Engagement Rate = Engagements x 100 ÷ Impressions

What Is A Good Engagement Rate?

According to data collected and analysed through our Engagement Rate calculator, the average engagement rate globally across platforms is 3%-4%. The best marketers (the top 25%) average between 6%-7%, while the bottom 25% of advertisers get around 2%. These are very general benchmarks but useful if you need to add context to your performance. If your results are…

above 6%, you should be very pleased
above 4%, you should be slightly pleased
below 3%, you should be somewhat disappointed
below 2%, you should be very disappointed

Most results are somewhere in the middle, so between 2-6%, you are more or less doing ok. The best benchmark is always your past performance. If you performed better compared to the same time last year, then that is important. This benchmark is more beneficial for context than a direct comparison.

[Take a look at our Engagement Rate Benchmark Tool to filter these results and make them more relevant to you]

Top Tip

If the only way of engaging with an ad is by clicking on it, then the CTR is effectively the ER.

Different Types of Engagement Rate

If you want to compare ER across platforms, I recommend sticking with engagements ÷ impressions. However, platforms do not necessarily all use this formula. Most notably, Instagram doesn’t publicly use an ER. This has led to different 3rd party platforms coming up with different ways of measuring it – which can be very confusing.

On top of this, different platforms measure impressions in different ways. Twitter, for example, wants you to feel like your Tweets have reach, so they measure when your Tweets appear in someone’s feed (even if they never come on screen). This has the effect of lowering your X (Twitter) ER.

On the other hand, LinkedIn wants posts to feel effective, so they only measure impressions when they are at least 50% on screen for over 300 milliseconds. This is a more honest form of impression, but it also raises your LinkedIn ER. Every platform is slightly odd like this, so when comparing ER results should be taken with a pinch of salt.

7 Things To Know About Engagement Rate

Engagement Rate shows you:
1. How often people engage with content
2. How fast people are engaging with content
3. Which content is most interesting
4. Which content is being noticed the most
TikTok has the highest ER of any social network BY FAR (It’s estimated to be at around 50% overall)
ER is a better metric than just Engagements. For example, you would expect more engagement from a post with 1 million views than one with 1,000 views, but that doesn’t mean it’s more engaging.
Instagram doesn’t even acknowledge engagement rate as a metric.
Each platform considers different things to count as engagements. If you are buying engagements, make sure you know what is included.
Platforms can increase ER by counting more things as an engagement. This is why some platforms include ‘negative’ engagements (such as muting a video) as an engagement. Platforms can increase ER by counting fewer impressions. This is why some platforms only count impressions when they are on screen for a period of time.

Other names for Engagement Rate (synonyms)

ER
Interaction Rate
Website Engagement Rate

Engagement Rate (GA4)

Engagement Rate is a new metric in GA4, essentially the opposite of bounce rate. Instead of measuring the percentage of people who left a page without doing anything, it measures the percentage of people who engaged with the site in some way after entering.

EOW

EOW stands for End of Week. It is a common ad hoc deadline set in many types of business (“”Can I have that by the end of the week?””). However, with more people working from home and working flexible hours, the typical meaning of this phrase (5pm on a Friday at the latest) is less steady.

EPMV

Earnings Per Thousand Visitors. A metric that captures the value of each visit to a site, rather than the value of each page or ad. The intention is to show that more visitors equals more money for sites that earn revenue through advertising.

ETP

The way in which Firefox blocks all third-party cookies automatically, making analytics and conversion tracking very difficult.

Even Delivery

In ad platforms, this is an option to specify that ads should be delivered evenly as possible throughout the set date range. For example, a campaign scheduled for a week with a £1,400 budget should deliver £200 maximum each day (although +/- 10% is often acceptable).

Exact Match

When targeting keywords in Google Ads for paid search, exact match means inputting the keywords with square brackets around them (eg [free soap]). By doing this, only that exact keyword is targeted in search engines (eg free soap). Note: Google have actually relaxed the rules around the exact match, so miss-spellings and ‘near’ matches are also targeted (eg free saop or free soaps).

Exclusion Pixel

An Exclusion Pixel is a way of stopping ads from appearing in a certain place or to a certain user. It is a 1×1 pixel that is given a variable that an Ad Server can see, and then not serve an ad. For example, the Ad Tag on a membership confirmation page may have an Exclusion Pixel on it. This is then used to ensure membership sign up ads do not appear on that page. The exclusion pixel could also be attached to a cookie so that users who have been to that page are also not targeted by membership ads.

Exit Rate

Exit Rate is the percentage of users who left a website after visiting a specific webpage. It is distinct from bounce rate, which only takes into account people who entered on a webpage (and did nothing trackable) and then left – exit rate includes all people who left from a page.

Expandable Ad

An expandable ad in online advertising refers to any ad unit which becomes larger upon some sort of user interaction. These types of ads often contain videos once expanded, and must always feature a close button. They also generally command a comparatively high CPM.

Experience

A marketing buzzword that tries to encapsulate how enjoyable and easy to use something was. This usage comes from User Experience but is often used more informally (eg “”This search bar doesn’t offer the best experience””). Experience can also be used as shorthand for a “”unique experience”” or an “”unforgettable experience”” (eg “”this app will create an experience that will make users love our brand””).

External Comms

External comms is a PR term used to describe communications such as press releases that are sent out by a company to the wider public.

Facebook

A social networking site, where users can post updates in their timeline which include text, photos or videos. Users can become ‘friends’ with other users as well like or follow pages to populate their own feed with updates. It was founded in 2003 (as FaceMash) and didn’t actually turn a profit until 2009. It is now the largest social network in the world by quite a long way. Like most social networks, Facebook uses Engagement Rate as the primary metric to measure if posts are doing well or not. However, Facebook uses a different Engagement Rate than basically everyone else. To calculate your Facebook Engagement Rate, go here >

7 Things To Know About Facebook

Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users.
Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram.
When was the last time you poked someone? For the longest time, it was a key part of the platform, but now most users struggle to find the poke button (it is still there).
Originally called FaceMash, it became TheFacebook.com before just Facebook.com
Founded in 2003, Facebook didn’t actually turn a profit until 2009.
Facebook no longer uses a timeline, as a popularity-based feed keeps people more engaged.
Facebook friends aren’t the same as real friends. Don’t be fooled!

Facebook Analytics

Facebook’s website analytics program (similar to Google Analytics) that was officially retired in 2021. It was pretty bad.

Facebook Blueprint

The free Facebook advertising course run by Facebook. It is very comprehensive.

Facebook Boost

Facebook Boost is a system where you pay Facebook to show organic posts to more people, with no way of defining who it will be shown to. This tool is commonly used by organic social marketers but shunned by paid media marketers due to the lack of options and tracking.

Facebook Creator Studio

Facebook’s built-in social media management tool for Facebook and Instagram. It can be used to schedule posts, as well as tracking and monetizing your content (and more besides).

Facebook Live

Broadcasting live onto Facebook, with a video appearing in your feed which is shown in real-time.

Facebook Messenger

The messaging system that is built into Facebook, which is broken out into a separate app on smartphones. Sometimes referred to as a social network (although it clearly isn’t one).

Facebook Total Value

“”Facebook Total Value”” is Meta Ads version of Quality Score for Google Ads. This is Meta’s way to rank bids in an ad auction. The formula is

Total Value = (Advertiser Bid x Estimated Action Rates) + (User Value)

In this case, User Value means how much the ad will add to user experience (through relevance, and likely CTR).

FAQs

FAQs stands for Frequently Asked Questions. It is a section added to most websites to improve user experience by providing useful information quickly and easily. A well-planned FAQ can be good for SEO, as the format is conducive to having internal links using headings that are SEO friendly. For example, a farming site could have the question “”Where do I find out about pigs?”” in its FAQs and then an answer linking to its pig section.

Favicon

The icon that appears on a tab in a browser when visiting a website. Usually just the websites logo.

Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are a small portion of a webpage’s text that Google displays at the top of search results in order to answer a question quickly. I personally consider them theft.

Federated Learning of Cohorts

FLoC was a way of tracking people for advertising purposes (both targeting and conversion tracking) from Google, which places people into groups so that no individuals can be identified. Announced in 2019, FLoC was intended as a response to the end of third-party cookies and the iOS14 update. However, on 25th January 2022 Google announced that FLoC was no longer being developed and would be replaced with a new product – Topics API. Before its cancellation, FLoC was widely criticised for many reasons, with the chief one being that individual users could still be identified within cohorts.

Feed

A social media term meaning either the list of updates you have posted or the list of updates from all the people and companies you follow on a social media platform.

Field Data

Field Data is data that is collected from real users rather than from a lab. Google is now using field data when assessing sites performance for Core Web Vitals. This data is collected via the Google Chrome User Experience Report. Data is for things like how quickly the largest element of web page loads from real people’s computers when they visit that page and these scores are averaged and stored.

File Extension

A file extension is the label your computer reads to understand what sort of file it is dealing with (it’s the bit after the full stop). For example a Microsoft Word Document will end in .doc or .docx or a Jpeg will end in .jpeg or .jpg.

Fill Rate

What does Fill Rate mean?

Fill Rate means the number of ad impressions that actually deliver ads out of the times an ad was requested by an ad server. It can be used to measure any situation where an attempt is being made to place ads on the internet, for example:

The number of placements on a website that successfully shows ads
The amount of times an ad tag successfully delivers an ad to a user
The amount of ads an ad network actually provides to a website without having to use default ads

Think of it this way – you own 100 billboards around town. Your fill rate is the percentage of ads you actually put up on those billboards. It does NOT count as the number of ads you sell, or the number of posters you receive. So even if you sell 100 billboards, if you only have time to put up 95, then your fill rate is 95%.

Fill Rate Formula:

Fill Rate = (Successful Ad Requests ÷ Total Ad Requests) x 100

Technical Information

You may expect that for every ad impression that you want to sell, you can sell it one way or another. This, unfortunately, is not the case with most ad networks as for one reason or another, they simply do not have enough ads to fill your site. This is why most ad networks will allow you to supply them with default ads – so that ads they don’t sell still have a chance of being filled. Reasons for a less than 100% fill rate can include:

Ad setup problems – ads may work on some browsers/computers/operating systems, but not all, and as this is hard to test it will often lead to a low fill rate.
Latency – An ad may take so long to load that a user leaves the page before it does so.
Reporting discrepancy – the analytics on the site counts an ad impression as soon as the page starts to load, whereas the ad server only counts it once the ad is fully loaded. The time between these two events can be long enough for a user to leave.
Ad Blockers – some adblockers stop ad networks instead of ad calls. In these cases, there will be an ad request, but no ad will be able to appear.

Average Fill Rate

It can generally be said that if the fill rate of a network is high, then the eCPM will be low (or at least lower than normal). This is why most ad networks have a fill rate between 20-30%. AdSense is a notable exception to this rule – it has such a large amount of ads available to it, that it generally provides a 100% fill rate.

Fill Rate Advice for Site Owners

To make sure you get as many ads on your site (and therefore as much money as possible), always supply ad networks with default ads. It makes sense in most cases for these to be for AdSense so you can make sure all your inventory is filled. If you are daisy-chaining ad networks, then you shouldn’t really use more than three ad networks, as the latency can get out of hand. Note: Do not accept ad networks own measure of fill rate, as they will most likely use the one which is most generous to them. This means they will measure ad requests at the last possible millisecond, and ads being successfully delivered the very moment they start to load. In reality, this will mean lots of missed ads – so always work out the fill rate by using your own analytics.

Fill Rate Advice for Ad Buyers

If you are using ad tags to deliver rich media ads, then try and keep the K Weight low in order to increase the number of users who will load them before they leave the page. Also beware of using too many analytics services on one set of ads, as they can cause enough latency (or general problems) to stop your ad tags working properly. Our advice is to make sure you have an analytics provider you trust and use them to monitor your fill rate. Note: If you notice a sudden dip in your fill rate then there is likely a problem with your ad which needs to be addressed immediately. Similarly keep track of the number of backup gifs you are delivering, as they may mask a decrease in fill rate.

Other names for Fill Rate (synonyms)

AdMob refer to it as Show Rate

Filmstrip

In online advertising, a filmstrip refers to a type of 300×600 ad unit. It is distinct from a normal HPU in that a filmstrip scrolls through five different screens (vertically) to create an actual ad space of 300×3000. A video from the IAB of how it works can be seen here.

Firefox

Firefox is made by Mozilla and is one of the most popular web browsers.

First Input Delay

First Input Delay is one of Google’s Core Web Vital metrics, which is to be used as a ranking factor for Google search. It is a measure of the responsiveness and interactivity of a webpage. FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page to when the browser starts to process that interaction For example, you go to a webpage and the menu at the top loads immediately. You click on a link in that menu, but as the page is still loading you have to wait. FID is the time from your click on the menu to that click generating a response from the browser (ie the new page starts to load). The intention of this metric is to show how long it takes before it feels like a webpage works. Google’s guide on FID can be found here.

First Input Delay Definition

First Input Delay is the time (in milliseconds) from when someone first interacts with a page, to when the browser starts to process that interaction. The delay may occur because there is still more of the webpage to load. Therefore the browsers ‘main thread’ may be too busy loading the webpage to process what has been clicked on until it is finished. As there needs to be an element on the page to interact with, the earliest that FID can start measuring is after the First Contentful Paint (FCP). FCP is when the first visible element appears on-screen. First Input Delay is a field metric, meaning it is based on real users experiences rather than machine processing.

Levels of FID Performance

As with all Core Web Vitals, Google has created three tiers of performance:

Good = Up to 100ms
Needs Improvement = Over 100ms and up to 300ms
Poor = Over 300ms

Webpages are categorised into one of these based on where 75% of users experience on a page fall.

Technical Information

This is a very complicated metric for many reasons.

First Input Delay is a field metric, meaning it is based on interactions by real people with a webpage. Therefore tools alone are unable to measure this accurately.
Also because it is a field metric, FID will vary wildly between users. Some will click immediately, so will click later or not at all. Users will have computers that load at various speeds for various reasons. FID, therefore, measures where the majority of users fall.
Scroll events are not included as interactions.
While FID should be about clickable elements only (such as links, form fields, etc), it is actually triggered by any click. This means that frustrated users clicking repeatedly (and aimlessly) while a page loads will have a bad FID.
FID replaces TTI (Time to Interactive) as an interactivity measure. TTI measured the time until interactivity from when a page first started loading. Whereas First Input Delay only starts potentially measuring from when some content has loaded (FCP). This image from Google explains it:

Top Tip

First Input Delay is essentially a measure of page speed as the faster a page loads, the sooner a page becomes interactive. However, as it is timed using real-life interactions many people will only interact once a page has actually loaded. This makes it more of a user experience metric. Your page should make users only want to interact after the page has fully loaded. This will make your FID score better – and the users experience too.

First Price Auction

A first price auction is when the winner of an auction pays the amount they bid (as opposed to 1 penny more than the second-place bid). This earns the most for ad platforms (and publishers) and encourages advertisers to optimise their bids. Google moved its online advertising to this system in 2021.

First Time Impression Ratio

First Time Impression Ratio is a metric used by Facebook for the ratio of the number of ad impressions seen for the first time by someone (that day) to the total number of impressions. Facebook often uses its own naming conventions for metrics. Using more standard terms, this could be referred to as a unique ad impressions ratio.

Flash Ad

An ad made using Adobe Flash which is usually animated and can be interactive. These types of ads are defunct now, as Flash is not supported by default in most browsers anymore.

Flywheel

A flywheel is a type of wheel that is designed to efficiently translate one type of momentum into another. In marketing, this concept is used to explain the power of branding, user experience, and word of mouth. By making people like your brand, you create customer loyalty and recommendations – which can be an efficient way of building a business.

FMCG

FMCG stands for Fast Moving Consumer Goods, and basically means anything you would buy in a big supermarket (food, clothes, pharmaceuticals etc).

7 Things To Know About FMCG

With Amazon selling groceries and supermarkets rapidly shifting to offer more home deliveries digital marketing is now a huge part of the FMCG marketing mix.
Fast Food brands have made their own niche on social media, with Wendy’s snarky X (Twitter) account famously leading the way.
Giant FMCG companies bulk buy ad space at a huge discount to be used by any of the brands they own. This both creates a financial backstop for ad-funded websites, as well as a downward spiral of eCPMs
Selling food has unsurprisingly been seen as a job best suited for old media, with 2018 seeing only 10% of FMCG marketing budgets go on digital.
For FMCG brands posting hacks, tips, & advice can be a great way to turn people from customers into fans.
Local SEO is a vital channel for small scale FMCG businesses. Selling locally can reduce costs as well as create community goodwill.
FMCG companies often refer to themselves as CPG companies (Consumer Packaged Goods).

Fold

The bottom edge of a browser: the area above is what a user sees when they first load a webpage, the area below needs a user to scroll down to see it.

Follow

The act of choosing to add someone’s updates to your social media feed (and becoming their follower). For example, if you follow five people on X (Twitter) then your feed will be made up of the updates they tweet.

Follow Friday

An old tradition on X (Twitter) where people would suggest interesting accounts to follow (these tweets were sent out on Fridays). Often abbreviated to #FF.

Follow Ratio

What does Follow Ratio mean?

Follow Ratio is the number of followers compared to the number of accounts someone is following on X (Twitter) or Instagram. It is also known as the Follower to Following Ratio, and occasionally as your Cool Ratio. Follow Ratio is generally considered a good measure of how ‘good’ an account is. This is because the most interesting X (Twitter) or Instagram accounts will have far more people following them than they are following themselves. Think of it this way – imagine everyone (including Oprah) followed just their family members and Oprah on Twitter. This would mean Oprah would have loads of followers, but still only follow a few people.

Calculate the Follow Ratio of your accounts with our Follow Ratio Calculator >

Follow Ratio Definition

The Follow Ratio is simply the number of followers someone has divided by the number of people following them. A value above 1 means an account has more followers than accounts they are following. The higher the number the ‘better’. This measure is considered necessary in that many accounts will follow lots of people, simply to get them to follow back. So if someone has 1 million followers, but follows 2 million people, then it is more likely that they have just been following people for the follow backs, rather than are actually saying anything interesting. It is exceptionally unlikely that they are as interesting who has 1 million followers but only follows 50 people anyway.

Follow Ratio Formula

This is the Follow Ratio Equation (or the Instagram Cool Ratio Equation if you prefer):

Follow Ratio = Followers ÷ Accounts Followed

Average Follow Ratio

There is no average follow ratio. Celebrities might have a ratio of 100,000+, while non-celebrities will often have a ratio below 1. This is because Follow Ratio is basically only useful for Influencer marketing, and even then not really. ‘Normal’ people using X (Twitter) or Instagram just for fun are quite likely to follow many accounts but only have a few followers. However, there is of course huge variance in this. Some people will follow thousands of accounts, and use lists to filter. Some people will use the following as a way of publicly supporting another account. Other people will only follow accounts they are exceptionally interested in. Celebrities and influencers are the same – some will follow freely, some will not. This makes this ratio no more than a curiosity really, and any benchmarking of it doesn’t make much sense. Here is what a Follow Ratio looks like in action (and why it’s not geared to ‘normal’ people).

Technical Information

The method of following lots of people just to get lots of people following back used to be more prevalent. A common tactic to improve Follow Ratio used to be to follow the maximum amount of people for any one day. Next, they would automatically unfollow anyone who followed back. This would mean it would look like you were increasing your follow ratio. This used to be so common on X (Twitter) that there were many services that would do this automatically. These services often included following new accounts too. This meant that X (Twitter) was awash with bots that would follow 500 people per day, then unfollow anyone who followed them.

This would all happen without anyone actually touching the account. Then someone could take over an account with a very high follower account and Follow Ratio, and pretend that they were just very popular. For the average X (Twitter) user, this was a virtual nightmare. As people are notified when they get new followers, having lots of people follow you, without your follower count ever-growing (as they unfollow you so quickly) was a weird type of torment.

On top of that, Tweets from popular accounts would appear more often in people’s timelines and be recommended for following more often. This meant that these fraudulently boosted accounts were radically changing Twitter.

In recent years X (Twitter) has cracked down on ‘aggressive following’ and unfollowing. They have also cracked down on services that do this. X (Twitter) has also imposed a barrier for new accounts to pass – until you have more than 5,000 followers, you can’t follow more than 5,000 accounts.

However this all still happens, but on a much smaller scale as it is all done manually. On average people still follow back about 20% of the time.

A subsidiary measure to Follow Ratio is how many followers per tweet someone has. This is known as the Follower to Tweet ratio and works basically the same way.

Top Tip

If you want to improve your Follow Ratio be interesting, and only follow people you are interested in. Using hashtags can expand the base of people who see your posts, which should also help. However as stated above, this ratio is not actually very helpful. Engagement rate is a much better measure for social media, as it actually measures how much people care about your posts.

Follower

A follower is a social media term that means someone who has chosen to see your updates on that social media platform. If someone follows you on Twitter, for example, that means that your tweets will turn up in their feed.

Calculate what your audience costs with our Cost Per Follower Calculator >

FOMO

An acronym that stands for Fear Of Missing Out, which refers to the idea that people always think something cool is going on elsewhere. Marketers can use this idea to improve their marketing messages.

Freemium

A service that has a basic version that is free to use, but for which a premium version of the service can be purchased. On a freemium listings site for example it would usually be free to add a listing, but you will often be able to pay to get to the top of the list or have extra features (such as a website URL or map) added to your listing.

Frequency

In online advertising, frequency refers to how often an ad appears to a single user in a specific time frame. It is usually measured and expressed as a per hours figure, even when discussing a day. For example, if an ad appeared to a single user six times in one day, it would be said to have appeared 6/24 times (or 6 per 24 hours). Frequency is an important measure because the number of times a user sees an ad affects the likelihood of them clicking on it (or buying a product because of it). In traditional advertising, it is thought that someone needs to be exposed to an advertising message about five times to be effective – this is referred to as opportunities to see (or OTS).

Technical Information

For online advertising, it depends on the ad unit, but generally speaking, the best performance comes from a 3/24 frequency cap. This means each user sees an ad no more than three times a day. If an ad is more invasive (such as a pop-under or overlay), then a 1/24 cap is preferable. Both of these caps are likely the most amount of times a user can tolerate seeing a single ad campaign. Once they are annoyed by it, the effectiveness of a campaign tails off quickly. If a single user sees an ad too often, they will likely tune it out. More than that, it is a waste of the advertiser’s money to show the same ad repeatedly to a single user. There is only so much any single user can click (or purchase from) one ad after all!

Frequency Formula

To work out the approximate frequency of an ad, you can divide ad impressions by unique users. This will be a rough measure only, as users will have seen the add different amounts of times. However, if you have a frequency cap in place, it will be pretty accurate comparatively. The frequency equation is:

Frequency = Impressions ÷ Users (per timeframe measured)

Example: Thirty impressions served to three unique users in 24 hours would be expressed as 10/24 (as each user saw ten impressions).

Other names (synonyms)

Opportunities to see

Not to be confused with

Frequency Cap, Recency

Frequency Cap

What is a Frequency Cap?

A frequency cap is a set limit on the number of times each user sees an ad, generally expressed as a per-day allotment. For example, “”3/24″” means each person will see an ad three times in a 24-hour period. The number of times someone sees an ad can change whether or not they interact with it. It is traditionally thought that people need at least five opportunities to see an ad campaign (across all formats) before they notice it. For online advertising, 3/24 is generally the best frequency cap. This means that, on average, more users will click on an online ad if they see it three times per day at most. Keep in mind that this is an overall average. Depending on your goal and the type of advertising you are running, different frequency caps will likely improve the outcome of your campaign.

Top Tip: To optimise your frequency cap, look at the average number of times people see your ads before converting, and set it slightly above that

Frequency Cap Advice for Ad Buyers

Experimenting to find which frequency cap works best for each activity will yield the best results for all types of campaigns. However, below are some best practices you can follow when running a new campaign.

CPA Campaigns

Display ads are more suited to brand advertising than performance advertising. If you want to drive conversions, you should choose a different frequency cap depending on how your brand value plays into your plans.

High-intensity campaigns

For a brand-new product or CPA campaign, you may want to start with a high frequency cap of 5/24 or even 10/24. This will cause your ad to be seen by people at high intensity and give you data to show what a good frequency cap is for the campaign. This tactic is intended to boost brand awareness and performance simultaneously. It is risky, though, unless you are a large advertiser, as it can mean spending a lot of money quickly. You should only try this if you have deep pockets and a strong marketing plan to minimise initial wastage. A strong marketing plan, in this case, means targeting an audience that is likely to convert.

Always on campaigns

For advertisers not looking to make a big splash with a campaign, a reasonable frequency cap for most CPA campaigns is 1/1. This means that users will see your ad once per hour. For products with good brand awareness, this should keep your product front of mind without overwhelming people (or your budget). For advertisers with small budgets who are not relying on a brand, this can be a way to ensure a large number of people see your ads – and keep seeing them frequently. The cost per conversion will be high compared to established brands. However, a 1/24 frequency cap should increase the efficiency of your limited ad spend.

Top Tip: You may want to use a lower frequency cap if you are running ads across lots of ad platforms, as people could see your ads in many different places

CPC Campaigns

Keep in mind that when you pay for clicks, you will only get clicks. There will likely be no attempt to ensure that the people who click on your ads are actually interested in what you have to offer. It is up to you to do what you can to improve the quality of those clicks.

Looking for your core audience

If you are running a CPC campaign to draw in people who are very interested in what you have to say, a suitable frequency cap is likely 1/24. This means people will see your ads once every 24 hours at most. The point is to increase the likelihood that only the people who are very interested in what you have to say notice your ad and click on it. Using a 1/24 tactic will also ensure that your ad budget is spread across more users, as your ad won’t be shown repeatedly to the same person. This is important as many people will click on basically anything but have little intent behind the click. This means they may click your ad when they see it – and then may click it again when they see it again. Ad networks/algorithms can generally identify these click-happy people and send them ads that pay for clicks. Then, the ad network gets money, and the click-happy person gets to click—everyone wins (except you). So, by limiting the daily exposure per user, you can improve the performance of your ads in two ways:

Creating more opportunities for high-intent clicks
Limiting the opportunity for low-intent repeat clicks

Example

Compare these two example personas:

John is a massive fan of kiwi fruit. When an ad for a kiwi fruit site comes up, he clicks on it immediately and loves what he finds.
Jane is a massive fan of fruit, but kiwis aren’t her favourite. When a kiwi fruit ad comes up, she ignores it.
- If Jane saw the ad ten more times, she might eventually give in and click. But it would be begrudging, and Jane is less likely to be interested in the kiwi fruit site.

In this example, people like John are your core audience. People like Jane are a more appropriate target for prospecting campaigns (see below).

Prospecting campaigns

A higher frequency cap is a good idea if you are looking for people who may be interested in your site (but don’t know it yet). You may need to wear people down into clicking, which means going to a frequency cap of anywhere between 3/24 and 10/24. The more times someone who is slightly interested in your site sees your ads, the more likely they are to click. Keep in mind that they have to be somewhat interested in the first place, so you can’t just run an ad constantly and hope to get a click from anyone. You will have to balance this with your budget (depending on how you pay for your campaign). But on average, the higher the frequency cap, the less interested the people clicking will be – so it really depends on how wide you want to cast your net.

This also means that the landing page you create is extra important. A good ad will get more clicks, but what happens after those clicks depends on the landing page. And if you are prospecting for a new audience, then you really have to give them what they want when they arrive on your site.

Especially if you’ve paid for the click that brought them there.

Brand awareness campaigns

If you are running a CPC campaign to raise brand awareness, you should also go with a 1/24 frequency cap. This is because clicks alone aren’t worth that much. If you are trying to drive people to your site but don’t have any further specific plans for them, it’s more important than ever to find people who are interested in it. As with core audience campaigns, a 1/24 frequency cap will help you focus your clicks on those who are most interested. As with a prospecting campaign, your landing page must make its point.

Top Tip: A frequency cap can often be applied to an individual ad or an ad campaign as a whole. When capping individual ads, use a lower frequency cap to achieve the same campaign efficiency.

CPM Campaigns

When you advertise on a CPM basis, you should ask for a frequency cap, preferably of 3/24. A 3/24 frequency cap means your ad will be seen by each person three times per day. A CPM campaign is free money for an ad network, as there is no promise of performance at all. As an advertiser, you should only run CPM campaigns if you are trying to improve your branding. A 3/24 frequency cap will ensure that your ad gets seen by people frequently enough for them to remember it. It will also limit your ad spend per person, meaning your ad will likely be seen by enough people to make a difference. If you run display ads as a brand campaign, you should consider a homepage takeover or roadblock ad. This means running all the ads on a page at the same time. They are typically run on a CPD basis (meaning you pay per day they run). However, some larger sites run them on a CPM basis, and when this is the case, a 3/24 frequency cap is still considered best practice.

Frequency Cap Advice for Site Owners

You may not be able to add a frequency cap to campaigns because the ad tech you use may not give you the option. However, when it is an option, frequency capping campaigns is vital for sites funded by advertising.

Running ads yourself

If you run display ads on your site, adding a frequency cap to campaigns will improve performance and increase revenue. This is because if you keep showing the same ads to the same user repeatedly, they will probably only interact with it once at most. This limits the amount you can make from those ads if you are being paid for an interaction with those ads. You will also make advertisers feel like they have wasted their money on your site (due to poor performance). This, in turn, means less repeat business. Try to show the ads booked on your ads to many users and keep showing them daily to everyone to maximise exposure. By rotating ads, you will keep users more engaged and likely make more money. Best practice for frequency capping (unless an advertiser specifies otherwise) is:

CPA campaigns – as 1/1 (but set as high priority) – This means everyone will see them, but you are not gambling too much on conversions happening.
CPC campaigns – at 1/24 – this increases the likelihood of clicks
CPM campaigns – at 3/24 – this improves the value of the audience you are selling
Also, cap invasive ads (like video ads and overlays) at 1/24 so you don’t annoy your users (as much).

Top Tip: To maximise your earnings, calculate the eCPM of each campaign and prioritise them based on that.

Using an Ad Network

Most ad networks add appropriate frequency caps to campaigns as a matter of course. They want to be as efficient as possible when serving campaigns to make both you and them the most money. The frequency caps they use are based on the likelihood of an ad campaign making money.

CPM or CPD campaign earns money just by being shown. This means they might as well show those ads all the time.
CPC ads only make money when someone clicks on them. Since clicks are easy to obtain, these can be run fairly frequently.
CPA ads only make money when someone converts. Because they are harder to profit from, they will be run only when conversions are most likely to occur.

Technical Information

Frequency capping has some technical limitations:

When people block tracking cookies, an ad server cannot keep track of ads being served, making traditional frequency capping impossible.
A single user can visit a website on multiple devices simultaneously. Depending on how it is implemented, it may confuse frequency capping.

If a user is logged in to a site or service, it can be possible to base a frequency cap on server-side information. This could negate both of the above, but it depends on the individual technical implementation. Ad networks will not natively provide this service in most cases. Campaigns can also run multiple ad sizes at once. Many ad servers can set a frequency cap at the ad set or campaign level, but setting up a frequency cap across creatives can be challenging when that is not possible.

Frequency Formula

To work out the frequency your ads have been shown at, you can use the frequency formula:

Frequency = Impressions ÷ Users (per timeframe measured)

Example

Thirty impressions were shown to three people in a 24-hour period. Using the above formula, this would be expressed as 10/24 (as each user saw ten impressions on average).

In reality, it could be that

Person 1: Saw 25 impressions in a day
Person 2: Saw 4 impressions in a day
Person 3: Saw 1 impression in a day

In this case, the average of ten impressions per person per day would be obfuscating the truth. This is why you should always ask for a frequency cap.

Other names for Frequency Cap (synonyms)

Ad Frequency Cap, Opportunities to See (kinda)

Not to be confused with

Recency

GA4

Google Analytics 4. This was previously known as Web + App but is now intended as a replacement of Universal Analytics which is the most commonly used version currently. Despite the switchover to GA4 that was planned for 2021, takeup has not been widespread due to numerous problems with the new interface and Google are still advising people to run both the old and the new version side by side at the moment.

Gamification

Gamification is a loose term that means turning things into games. In online advertising, it generally means trying to make something fun in order to get people to do it. For example, if you want a lot of people to read some information, it could be turned into a quiz.

Gated Content

Gated content refers to any webpages which require something before you are allowed to use it. For adult content, there may be an age-gate where users are required to enter their date of birth before being allowed content, or for subscription services a user might have to log in and be paid up to gain access.

7 Things To Know About Gated Content

Gated Content is content that isn’t intended for everyone – whether because it is valuable or sensitive.
There are 3 main types of paywall:
- Hard: 1-2 free articles per month, then you pay
- Metered: 10-20 free articles per month, then you pay
- Freemium: Some articles are free, some aren’t
You should only really gate middle of funnel content such as eBooks, research, webinars etc. Top of funnel content needs to draw people in, & the bottom of your funnel still needs to sell
Just because someone registered with you to access your Gated Content, doesn’t mean they have given you any other permissions with regards to their data. Don’t email without permission.
New privacy regulations mean that you can’t restrict access to content in return for allowing cookies.
Paywalls are mainly used by news websites. According to AdMonsters, in 2020 over 76% of US digital news publishers have a paywall model in place.
Paywalls which are easy to circumvent are referred to as leaky or porous paywalls.

GDPR

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is the updated legal framework in the EU for the collection and management of data, which came into effect in May 2018. These regulations cover data both online and offline for all EU citizens regardless of where the business they are dealing with is situated. For online data collection, the basic idea is:

don’t collect people’s personal data unless they give you explicit permission
don’t collect data unless you need it
don’t keep data unless you need it
don’t share data unless you are explicitly allowed to
keep any data you have collected as safe as possible

GDPR obviously has a lot more to it than this, however, these are the general ideas. You can find out more about the regulation here.

Geo-Targeting

In Digital Marketing, Geo-Targeting means aiming content (an ad, webpage etc) at a particular location. Historically it has mainly been used on a country level to ensure that content is in the same language as the users it is reaching. However, geo-targeting is now being used widely for mobile advertising to tell users about real-world locations as they are on the move. For example, a shop could pay to advertise to anyone within a five-mile radius that they are having a sale. With smartphones being so prevalent, this means that people who were travelling through that geo-targeted area could also see those ads (instead of people who simply live nearby). This change in users internet browsing behaviour (from static locations to on-the-go) has made geo-targeting incredibly useful and important to advertisers.

Gif

A type of image file, which can be animated. Gif is an acronym that stands for graphic interchange format.

Glossary

A glossary is a list of definitions of words that appear in the attached text. They are useful for both SEO and Content Marketing.

Golden Questions

“”Golden Questions”” are a set of questions that tell you more than just the answers. These are used in marketing to help segment audiences. This means interviewing people and finding answers that are common to your target market. For example, if you found out that people who are likely to buy expensive TVs generally say they like marmalade, you could ask people about marmalade in order to quickly find customers for your TVs.

Golden Triangle

The “”Golden Triangle”” is a concept in Google Ads where you rely on its automated systems to optimise your campaigns. The core of this concept is using these three:

Broad Match Keywords + Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) + Smart Bidding (eg ‘Maximise Conversion Value’)

Google

Google is the largest and most popular search engine. They also have a wide range of interconnected services such as Google Ads, Google AdSense, Google Maps, Google Business Profile etc (there are too many to list here). The word Google is also often used as a verb (eg “”I’ll google it””). This is a colloquial way of talking about using the Google search engine, as in “”I’ll google it”” really means “”I’ll search for it on Google””.

Google Ad Manager

Google Ad Manager is Google’s ad serving platform. Through GAM websites can add different ad networks (including programmatic), manage their ad inventory, and arrange deals.

Google Ads

Formerly known as Google AdWords (the name changed in 2018). Google Ads is one of the largest online advertising platforms out there. While it is mainly known for Paid Search, Google Ads covers:

Paid Search advertising on Google Search (and their search partners)
Display Advertising through the Google Display Network (which includes AdSense)
Video Advertising through YouTube
Shopping Ads through Google Merchant Centre

It is both very easy to use and has very advanced options, making it one of the most important ad platforms for digital marketers to learn (Google has some great free courses to help you). Most Non-Profits can apply for a $10,000 per month Ad Grant from Google to use on Google Search.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most commonly used providers of web statistics. It’s free and easy to install and use on any website.

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is a way of managing how your business appears on Google Maps and in the knowledge graph of Google Search. It also connects with Google Ads for Location Extensions. Google My Business was renamed Google Business Profile in November 2021.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser made by Google. It is the most popular browser and comes bundled with the Google Android mobile OS.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a free WYSIWYG report builder that links with Google Analytics and other analytics platforms. It is incredibly convenient, easy to use, and powerful.

Google Discover

Google Discover is a feed on Google.com (on mobile) and the Google App which surfaces content based on your browsing history. It’s a kind of search engine without the search. Google Discovery Campaigns (in Google Ads) run on Google Discover, as well as:

YouTube Home feed
YouTube Watch Next feed
Gmail Promotions tab
Gmail Social tab

Google Maps

Google Maps is an online mapping service owned by Google that includes the location of businesses, as well as facts about them. Results from Google Maps are included in Google Search. This information can be edited by using Google My Business. Due to this, it is a vital tool in local SEO.

Google My Business

NOTE: Google My Business was renamed Google Business Profile in November 2021. Google My Business (now Google Business Profile) is a business listing directory. Information such as opening times, location, contact information and pictures of staff and products may be added. It is a highly effective and central part of local SEO, and all businesses with a physical location are highly recommended to set up an account. It links with many other Google products (including Maps, Google Ads & Search) and so is a great way of providing Google with information directly.

Google Search Console

The new name for Google Webmaster Tools. Google Search Console is a free service that lets website owners understand their performance within Google Search by providing a number of useful metrics and tools. Every website owner should connect their site to Google Search Console to improve their organic search traffic.

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is an efficient way of dynamically managing tagging on a website from Google. Instead of adding tracking code from multiple sources (eg Google Ads, Facebook, X (Twitter) etc), you simply add Google Tag Manager to your site and then add the 3rd party codes to GTM. Google Tag Manager allows you to manage which tags load on which pages and why. It’s honestly a real lifesaver for people who need to add code to their site, but don’t want to be constantly messing with the code of their site.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool from Google which lets people explore the relative popularity of different search terms on Google Search. Incredibly useful for SEO research.

Google+

Google+ was a social network from Google. It has now been switched off.

Ground-Swell Approach

An influencer marketing strategy that use a large group of micro-influencers to try and influence people’s actions by starting a conversation from the ground up.

Growth Engine

The mechanism that makes a startup grow in a sustainable fashion. This can often mean a marketing channel.

Growth Hacking

A type of marketing focussed solely on finding strategies for growth.

Guaranteed Inventory

Guaranteed inventory refers to ad buys where a specified amount of inventory is offered. The guarantee usually means that there is usually some sort of penalty for failing to deliver that amount of inventory. In many cases, the penalty will be implicit rather than explicit and will involve the publisher making it up to the ad buyer by providing further inventory in the form of a make-good.

Guest Post

A Guest Post is a post in a blog from someone who is not one of the authors of a blog. Guest Posting on someone else’s site is a great way to demonstrate your expertise on a subject, as well as good for SEO (as you can usually add links to your own site). Accepting Guest Posts is a good idea for most blogs, as most people trust blogs written by multiple people more than single-author blogs. It also reduces the burden of having to write every post yourself!

Half Swipe

On Snapchat, a half-swipe is when you uncover a message to read it without notifying the other person (as the other person is only notified if you fully swipe). This was changed in 2021 to great controversy – and Snapchat now marks half swipes as read messages too.

Half-Life

In digital marketing, half-life is defined as the time it takes for a piece of content to receive half of the total number of clicks or engagements that it will ever receive. For example, you sent out an email campaign regarding a current sale of your eCommerce store. Subsequently, a total of 500 people clicked on the link you provided in the email. Out of that 500 people, 250 of them clicked on the link in 12 hours. Therefore, 12 hours is the half-life of your email campaign. Knowing the half-life of your campaign is useful as it helps you adapt rapidly to the audience’s demand.

What is the Half-Life of Social Media Posts?

The half-life of a social media post is the time it takes for the post to receive half of the attention it is going to get, including likes, comments, clicks, shares, and so on. Some of the Social Media half-life stats include:

Facebook

An average half-life of a Facebook post is 90 minutes. Moreover, a Facebook post will disappear from the news feed after 02 hours, therefore, make sure to post your content in its prime time.

Twitter

Tweets have the shortest lifespan of other social media posts. An average half-life of a tweet is about 24 minutes. Since X (Twitter) is a fast-paced social platform, posts tend to get buried quickly.

Instagram

An Instagram post’s average half-life is about 72 minutes. The higher the quality of the post, the longer the half-life is. A high-performing post on Instagram averages about 13 hours to receive 50% of its total engagement.

A pin has an average half-life of 04 months, which is much higher than any other social media platform. Posts on Pinterest do not disappear, they remain on the platform and show up on feeds as long as they are relevant to a user’s search. Half-life is a concept that is used in marketing to determine how long an ad has an impact. Understanding the half-life concept in digital marketing is a great way to track your performance and set up an efficient posting calendar for your campaigns.

Hamburger Menu

A common feature of websites (including this one), where the menu button is simply shown as three lines.

Hard-Bounce

Hard bounces in email marketing refer to when you try to email someone, and their email address or the domain name don’t exist. They can also occur when the recipient’s email server has blocked delivery. When Hard Bounces occur, these users should be removed from your email marketing list (this is done automatically by some email providers).

HARO

An acronym meaning Help A Report Out. HARO is a website that helps reporters find expert sources for their stories. Getting exposure as an expert is an excellent SEO tactic.

Hashtag

A hashtag is this symbol #. It is used on social media to categorize posts so that other users can search a topic easily (for example a picture of a kitten might be followed by #kitten, which a user could click on to find more kitten related content). They were invented in 2007 on X (Twitter) by a user named Chris Messina (and were originally considered ‘too nerdy’ by X (Twitter) itself to adopt). As this is a user-generated system of categorisation, there can often be competing hashtags on the same topic when something new comes up. Hashtags are often also used for non-categorisation reasons to punctuate a post (sometimes, but not always, for comedy reasons). For example, a post critical of the government may end in #GuvSucks or a post about an easy day at work may have #IWorkHardForTheMoney.

Hashtags for Marketing

Hashtags are commonly used in marketing for:

Events – so that people attending the event can communicate easily.
Brands – to get people to talk about a specific topic (eg #ShareACoke)
Activism – to share information on a specific topic or idea (such as #MeToo)

Head Keyword

Keywords that are one or two words long (usually less than 15 characters in total), which capture the main meaning of the company targeting it. For example “”Bakery””, or “”Pastry Shop””. Head keywords usually provide the majority of conversions for an advertiser but will have a much lower conversion rate than long-tail keywords, as they are much broader.

Header Bidding

A type of real-time bidding where publishers offer each ad impression to multiple ad exchanges at the same time (via code in the header of the page) and then choose which one to accept based on the bids received. Header Bidding is an attempt to increase the efficiency of ad serving by reducing the load time of ads.

Hero Image

A Hero Image is a large (possibly oversized) image that dominates the top of a website, often filling the whole screen (although commonly as a background image). They are frequently the first thing that someone sees on the homepage of a site (and sometimes throughout).

Heuristic

Marketers and advertisers often use heuristics to understand shopper behaviour and to influence the purchase decision of their target market. This is because people instinctively make decisions based on heuristic techniques rather than strict logic. As a result, heuristics can help marketers strategically and effectively guide their target consumers through the steps of purchasing decisions. Understanding heuristics is essential for marketers to understand shopper behaviour, both online and offline.

Heuristic Definition

A heuristic is a problem-solving technique that helps people make decisions quickly and efficiently through mental shortcuts. For example, instead of thinking about which product is actually best a consumer might just think about which brand they like most. This mental substitution is a type of heuristic (see below).

What are the 4 types of heuristics?

1. Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic is used when a person makes a decision based on the first information or example that comes to their mind. When an example comes to mind easily that information is believed to be important. In marketing, the availability heuristic is used when an example of a product is given to a consumer to be familiarized with so they can recall it easily. For instance, if you buying groceries when you are hungry and are given a free snack bar sample, you will probably find that it tastes exceptionally delicious! As a result the next time when you shop for snack bars, you will be able to recall the brand easily and might use that as your purchase decision. (This is why more samples are given out just before lunch and dinner time.)

2. Representativeness Heuristic

This type of heuristic is used when a person compares information to an existing example in their mind. In marketing, the representativeness heuristic is often used to convince customers about an idea or a concept. For instance, in a product launch campaign, the marketer highlights features of the new product that are similar to those of another popular product that the target customers like or have previously bought.

3. Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

This type of heuristic is used when a person relies on the first piece of information to make a decision. In marketing, brands use the anchoring and adjustment heuristic to strategically set a product’s price point. For example, a real estate agent lists a house at a higher price than its fair value, and the potential buyer will use that price as an anchor to negotiate down until they reach the desired price.

4. Attribute Substitution Heuristic

Attribute substitution heuristic happens when a person has to make a complex judgment and instead, substitutes an easier attribute to make the decision faster and easier. For example, when thinking about which laptop to buy, some customers avoid the technical questions (screen size, resolutions, battery life, key specs, etc) and instead they ask themselves, “Which brand do I like most?” and then make purchase decisions based on that question.

Hidden Iframe

A hidden iframe is an iframe that is made invisible to users by being made incredibly small or having invisible text. Although they can be used for legitimate reasons, they are mostly used for viruses and fraud (eg loading a webpage in an invisible iframe will increase the impressions of that page, even though no one actually saw it).

Hit

Hit historically was used to mean “”pageview””, however, this is no longer correct. What ‘hit’ actually means is a download of a file from a server. This means every image, every style sheet, every video on a webpage (and the webpage itself) all count as a hit each (as well as numerous other things). A simplified example: You enter the URL of a webpage into your browser. The webpage uses a tracking cookie, and has an external style sheet, and contains one image. This would result in one pageview, but four hits – one for the webpage, one for the tracking cookie, one for the style sheet, and one for the image. It’s actually more complex than this, however, this is why ‘hits’ used to mean pageviews – as webpages used to be a lot simpler and did not contain other elements.

Homepage

The front page of a website (where you go when you type in the URL). Occasionally abbreviated to HP.

Homepage Takeover

What is a Homepage Takeover?

A Homepage Takeover is a type of roadblock in which the Homepage is filled with ads from one company for a specified time frame. This will generally include all ad units on a page as well as a reskin and will be usually sold on a CPD basis. Homepage Takeover is often abbreviated to HPTO and is considered a type of sponsorship. It is a high-value type of co-branding deal. This is where an advertiser is paying for the value of being associated with the websites brand, as well as the ads which are actually run. This is an example of a homepage takeover:

Technical Information

Most of the time an HPTO is sold as a Sponsorship deal on a Cost Per Day basis. This means that the Homepage Takeover will appear all the time for a set period. This is the least effort version of this type of deal, and therefore the most likely to run successfully.

Due to how web pages load it is likely that each ad unit will receive a different amount of ad impressions. The ad unit which loads first (likely the 728×90) will receive the most ad impressions, the second loaded will receive the second most and so on. This is for a variety of reasons, but discrepancies such as this should not be worried about.

As long as the ad unit that loads first, and the one which loads last have within 30% of the same amount of ad impressions, it is likely that there is no technical issue. This is one of the reasons why selling on a CPD basis is ideal. Some sites sell HPTOs as a roadblock – ie on an impression basis. This means that it will appear to users just enough to hit its impression goal.

However, due to the discrepancy between ad units, most advertisers will only accept that an HTPO Roadblock has loaded if all units are present at once. This can cause huge losses to the site. Repeated occurrences of the HPTO not loading entirely correctly will mean large amounts of impressions have to be written off.

Therefore only sites with a great technical team should attempt to sell HPTOs on a rotational roadblock basis like this.

Top Tip

Don’t make/accept homepage takeovers that are annoying. This ad space is expensive – make sure people who see it enjoy the experience. Don’t include overlays or pops unless they are amazing.

Work out the CPD of your Homepage Takeover with our CPD Calculator >

Homepage Takeover Advice for Site Owners

A Homepage Takeover can earn you a lot of money compared to other types of advertising. This is because your homepage will likely not generate a lot of clicks, but will create a lot of impressions. Many people enter a site through the homepage, meaning it will probably get a high level of page views. However, if your site is designed well, most people will want to continue into your site once they’ve hit the homepage, rather than leave via an ad.

Also, as many people enter through site homepages, they often have a high ratio of unique users. This means the ads people see on this page are the first ads they see on your site. Adding all of these facts together means that a homepage has a lot of potential value. It paradoxically often earns little money, however. A Homepage Takeover is a great solution to this problem.

However much you earn from the ads just on your homepage, you can charge a premium on top for homepage takeovers. This can be between 2x–10x as much as you would usually earn. You are selling all of the ad space on your homepage (as well as a reskin) AND the value of your brand. On top of this, users who see this HPTO are likely to be fresh to the site, and so more susceptible to the advertising message. This is why you can charge such a premium. The more well known your site is, the more of a premium you can charge.

Homepage Takeover Advice for Ad Buyers

If you have a big advertising budget and want to have a high impact ad campaign, then a Homepage Takeover might be for you. If you can find a site that has users you really want to grab the attention of, then a homepage takeover is basically impossible to ignore.

These are quite difficult campaigns to run for websites. Therefore make sure you give them plenty of time to test your ad units before the campaign. On top of that, if you are including a reskin, make sure you know in advance what their reporting capabilities are. As mobile sites have so much less room (and ads), you may want to consider including a reskin of the site’s logo as part of the deal. This may cost more but will mean that your HPTO is seen by everyone, including mobile users.

It can be tempting to run a Homepage Takeover as a roadblock unit on rotation with other ads which only targets users’ first page view of a site. This can reduce costs, and improve performance. However, it also increases technical difficulties which will discourage the site from running them again. If you only pay for the HPTO roadblock when all ads show (which you should) then this will also reduce profitability for the site. This will likely encourage them to either increase prices or stop running Homepage Takeovers altogether.

Also, by running an HPTO on a rotational basis you are reducing the impact of your ad campaign. By “owning” the homepage of a website you are demonstrating a serious investment in your ads. By having them pop up now and then, you are just running regular advertising as far as anyone knows. We therefore highly recommend to ad buyers to run Homepage Takeovers on a sponsorship basis.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media scheduling tool.

Horizontal Ad Unit

An ad unit that is wider than it is tall. It is useful to group ad units in this way for multi-size ad slots, as well as general web design.

House Ad

A House Ad is an ad that advertised your products or services on your site. They are generally used as the backstop for your ad tags – as in if your ad server can’t find another paid ad to show then it will show your house ad. Due to this, it is common to refer to whatever is used as the ad-of-last-resort as a House Ad (which is commonly AdSense) however this is technically incorrect.

House Party

A social network based around group video chats.

Hreflang

Hreflang is a piece of code that you add to a webpage that tells search engines which language that page is in. This will help search engines to serve that page to users of the same language.

Adding a hreflang tag to a page is especially important when a page appears in many different languages. When a page appears in many languages, the hreflang tag should also include links to the versions of the page in different languages.

Hreflang implementation is considered one of the more difficult page markups, so I would highly recommend:

Reading Google’s original guide on localisation
Using a hreflang tag generator tool

Top Tips

Hreflang should be used in conjunction with canonicalization tags. Each language variant of a page should have a self-referential canonical tag so that search engines know that it is the ‘real’ version of the page for that language.
Make sure to use the correct language markup. For a full list of Hreflang language codes, see this resource from Martin Kura.
Make sure to have a hreflang alternate setup for ‘everywhere else’. So if you have an English, French, and Spanish version of a page, you should also designate one of them as the default page by using the code:

HTML

HTML is the name of the code webpages are written in. Although there are other types of code (such as CSS, PHP or javascript) that are used alongside or within HTML, HTML is the code that makes the internet run. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.

IAB

IAB stands for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (or Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK). They are a trade body for online advertising who have helped define online advertising since 1996. Most notably they designated a set of standard ad sizes which helped display marketing take off by reducing technical issues between publishers and advertisers. These standard ad sizes (728×90, 300×250 etc) are still in use today. The IAB also came up with the VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) standards, which made it possible to serve ads across many sites.

Idea Pins

The new version of Story Pins. Idea Pins however are intended to be long-term ‘stories’ rather than the ephemeral stories functionality found on other social networks. Idea Pins can contain up to 20 pages within them and have videos that are up to 60 seconds long.

IDFA

Apple’s way of allowing advertisers to transmit data to third parties of users who opt-in.

Iframe

iframe is an abbreviation of inline frame and is an innovation by Internet Explorer to display webpages within webpages. It can help to think of them as separate entities resting on top of a webpage, which is largely unable to interact with the main webpage. Within online advertising however they are almost always a pain as they can create problems with expanding and overlay ads. We recommend avoiding their use wherever possible.

Impression

What does Impression mean?

Impression means when something (usually content, an ad or post) is loaded on a webpage. The term impressions is often used as being synonymous with view – as in page views, ad views or post views. Advertising is often sold on a CPM basis and paid out on an RPM basis. These mean Cost Per Thousand Impressions and Revenue Per Thousand Impressions respectively. The difference between the two is the ad serving fees that an ad network charges – meaning the RPM is always lower.

Work out the Cost Per Thousand Impressions of your campaigns with our CPM Calculator >

What is an impression?

There are several types of impression:

A Page Impression is the loading of the page itself.
An Ad Impression is when an ad is loaded on a webpage.
A Viewable Impression is an ad impression from above the fold.
In social media, an impression is when a post loads in a user’s feed.

In online advertising when the term impression is used, an ad impression is usually what is meant.

Technical Information

Impressions are used as they are easy to count. Servers keep logs of items they load. Therefore counting up the loads of ads, pages or posts is relatively simple. However, just because a page loads an item, it doesn’t mean that anyone has actually seen it. Ads are often delivered below the fold, making many ad impressions worthless. This is a situation that is being addressed by the ad industry but is also somewhat self-correcting.

In an attempt to make advertising fairer, viewable impressions are now being measured. These are impressions that appear at least 50% above the fold, and on-screen for 2 seconds (definitions vary). Many Ad Networks offer CPvM deals to sell only this type of ad impression.

This is also a self-correcting problem in advertising, as below the fold ads perform badly. This means that they cost less, and therefore publishers are less willing to use them. Also, due to page loading speed being an ingredient of SEO, there are fewer ads per page in general, with these un-viewable ads being the first to go.

Top Tip

In Social Media, this metric is frankly a mess. Efforts are being made to improve it all the time, but currently, an impression in social media generally means the number of times something appeared in people’s feeds. As a user won’t necessarily see their whole feed, or will perhaps scroll through at high speed, this makes this number unreliable. A social media version of viewable impressions is vitally needed to improve this metric. This is a demonstration of how to count ad impressions versus page impressions.

Not to be confused with

Reach, which is a count of users seeing content, not the number of times seen. Sessions, which is the number of times users have logged onto a site.

Impression Cap

A time-based limit on the number of impressions that can be served, usually added to part of a deal to keep delivery steady. For example, a daily impression cap of 10,000 means that no more than 10,000 impressions can be server per day.

Impression RPM

What does Impression RPM mean?

Impression RPM is the amount of revenue paid per 1,000 impressions. It is a metric mainly used by Google AdSense and tells you how much they will pay you for your ad impressions. So for example, if you had 40,000 ad impressions with an impression RPM of $2 you would receive $80. This is because you receive $2 per 1,000 ad impressions, and $2 multiplied by 40 is $80. Impression RPM is virtually identical to CPM. The main difference is that RPM is from the point of view of the website owner, and CPM is from the point of view of the advertiser.

Work out the RPM of your campaigns with our RPM Calculator >

Impression RPM Definition

RPM stands for Revenue Per Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for one thousand). Impression RPM and Page RPM are distinct from each other, as most of the time when the word ‘impression’ is used, it is assumed that ad impression is meant. So Page RPM measures revenue per one thousand page views, and Impression RPM measures revenue per one thousand ad impressions. The above formula shows the revenue as being estimated. This is because this metric is generally an estimate. Like eCPM, it takes many campaigns of many different types and combines them to estimate total revenue, and then divides that amount up between the impressions delivered. Impression RPM is often shown in real-time, which also means the amounts have to be estimated. It could include conversion data for example, which may not be confirmed that quickly.

Impression RPM Formula

The equation for Impression RPM is:

Impression RPM = (Ad Revenue ÷ Ad Impressions) x 1000

Technical Information

RPM and CPM are different metrics as RPM means revenue whereas CPM means cost. These may seem the same, but due to fees etc, they are not. Revenue is the amount paid to publishers whereas cost is the amount paid by advertisers. Even if one advertiser took all the impressions on a site in a CPM deal, the CPM and RPM will probably still not line up.

Example

Johnny’s Fruit Juice has a big ad spend and buys up all the space he can find on fruit juice websites. He pays £5 CPM to all sites that he works with and goes through an agency. The agency uses a third-party ad server to deliver the ads. The agency charges 20% of ad spend, which takes the CPM down to £4. The third-party ad server charges a (high) 10p CPM. This leaves £3.90 CPM. Fruit Juice World is one of the websites that the agency chooses to place Johnny’s Fruit Juice ads on. They work with an ad network with who they have a 50% rev share. As a result, this means Fruit Juice World are actually only paid half of the CPM of campaigns booked with them. This gives them an Impression RPM of £1.45. Note: It would actually not end here most likely. Ad networks could have their own ad serving fees too, and often give agencies discounts of up to 20%. Therefore it wouldn’t be surprising if the final figure from a £3 CPM was more like £1 Impression RPM. The ad network would only present this final figure to the website, however, and the agency would never break the figures down like this, so neither would find this out. This is one of many reasons why direct deals can be advantageous to both advertisers and websites. However this of course doesn’t take into account the added value of the expertise both advertiser and website are getting, and the consistency of revenue/opportunity they are provided. It is much more difficult to go it alone!

Other names for Impression RPM (synonyms)

CPM or eCPM (essentially)

Not to be confused with

Page RPM, RPM or REM.

Impression Share

Impression Share is a metric in Google Ads. It is the percentage of impressions that your ads received in paid search out of the total amount they were eligible to receive. A low impression share likely means that either your ads aren’t good enough, or that another advertiser is outbidding you (or both).

In-House Marketing

In-House Marketing is when a company has its own team of marketers on the payroll (as opposed to outsourcing it to an Ad Agency).

Inactive Subscriber

In email marketing, the term ‘Inactive Subscriber’ refers to someone who has chosen to continue to subscribe to your content but isn’t opening, clicking or interacting with it further. If you have a lot of inactive subscribers it can mean that your content isn’t quite interesting enough to your consumers or it may just be time to tempt them back through a re-engagement campaign specifically tailored to get them excited about your brand again.

Inbound Link

An inbound link is a link that leads to your webpage. In SEO it is important to have lots of inbound links from good quality sites in order to get search engines to list you higher in their results.

7 Things To Know About Inbound Links

Inbound Links are *still* one of the most important SEO factors. Every site should have an inbound strategy, even if it’s just guest posting.
Backlinks are inbound links, but inbound links *aren’t necessarily* backlinks (as backlinks must be from another site, but inbound links just need to be from another webpage).
Websites can add a “”no-follow”” attribute to outbound links to show that they don’t endorse the site they are linking to. For the webpage linked to, these inbound links have no direct SEO effect.
Not all inbound links are created equal. If popular and relevant pages link to your webpage then that’s a huge win! If unpopular/irrelevant pages link to you then … meh
You can find which sites link to your pages in Google Search Console by:1. Clicking on “”Links”” in the left-hand menu 2. Clicking on “”More”” under “”Top Linked Pages”” 3. Selecting a page
Reciprocal links are a bad idea. Exchanging an inbound link on someone else’s site for one on your site will NOT improve your SEO (Google watches for this and penalises sites that do it).
The difference between inbound links and outbound links is that if you are looking at a specific page, links to that page are inbound links, and links on that page going elsewhere are outbound links.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to trying to get customers to come to you as opposed to going out and trying to get their attention. This would include having a good reputation so that customers choose you when doing research.

Incremental

Incremental’ is a common way of referring to things that only happened because of marketing activity. While difficult to prove, ‘incremental sales’ (for example) means sales that wouldn’t have occurred without the related marketing.

Incremental Revenue

Incremental Revenue in online advertising usually means the extra amount of money made from increasing the amount ‘per something’. For example, increasing the CPM of a campaign will incrementally increase the value per impression, or adding an extra ad unit will increase the revenue per page.

Infinite Scroll

Infinite Scroll refers to a feature on websites where a user can continue scrolling down a page forever. This is because new content will load once a user has hit the bottom of their current block of content. Most commonly used on social media sites. ”

Influencer

An Influencer is essentially the internet version of a celebrity. The unofficial definition of an influencer says that you need at least 10,000 followers to be classed as an influencer, but the truth is more nuanced than that. You need to be able to influence the decision making power of your followers on social media. If you can do that, then advertisers will pay you to advertise their brand. Word of Mouth advertising is still one of the most powerful types of advertising out there, and Influencer Marketing is the social media version of this. As Influencers often operate within a niche (gaming, cooking, make-up etc), they are often entirely unknown by anyone who doesn’t follow them. However, as influencers often interact with their followers in ways that celebrities generally do not, the connection between an influencer and their fans may seem (to the fan) much more akin to a friendship than a fandom – which is why a comparison with Word of Mouth advertising is apt.

7 Things To Know About Influencers

If you hate influencers, think of it this way…. there are excessively popular authors, actors, columnists, musicians etc. The internet was always going to generate its own celebrities.
Unlike traditional celebrities, influencers are often accessible to their fans in various ways. This creates a much more intense fandom, which can be very confusing from the outside.
According to the Digital Marketing Institute, about 3/4s of people trust opinions on social networks when making buying decisions, and 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations.
When an influencer operates in a niche interest they can have a lot of influence and celebrity within that niche, while not being known at all by the wider public. This is why influencers really test the limits of what “”fame”” means.
According to a study by Tapinfluence and Altimeter, 70% of influencers are in it for the money. However, almost 60% of them say they are also hoping to effect some sort of change.
Essentially an internet celebrity. Just because you haven’t heard of them it doesn’t mean they aren’t famous.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, there are 5 tiers of influencers: 1) Celebrity (Mega) Influencers 2) Macro Influencers 3) Mid-Tier Influencers 4) Micro-Influencers 5) Nano-Influencers

Influencer Marketing

Using influencers to market a product or brand. This can be direct via paying an influencer (eg for a sponsored post) or indirectly by marketing to influencers in the hopes that they like your product and tell more people about it.

Influencer Marketing Platform

A marketing platform that helps brands with their influencer marketing. Often not much more than online catalogues, however, this type of platform is still evolving.

Informational Search Query

A query on a search engine that is looking for specific information. Creating content for these searches can be a great way to get people into the top of your marketing funnel by showing your E-A-T credentials.

Inline

A way of including code (such as CSS) directly in the body of a program (or webpage). While this can be inefficient, it can also lead to faster loading times. This is important for SEO when working on page speed.

Instagram

Instagram is a free photo and video sharing social network, created in 2010 and acquired in 2012 by Facebook. Since its inception, Instagram has been through various – minor or major – transformations, and is now one of the most popular and used social networks. Anyone can sign up for it for free. While it originally only contained photos and was only accessible through a phone, it now is available on any device and you can publish images, videos and stories (see below) alongside captions. There is also a video conferencing feature called Instagram Live Rooms. By making a quick search on Google Trends, we can see that Instagram is constantly increasing its popularity. Instagram even outperforms X (Twitter) – probably because it is an entirely visual medium and images and videos are usually very popular and engaging.

Types of Instagram Account

When creating an Instagram account, you usually start by setting up a personal account. This type of account is for anyone and everyone. A personal account allows you to make your account and posts public (so everyone can see) or private (so you can choose who can see them). However, if you are running a corporate account (or feel like creating a personal brand on Instagram), you can switch your account to a business account. A business account on Instagram provides you with basic analytics and data for your posts, your activity in the last 7 days and some extra features. You also now have the choice to turn your account into an Instagram Creator account. A Creator account is intended for celebrities, and influencers (large and micro). With a Creator account you get most of the same Business features, and then some more on top. With the Creator account, you get daily stats of your Follow/Unfollow ratio, demographics breakdowns and your audience’s characteristics. You can also sort your DMs into 3 categories: primary (you get notified), general (you don’t get notified), requests (by people you do not follow).

Instagram Persona

Whether you are a new or experienced user, there is one important thing we need to say to you. Your Instagram account needs to have a persona. If you are using Instagram for business reasons, this is so that you can more effectively target and talk to the buyer personas you (should) have created for your company. If you are using Instagram for personal reasons, this is so that people can get an idea of what you are about. Wait… what does that mean? It means that your Instagram account should have certain consistent characteristics. Basically, your Instagram account needs to have a defined tone of voice, attitude, and style, and one that is likeable to your potential customers or followers. I’ll put it this way – when people follow an account, they do it for a reason (they like something about it). If all your posts are completely different from one another, it makes it harder for people to decide whether or not they like your account.

Instagram Elements

These are the basic things you need to set up to have an Instagram account. 1. Username Your Instagram username can be a maximum 30 characters and it needs to be spot-on with your personal or business brand. Do not overuse special characters, as it will make it difficult to be found by your followers. Your username is a big part of how people see you on Instagram, so choose carefully. 2. Bio/Caption Your Instagram profile can be a maximum of 150 characters. This is your chance to engage people visiting your profile. Use the limited space wisely and make every character count by writing something witty, clever, and brand-oriented. 3. Contact Information Firstly, add your email address (your most professional one) to let people contact you. Secondly, add your website/blog URL, or your Facebook profile URL. Last, but not least, hide your phone number (if it’s not necessary for your goals) as there is no need to share it if you don’t want to.

Work out the ER of accounts or posts with our Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator >

Instagram Posts

An Instagram post can be one picture, a group of pictures or a short video (with a maximum length of 1 minute). A good Instagram post should follow a lot of rules including: use natural light, find bright vibrant colours, use symmetry and the 3X3 rule, experiment with your picture’s angle, add some action, food, animals etc. To help understand all of this, here is an example of a good Instagram post: If you want to improve the quality of your posts, you will also need to learn how to edit an image for Instagram. It’s not as easy as it looks! Because of this – your early posts probably won’t be great – but be patient and it will bring in results sooner than you think. All these tips will help you engage your followers and increase your audience as well.

Instagram Stories

An Instagram story can be a picture or a video (maximum 15 seconds). Whatever you post to your stories will remain there for one day (24 hours). You can share your story with all your friends or create a “close friends” list and share some stories only with them. Good Instagram Stories can have flaws, be more personal, fun, and portray some daily stuff you do, or include quotes from one of your favourite poets. Your Stories should be … well your story, to be honest. The fun part of Instagram Stories is that there are a lot of extra features and effects when taking a picture. You can ask questions, create polls, add questions, quizzes, gifs and more. At the moment effects on pictures are going crazy! It all started with people adding some flowers on their heads in images, but now you can find out which Pokemon you are, when you are gonna die, or you can see your face on the Statue of Liberty! Please note: don’t just randomly use your stories all the time. People won’t be as entertained as you might think they will be! Another thing you can do with Instagram Stories is to create highlights for each experience (like your trip to Barcelona, or your high school reunion). And if you don’t know what to do next… well you can create targeted polls to get insights from your audience for your next posts.

Instagram Television (IGTV)

This is a tricky one. IGTV… hasn’t impacted things the way that the Instagram team hoped or expected. Not yet anyway. IGTV is meant to be the answer of the “Facebook family” to YouTube, as it allows you to upload up to 1-hour video content. While it hasn’t reached its peak yet, IGTV will surely be a trend soon enough as it is integrated with Instagram, but it stands as its own application as well. As it is integrated with IG, you can have direct access to the content of people you follow already, and you can also explore popular videos.

Instagram Extras

When using Instagram, you can find interesting accounts and users on the “Explore” section. This section is created based on your past activity and shows you posts related to things you are interested in. For Instagram fans, it is a kind of a personal goldmine of content you will like! Also, if you feel like interacting a bit more, instead of a story, you can go “Live”. This means broadcasting directly to Instagram live from your phone. Instagram will send notifications to your followers that you are now live, and if your “Live” is long enough, it will be integrated into your IGTV.

Tagging on Instagram

Hashtags are not ignored or forgotten on Instagram. They are used A LOT, and because of the way Insta surfaces content to people just browsing they are very effective. There are different approaches to using hashtags. My approach is to use hashtags when needed and never over-hashtag one post. The ideal is approximately 5 hashtags per post (not too general, not too specific), so you can be found by other people as well. If you want to find appropriate hashtags, find posts like yours and see what hashtags they are using. Some people recommend adding your hashtags in the first comment underneath your post or in the caption, and there are advantages to both depending on your type of account. Another way to increase your audience is to add a location in your post. By adding a location tag people who are searching for posts in your area will be able to see your post as well.

Instagram Takeover

If you want to be more inclusive do not forget the newest trend: account takeovers. An account takeover is when a micro-influencer, a public figure, or a celebrity (or anyone really) takes over the running of an account for a day, a special event, or a weekend. The point of this is to give something special to your followers! For example, an Instagram account about tips by local guides and storytellers organizes weekend takeovers in different cities around the world. Each one becomes a beautiful and specific travel guide, which is exactly the sort of thing the account’s followers want.

Instagram Principles

There are a lot of Do’s and Don’ts for using Instagram properly, but every user can adapt to its audience’s needs and create a visual content strategy. The main idea, though, is that you want your account to be pleasant, reliable and exciting for your audience. So, you have to respect your brand identity. You need to post relevant content, and content that people want to like and share on their stories – but only when it stays true to your brand. This brings me to the principle of “consistency”. Followers need to feel your vibe, even if they don’t know your brand. And to do that, you need to be consistent with what you share and what you allow in your posts and stories. And finally – as you expect people to engage with you, you need to engage with them. Interaction is crucial to engaging your followers and making them feel a part of your story. And the truth is that your audience is your co-writer in your story. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to keep writing your book. So, engage with them, like posts and stories that mention your account, and reshare some of their stories. If you follow these principles, you will never be out of trend (and eventually you will be able to create your own trends).

So, what is Instagram, really?

Instagram is a mentality, a way of communicating your identity to your audience, through different forms of visual content. Instagram is a modern, up-to-date way of writing chapters of your book, and letting a great audience be part of it.

Instagram Live

Broadcasting live onto Instagram, with your video appearing live in your feed.

Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels is Instagram’s version of TikTok. You can record a 15-60 second clip set to music. Other users can “”Remix”” your reels, meaning they can record their own video to appear alongside yours (which will appear in their feed).

Instagram Stories

A way that users can curate a group of their own Instagram posts. These stories are only displayed for 24 hours.

Install Rate

What is an Install Rate?

The Install Rate of an ad campaign means how many clicks on an ad it takes to lead to an installation of an app. It is mainly used to optimise CPI (Cost Per Install) campaigns on smartphones. So for example, if one person installed an app after clicking on an ad after it has already had 99 other clicks, that will give you an Install Rate of 1%.

Work out the IR of your campaigns with our Install Rate Calculator >

What does Install Rate mean?

CPI advertising has come to be a strong force in the mobile advertising industry, as users on a mobile phone will be most interested in clicking ads that relate to their phone. However, as with CPA campaigns (which CPI campaigns are really a subset of), just because a user clicks on an ad it doesn’t mean they are going to follow through on that action. This is where install rates come in. This is a measure of how many installations each click leads to, and is currently around between 1-4% across the industry on average. That means an ad would need between 25 and 100 clicks to get one install, which is no mean feat.

Install Rate Formula

The Install Rate equation is:

Install Rate = (Installs ÷ Clicks) x 100

Top Tip

Install Rates vary greatly based on country, which is thought to be a result of varying internet speeds. Targeting your app ads at countries with superfast broadband just makes sense.

Other names for Install Rate (synonyms)

Click-To-Install Rate

Installs

A metric used when the goal of advertising is getting someone to install a piece of software (generally an app). This is an important metric for CPI campaigns, as there is often a large drop off between someone clicking a button to install an app, and actually completing the installation process.

Internal Comms

Internal Comms is a PR term that refers to information being communicated within a company. Depending on the size of the company it can be informal, or a huge undertaking to keep a company motivated and on track.

Internal Link

An internal link simply means a link that goes from one page within a site to another page within the same site. They are useful in terms of SEO, as they can make it easier for search engines to discover pages when crawling a site.

Internet Explorer

Made by Microsoft, Internet Explorer is one of the oldest browsers available. It has now been replaced with Microsoft Edge. Despite being retired, it is still quite popular – which can cause web designers a lot of trouble due to its outdated functionality.

Interstitial

Interstitial essentially means “”between”” and are the ads which appear before or between webpages (when links are clicked, a user is taken to one of these ad pages before the content they clicked to get to). Interstitial can also be used to mean a floater/overlay. These are ads that appear on top of the page in the same browser window, effectively floating. They can be interactive and/or affect the sites appearance, or sometimes are just an image or video playing.

InText Advertising

What is In-Text Advertising?

In-Text Advertising is where you allow a company to monetize words within the content of your site. It is also known as Inline Advertising. The concept is that certain words will be highlighted, and when a user rolls over them a box will pop up with advertisements related to that word. The ads which pop up related to the word can be wide in range. Anything from selling a product related to that word to having news stories related to that word (advertising the news provider) are to be expected.

In-Text Advertising Advice for Site Owners

Only a few companies run this type of advertisement. Due to this, these companies have a great focus on their product and will really try and work with you to maximise your revenue from these products. However, as it is our rule of thumb to not irritate users wherever possible, we cannot recommend this type of advertising. The amount of money that you can make from this from In-Text advertising is not enough to counterbalance how disruptive it is to the user experience.

You can make a reasonable amount of revenue from this In-Text Advertising (though significantly less than from banner advertising), so if you are happy to annoy your users to some extent this might be for you.

In-Text Advertising Advice for Ad Buyers

In-Text Advertising trades on utilizing users focus on content to make advertisers feel that users will focus on their adverts as much as the content they sought out. While this feels unlikely, the prevalence of In-Text Advertising at least implies that it is quite successful at doing this. Having said that, it is rarely more effective than display advertising. If you are trying to make your product synonymous with a word, then this type of advertising may be suitable for you. It is generally quite reasonably priced, however that depends on the words you want to use. The sites you can advertise on is also comparatively very limited.

Invalid Traffic

Invalid traffic (or IVT) is traffic that ad networks will not pay publishers for, regardless of whether they delivered ads on it or not. This can be due to an ad platform detecting spam, fraud, or bots that have generated web traffic. All three of these are common in online advertising. IVT is usually only identified to publishers in the billing stage. This leads to publishers receiving less than expected. A small amount of invalid traffic is nothing to worry about. However, a large amount of IVT frequently appearing should be something a publisher and ad network work together to solve.

Inventory

The total amount of ad impressions a publisher or network has – this is usually expressed as a per month figure.

Inventory Forecasting

The act of predicting how many ad impressions will be available in the future. Like all predictions of the future, it is not a science.

Inventory Management

Inventory Management is the process of making sure all ads booked are able to deliver, by moving ad campaigns around. It also covers maximising revenue from a set of inventory, which can also be called Yield Management.

IO

An IO is an Insertion Order which in online advertising is the contract that provides the specifics of an advertising deal. It usually includes at a minimum:

the ad pricing model
the ad rate
the amount to be delivered
the time frame
targeting
terms & conditions of the deal

It can also include many more specifics, like times of day, frequency caps, which parts of the websites to be used etc.

iOS14

An operating system from Apple which included many updates around privacy. For digital marketers, this most notably included requiring apps to ask users to opt-in before allowing tracking outside of that app. This change meant that advertising on an app where a user bought something on another app or website was suddenly very difficult to track.

Java

A programming language used for web applications. Not to be confused with the far more prevalent JavaScript.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a type of code used for programming on the web. It is one of the three main types of code used on the internet (along with HTML and CSS) and is not to be confused with Java. Many Rich Media Ad Tags are written in JavaScript, as it is a very versatile and comparatively simple programming language.

JICWEBS

JICWEBS stands for “”The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards”” and was a regulatory body set up by the media industry in the UK and Ireland to ensure consistent standards when measuring performance online. In July 2020 JICWEBS merged with the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) and now operate under the TAG brand name.

Joint Copyright

When a piece of content belongs to multiple people/companies. This often happens for co-branded products or services, and when influencers partner with brands.

jpg

jpg is the file extension abbreviation of a JPEG image file. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.

jQuery

jQuery is a JavaScript library that makes it much easier to use JavaScript in a variety of ways.

Jump Page

A jump page is a microsite that opens after clicking on an ad. It is essentially a pop-up ad that is in the form of a fully formed webpage that has been designed for that purpose only. They are often used to act as a bridge from the website you were on to the advertiser’s website, and as such will often contain content which links the two.

K-Weight

In Digital Marketing, K-Weight refers to the size of an ad or piece of content in kB (kiloBytes).

7 Things To Know About K-Weights

The ‘heavier’ a piece of content is, the slower it will load. That’s why k-weight is such an important consideration for any sort of digital design work.
Ad networks and websites limit the k-weight of ads they allow. This limit will be documented in their ad specs – *always* read it before designing your ads.
Energuide.be estimates that the total energy used for a 1MB email emits about 20g of CO2. This means that lower K-Weights are also good for the environment!
The K-Weight limit of ads is broken down into two parts: 1. Initial Load – how much can be loaded immediately (usually 200kB); 2. Sub Load – how much can be loaded after the rest of the webpage (usually around 500kB)
According to httparchive, webpages averaged around 500KB in July 2011 but have ballooned to around 2MB by July 2019.
A favicon should weigh no more than 300 bytes ideally.
According to Cloudflare, conversion rates increase by around 0.5% for every 1 second faster a page loads. Lower K-Weights can increase revenue!

Kerning

Kerning is the process of altering the space between letters to make text easy to read and nice to look at.

Keyword

A keyword means something that is entered into a search engine. They can be targeted by Paid Search platforms such as Google Ads. Despite it being singular, a keyword can in fact be several words, as it refers to the search term being targeted.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword Stuffing is the act of filling a page with keywords in an attempt to rank higher on search engines for them. These extra keywords would often be just added to a page in the form of a long list, or in the footer of a page. This tactic does not work.

Keyword Targeting

Keyword targeting is the process of targeting marketing activities at specific sets of useful words. For example, if you have a car website you may use Google Ads to target the keyword “”Audi”” and then your ads will target all search results which include the word “”Audi””. There are many types of advertising platform where you can directly target keywords (such as Google Ads) by inputting the keywords you want your ads (or content) to appear by. However, the term keyword targeting also encompasses indirectly targeting keywords by making relevant content. For example, by writing an article titled “”The Best Cheeses in Britain”” your article is targeting the keyword “”Best Cheese in Britain”” and will likely be picked up by Google’s search algorithm for this keyword. Both direct and indirect keyword targeting benefit from keyword research – meaning finding keywords that you should target. Criteria for keyword research often includes:

How useful a keyword is to your brand or business
How much competition there already is for a keyword (the lower the competition, the better)
How much volume there is for a keyword (the more a keyword is used, the more potential your targeted content has)
How much it costs to target a keyword (or conversely – how much you will be paid for having content around a certain keyword).

Top Tip

Paid Search platforms have different rules, but there are generally “”modifiers”” you can apply to your Keyword Targeting. This means that you could enter just “”Audi”” for example and still get people who search “”Audi A6″” or even “”Owdi”” (depending on the setup of the network). If you entered [Audi] however you would only get people who made that exact search.

7 Things To Know About Keyword Targeting

A “”keyword”” is what is used to target a set of “”search terms””. E.g. the keyword “”Best Cheese”” covers searches for “”Best Cheese Shop””, “”Best Cheese in the World”” & maybe even “”Best Cheesecake””
Keywords based around money are among the most expensive. For example Insurance, Loans, Mortgage, Credit, Donate, or Trading.
Look in Google Search Console for search terms that a page ranks highly for then target them in Google Ads. Having the top organic & paid result together works better than either alone.
Negatively targeting keywords is as important as positively targeting them. For example, Airlines want ads to appear on pages with the word “”aeroplane”” on them but not the word “”crash””. Google Trends is a simple & free way to find out how popular a keyword is in Google search. It is also a useful tool to compare the popularity of multiple ways of saying the same thing.
A keyword is a badly named piece of marketing jargon, as a “”keyword”” can contain multiple words. However, “”Keyterm”” has not taken off as its replacement and is rarely used.
The Keyword Planner in Google Ads is a useful way to research which keywords to use for your Google Ads (or any type of content really).

Keywords Everywhere

A plugin for Google Chrome that provides keyword suggestions for free within search results. You can also buy credits to get information on search volume and CPC data on websites like Google Search, Amazon, and YouTube.

Kik Messenger

Kik Messenger is an instant messaging platform that is sometimes referred to as a social network.

KISS

An acronym standing for Keep It Simple Stupid. KISS is a sort of pseudo-ethos that advocates for not overthinking or overcomplicating things (which can be vital in marketing).

Knowledge Graph

A knowledge base that is used by Google to serve information directly into search results. These can come up as text answers from web pages above search results (with the source link below) or in the right-hand column with a set of useful information drawn from multiple sources.

KPI

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator (or sometimes Key Point Indicator) and simply means the most important factors in how something is being judged. For an Advertising Campaign, it may be the number of clicks, conversions, user interactions or anything which the advertiser is tracking and has set targets for.

Lab Data

When data is collected under lab conditions. For example, when testing page loading speed, Lab Data would refer to using computers optimised for the tasks to collect all the data. This creates a bias in the results as while real-world computers are messy in various ways (using different programs, with different hardware etc) a ‘Lab’ computer used for a single task is likely to be unrealistically efficient.

Landing Page

The page where a person enters a website (ie the page they “”land on””). In online advertising, the URL which an ad directs to is the landing page. Optimising landing pages is a vital part of conversion rate optimisation.

Largest Contentful Paint

Largest Contentful Paint is one of Google’s three Core Web Vital metrics. It is a type of page speed measurement that is intended to be a ranking factor for Google search – and so is important for SEO. Largest Contentful Paint is generally referred to by the acronym LCP. It is reported on in Google Search Console and can be measured with a wide variety of page speed tools (such as Page Speed Insights).

Largest Contentful Paint Definition

LCP measures the amount of time it takes for the largest piece of content (that is immediately visible) on a webpage to fully load. The purpose of this is user perception – how long does it take until a page seems like it has loaded. Note:

Largest in this sense refers to the space a piece of content takes up on a screen (rather than file size).
Only content that can be seen when a page first loads is counted (ie above the fold content).

LCP is primarily a measure used by Google and can be found in the Core Web Vitals section of Google Search Console. There are three levels of performance according to Google: These three levels of performance are measured separately for desktop and mobile devices. The timeframes however are the same:

Good: Up to 2.5 seconds
Needs Improvement: Between 2.5 seconds and 4 seconds
Poor: Over 4 seconds

Technical Information

Google previously used a different measure for the same purpose. First Meaningful Paint (FMP) attempted to measure when the first important thing on a page had loaded. Of course what is “”important”” is subjective and hard for an algorithm to guess across millions of different websites. Instead, Google has changed to LCP as it is a far more objective measure. However what is the “”largest”” piece of content on a webpage still needs to be detected. Google does this by ‘watching’ as a page loads and seeing which image, video, or block-level elements (eg things within HTML tags) are the largest above the fold elements once a webpage loads. As pages don’t load in order from largest to smallest this means that the Largest Contentful Block changes as the page loads.

Here is an image from Google which shows how this works:

In this example, in the first screenshot we see the first piece of the main content of the webpage load and become labelled as the FCP (First Contentful Paint). Then the headline loads, and that is marked as the Largest Contentful Paint for the middle three screenshots, as other parts of the page load. However, the final screenshot in the sequence shows the full webpage load which includes an image. This image takes up more of the screen than the headline, and so is now marked as the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). This process is important as it tells you that you can’t cheat this measurement by having a large piece of content load quickly, only for it to be replaced as the largest later in the page load. Only the largest piece of content on the screen once the page is fully loaded counts.

Top Tip

As Google is using “”mobile-first”” indexing on most sites, it is a good idea to optimise for mobile ahead of desktop. Desktop and mobile are measured separately for LCP – but both have the same benchmarks. You shouldn’t assume fixing one will fix the other, however. It is likely that less content can be seen on a mobile screen and so a different block will be designated as the LCP than from the desktop version of the page.

Warning: Cookie Banners

When testing LCP, for most sites your cookie banner will get caught up as the Largest Contentful Paint. This means you should optimise your cookie banner to load as quickly as possible. There is a helpful guide from Google about it here. If you want to test your actual webpage without including your cookie banner, you can use this Webpage test tool and set your cookies in advance by using the advanced tab, then going to the custom section. Instructions on how to do it are included in the guide from Google mentioned above.

Last Click

Sometimes referred to as Last Touch, this is the most common type of attribution for conversions wherein the last click a user makes before a conversion is considered as the sole thing that drove that conversion. For example, a user might click on a social media post, then a referral link, then a paid search ad before making a purchase on a website. With last-click attribution, the results of that sale would be attributed to the paid search ad only.

Latency

The time between a user action (such as a click) and the corresponding reaction on a webpage (such as a new webpage starting to load).

Lazy Loading

In display advertising, lazy loading refers to not loading an ad until it is set to appear on a page (eg if it is 50% down a long webpage, then it would only load when a user gets 40% down the webpage). The idea is to minimise unnecessary computing resources used by the advertiser, ad network, website, and user.

Lead

A potential customer, or a way to get in touch with a potential customer (eg email address, phone number etc).

Lead Generation

Lead generation (or Lead Gen) is the gathering of potential customers’ contact information and can be the main goal for an online advertising campaign. For example, a newsletter signup on a website generates a lead, as the person who signs up has given their contact information and has demonstrated interest in what the website is about (although this is actually considered quite a weak lead). Examples of a strong Lead would be someone signing up for a test drive of a car or registering their email address to be informed when a product or service becomes available – in both cases, the user is indicating they have a desire to purchase.

7 Things To Know About Lead Generation

A lead is someone who you can *likely* sell to. You can think of them as people who are the most receptive to your marketing messages.
An email newsletter is one of the simplest and most powerful forms of lead generation. Having a big email list means having a captive audience for your marketing messages who have already expressed an interest in what you have to say.
According to Marketo, only 4% of website visitors are ready to make a purchase.
A good way to qualify a lead is to offer something for free, then have a survey afterwards asking about their experience. With some well-crafted questions, you’ll soon separate the qualified leads from the looky-loos.
Be careful where you get leads from. Buying data from companies who haven’t obtained it legally could land both you and them in legal hot water. People *hate* having their details grabbed without permission, and they *will* report you.
Looking for B2B leads? Did you know that 80% of all B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn?
Not all leads are created equal. Qualified leads mean someone has checked somehow, and the lead is very interested. Unqualified leads are more just a set of maybes.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an incentive offered to users, often in exchange for their data or their subscription to a marketing list. It is usually (but not always) digital content that is given immediately and for free in order to increase consumer interaction.

Lifetime Value

LTV (often called Customer Lifetime Value or CLTV) is an attempt at predicting the amount of profit that can be expected over the entire relationship with a user. The “”lifetime”” in this metric does not refer to the lifespan of a human, rather the full length of time that a person interacts with a business. For example, if people were only expected to visit a website twice, then their LTV would only be calculated based on what people spend on the site during two visits.

Why Use Lifetime Value?

LTV can be used to help determine how much should be spent on advertising to get a new customer. By working out your profit margin by using lifetime value instead of the profit from an individual sale, you can comfortably increase CPA bids which in turn will lead to more customers. It will cut your profit per sale, but it should increase your profit overall.

Work out the LTV of your campaigns with our Lifetime Value Calculator >

LTV Example

A shoemaker typically charges £50 per pair of shoes they sell, of which £10 is profit. This leads to their digital marketer, Geoff, setting the maximum CPA bid at £5 to ensure a profit is always made. As this is quite a low CPA bid for such a high-value product his ads lose most RTB auctions — but still win enough to bring in 100 sales per month.

The ad campaign cost £500 per month to run and brings in £5,000 in sales. He writes in his report that his ads bring in £500 profit per month or £6,000 per year. Even though this is an ROI of 100%, it is still an insignificant amount of profit for a shoe company, and Geoff fears for his job.

However, after talking to their Business Intelligence Analyst, Geoff finds out that most people who buy his company’s shoes buy another pair of shoes each year for a further four years on average. This means that his ads’ profit is actually much higher — £500 in the first month from the initial ad spend, but then £1,000 a year for the next four years without any additional ad spend.

This means each month his ads are bringing in £4,500 in profit on average (over a five-year period) or £54,000 per year in total. Not bad, but still not amazing for a shoemaker.

This gets Geoff thinking — instead of thinking about profit per sale, he should think about the profit per customer. Each customer buys five pairs of shoes in total, meaning they have a lifetime value of £250. This brings in a total profit of £50, but his CPA is only £5. He knows the low CPA has been holding the ads back, so he increases it to £25, and suddenly the ads start winning a lot more bids.

Sales increase to 500 per month… but the boss notices that they are spending £25 on advertising per pair of shoes sold — which still only brings in £10 profit (for a loss of £15 per sale).

Geoff explains that each customer is expected to come back four more times on average. This means that their Customer Lifetime Value is £250, and so for every £25 spent they are bringing in £250 sales over the next five years — which is £25 in profit after the cost of his ads are taken out.

His old ad spend of £500 per month (£6,000 per year) brought in £54,000 per year using this formula. His new ad spend of £12,500 per month (£150,000 per year) brings in £150,000 in profit per year (spread over five years). The ROI is still 100% he thought he was originally getting — however, by switching to LTV, Geoff was able to massively increase the scale of his ad spend.

Imaginary Geoff no longer fears for his job, and will probably increase his CPA bids further still.

LTV Formula

How you calculate Lifetime Value depends on how you make money. This is the general LTV formula:

LTV = Average Revenue Per User x Average Length of Relationship

Likes

A “”Like”” is a social media term, meaning when a user clicks a button to show they like or approve of something. As this is now a prevalent form of positive feedback on the internet, its meaning has been watered down somewhat and is often used to express any sort of positive feelings towards the post or item that the like button is attached to. For social media marketers, getting likes on posts is the usual manner of demonstrating success, along with engagements and reach.

Linear Video Ads

Linear Video Ads are simply video ads that convey a message by being watched (as opposed to non-linear video ads which may have other interactive components).

Link

A link is when clicking on something on one webpage leads to another webpage.

Link Equity

Also referred to as Link Juice, this is an informal measure of how much a link affects the rankings of a webpage on a search engine results page. Link Equity is also used when discussing redirecting one page to another, or the use of canonical links. For example “”setting Page A as the canonical link for these pages will transfer all their link equity to it”” – meaning that Page A will get a boost on SERPs.

Link Exchange

When two or more websites put each others’ links on their pages in order to artificially improve their SEO. This is a black hat SEO tactic (ie it goes against Google’s guidelines). Websites which do this will have their ranking penalised when caught.

Link Rot

Link Rot means when links on a website stop working over time. This happens primarily when:

Linking to other websites – a site might close, change domain name or reorganise its pages, making links to it from other sites lead nowhere
Internal links – when pages are moved around on a site (or deleted), links internally can stop working

Link Spam Update

An algorithm update from Google in 2021 formalising the need to mark outbound links that are not editorially approved as sponsored, UGC, or nofollow.

Link Velocity

The rate at which a site gets new inbound links, usually measured as the number of linking domains per month. New sites with a very high link velocity might be considered suspicious by a search engine (as it potentially implies dishonest link building practices).

LinkedIn is a social network founded in 2003, now owned by Microsoft. LinkedIn is a social platform like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like, but unlike these other platforms, it is focussed on business. It is a networking platform for professionals to connect, learn, and share knowledge. It is designed to allow people to create business connections, find jobs, share their experiences, and learn from experts.

How is LinkedIn different from Facebook?

Although it focuses on professionals, this platform works similarly to the popular social platform Facebook. It uses the same principles of connecting to friends, posting updates, liking and sharing content, and messaging each other.

LinkedIn also adds a professional spin to popular ideas from Facebook. For instance, your profile can be your resume, and you can add your recommendations, accomplishments, work experience, referrals from colleagues, etc. There are also several other things that you will find exclusively on LinkedIn, such as a full-featured career board, for users to search for jobs they fit into and apply for. Many companies and employment services now use LinkedIn. When you apply for a position through LinkedIn, there’s a possibility that you can share your LinkedIn profile, and this may mean that you do not need to go through the pain of entering your work experience in an online form.

Main features of LinkedIn

These are the basic features of LinkedIn and how they are designed for professionals.

Feed: the LinkedIn feed works just like on any other social network, with opportunities to react to, share, or comment on people’s posts. The main difference is that the underlying themes of everyone’s posts are business-related topics.
- Hashtags: as well as following other people, you can also follow specific hashtags on LinkedIn. Posts using these hashtags will populate your feed along with your connections’ posts
Profile: this includes your details such as name, photo, location, occupation, your posts, workplaces and more. You can customize different sections such as education, work experience, and summary, to create something similar to a traditional CV or resume.
Groups: There are LinkedIn Groups on almost any topic. LinkedIn does not moderate these groups and so many of them do fill up with spam. However, if you find the right one for a topic they can be amazing places to talk about a specific topic with relevant professionals.
My Network: this is where you find a list of professionals you’re connected with on this platform. On LinkedIn instead of ‘Friends’ (as on Facebook) you have ‘Connections’. There is a limit of 30,000 connections.
- Following: If you want to see someone’s posts but don’t know them personally, instead of connecting you can ‘Follow’ them. This creates a one-way connection – their posts appear in your feed, but not the other way around.
Jobs: LinkedIn is one of the best places to look for a new job as recruiters use it as one of their top tools. If you set yourself as “”open to opportunities”” then LinkedIn will recommend jobs to you depending on your job preferences, location, and current information.
Learning: LinkedIn’s Lynda platform is full of useful professional courses. They are not free, but many organisations buy memberships which anyone working there can use.
Messages: you can message other users and start a conversation by sending a private message on LinkedIn. The messaging feature also allows you to send attachments, photos, etc.
- InMail: this feature is only available for premium users and it allows them to send messages directly to LinkedIn without a prior connection, unlike the basic messaging that requires connecting.
- Newsletters: LinkedIn has a newsletter feature that you can invite people to subscribe to. There are endless newsletters on virtually any (business-related) topic so it can be hard to find the most useful ones. However, when you are invited to join one you can click the name of it to see the last post – which should give you a good idea.

Top Tip Join/Subscribe freely to LinkedIn groups and Newsletters. They are often great for a short while. Leave when they stop being helpful.

Main Ways to Use LinkedIn

Personally

Reconnect with old colleagues: “My Network” section on LinkedIn helps you to find old teachers, friends, colleagues, and people you may be familiar with and you think should be part of your professional network.
Find jobs you can apply for: LinkedIn is the ideal platform to search for online job postings. You can get recommendations about jobs that may interest you from LinkedIn, but the search bar can also help you search for specific postings.
Use your LinkedIn profile as a resume: it is possible to use your LinkedIn profile because it represents your complete resume. So, you can add a link to your profile in your cover letter or email when you are applying for jobs. Some job-hunting websites also allow you to connect to your profile on LinkedIn so you can import your information when applying for a job.
Find new professionals to connect with: apart from your old colleagues and current co-workers that you can connect with on LinkedIn, it also allows you to find new professionals to connect with, both locally and internationally. And this may help your professional endeavours in many ways.

For Promotion

Join relevant groups: one of the most effective ways to connect with new professionals is by joining groups that relate to your profession and interests and participating in the discussions. You may get more people to connect with you from the group if they like your contributions.
Publish your blog: LinkedIn also has a publishing platform (called Pulse) to publish blog posts. Your published blog posts will be on your profile, which will boost your credibility in fields related to your profession.
Send a newsletter: LinkedIn Newsletters have the advantage of having an audience you can immediately invite to be readers. Instead of spending time building up a following, you can get one overnight if your newsletter is good enough.
Promote your business: similar to Facebook, LinkedIn features business pages that are free to set up, and that LinkedIn users can follow. Publish posts or blogs on the platform, or even get subscribers to an email list to connect with people interested in your company.
Advertising: advertising on LinkedIn is possible through LinkedIn’s advertising platform, Campaign Manager. Different types of ads you can run on LinkedIn are sponsored content, dynamic ads, text ads, and message ads.

Advertising on LinkedIn

The advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is that they have a lot of information on their users that other social networks don’t have. For example, job title, industry, work history etc. For B2B advertisers this can be a gold mine. You can target people who are exceptionally likely to be interested in whatever product you are selling. Similarly for recruiters, you can find people with the appropriate experience and headhunt them with direct messages. LinkedIn is not a cheap social network to advertise on. As the advertising is so targeted and the targeting information isn’t available elsewhere they can charge a premium. You should think carefully before advertising on LinkedIn. A well-targeted campaign can give great results, but a badly-targeted one can be costly.

7 Facts About LinkedIn

LinkedIn has around 300 million monthly active users, but they only spend 17 minutes per month on the site on average.
Almost 40% of users pay for LinkedIn premium, making it much less reliant on advertising revenue than other social networks.
After the USA – India, Brazil, Great Britain and Canada have the highest number of Linkedin users.
Users are 20x more likely to share videos than other forms of content on LinkedIn (although 80% of users watch with the sound off).
94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for Content Marketing, and 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
Only around 0.5% (3 million users) out of LinkedIn’s 600 million registered users post weekly or more.
41% of millionaires use LinkedIn, and 90 million LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers (63 million are in decision-making positions).

LinkedIn Newsletter

LinkedIn’s built in email marketing platform. There are a lot of suprisingly good ones on there (but also even more terrible ones of course).

Live Rooms

A way of broadcasting live on Instagram with up to three guests. The ‘host’ starts an Instagram Live session (which is a live streaming video on Instagram) and then can invite up to 3 other people to join.

Local Citation

Any mention of a business address online. These are vital in local SEO.

Local Influencer

An influencer whose followers are concentrated in one geographic area.

Local Pack

Also referred to as a Snack Pack. The section on a search engine results page related to a specific location. For example, if you search for “”dentists near me”” then there will generally be a section taken from Google Maps showing the nearest dentists.

Local SEO

The process of making a webpage or website more visible on search engine results pages due to its location. This often means putting information on mapping websites directly.

Long Click

A long click is when a user clicks on a site on a search engine, then doesn’t make that search on the search engine again for a long time. This indicates to the search engine that the site clicked on provided good information, and is, therefore, a good search result.

Long Tail Keyword

Multiple word keywords which really define the company targeting it. These keywords have low search volumes (often due to their specificity), which can make them good targets for smaller businesses. For example, the top refrigerator brands want to compete over the keyword “”buy refrigerators””. Although that keyword will have a high volume of searches, the combined advertising spend of the top refrigerator companies would make it too competitive (and therefore expensive) for smaller refrigerator manufacturers. Therefore a Scotland based refrigerator could instead bid on the phrase “”Buy Refrigerators in Edinburgh””. This keyword would have less overall volume, but as it is more relevant to the Scottish fridge company it would be an easier win for them. By doing well on lots of long-tail keywords, smaller companies are able to find markets less dominated by larger companies.

7 Things To Know About Long Tail Keywords

The more specific a search is to you, the higher the conversion rate it will likely have.
According to Hitwise, the long tail makes up 70% of search traffic (while the top 10,000 keywords make up about 19%). There is *a lot* of room to operate once you start getting specific.
For smaller businesses, it doesn’t make sense to spend all your time & budget competing for generic keywords. Dominating lots of Long Tail Keyword searches will get better results for less.
According to Ahrefs, 92% of keywords get 10 searches or fewer per month. The long tail is… very long.
A “”head”” keyword is the opposite of a long-tail keyword. If you searched for “”car”” that would be a head keyword – it’s more of a topic than a specific idea & it’s very hard to rank for.
You can’t run search ads on every search query in existence. Google Ads have a minimum number of searches that needs to be hit for a term before ads start to appear.
The term “”long-tail keyword”” comes from Chris Anderson who wrote that while there is a market for almost every product, sometimes that market is very small.These niche markets are the tail.

Long-Tail

The Long Tail refers to the vast majority of websites that get comparatively little traffic, but which, when taken altogether, make up a significant volume. The term was coined by Chris Anderson who explains it here.

Lookalike Audience

Often referred to as LALs, a lookalike audience is a targetable audience that Facebook generates of people who have similar qualities to a chosen group (eg people who made a purchase in the past 60 days).

Low Hanging Fruit

Low hanging fruit is an expression that means the easiest things to do. For example, the low hanging fruit in maths homework would be the questions you could do without thinking about them.

Loyalty Rate

Loyalty Rate is the percentage of users that visited a website or app, that also visited in the previous month. The equation is:

Loyalty Rate = Returning Users (Month 2) / Total Users (Month 2)

This is a useful measure of how effective your branding is.

LSI Keywords

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Intent keywords. LSI keywords are possibly the most controversial topic in SEO. The concept is that if you put keywords related to the one you are targeting in your content then that will give a boost to your SEO efforts. For example, a page about cats could arguably have LSI keywords such as ‘paws’, ‘whiskers’, ‘zoomies’ etc. While there is no evidence that this is how Google works, many people still claim that it is a good strategy (and many other people get mad at them for it).

LTV

LTV (often called Customer Lifetime Value – CLTV or CLV) is an attempt at predicting the amount of profit that can be expected over the entire relationship with a user. The “”lifetime”” in this metric does not refer to the lifespan of a human, but rather the full length of time that a person interacts with a business. For example, if people were only expected to visit a website twice, then their LTV would only be calculated based on what people spend on the site during two visits. This is a great metric to use when calculating CPA, ROI, or ROAS. By using LTV instead of immediate revenue, you capture a more realistic return on your marketing efforts. As LTV will always be higher than immediate revenue, using it in your campaign planning also means you are able to run ads at a higher CPA while still being profitable.

LTV:CAC

The ratio of lifetime value to customer acquisition cost. This is a way of measuring whether the cost of acquiring a new customer outweighs the amount you will earn from that customer.

Magento

Magento is a popular open-source eCommerce platform owned by Adobe.

Make Good

A make good (or MG) is when a website/ad network under-delivers on an ad campaign, so provides compensation in the form of more inventory at a later date.

Marketer

A marketer is someone who tries to increase and improve awareness of a product or company.

Marketing Channel

A marketing channel is a way to advertise something. For example, you could refer to online advertising in general as a channel or CPC campaigns as a channel, or technology websites as a channel.

Markup

A way of tagging a webpage (or elements of a webpage) to explain what they are. This is most relevant to SEO, as search engines read specific markups (such as Schema) and may add elements to search results as a result.

Media Kit

A pack of materials about an organisation. This can either be a pack of prices and options for buying media, or a pack of information about a brand / product etc to be distributed at an event.

Media Spend

The amount of money spent directly on advertising. For example, a campaign’s costs might include hiring influencers, and agency fees, as well as money spent on Paid Social – only the money directly spent on Paid Social is counted as media spend.

Medium

An ad free publishing platform where anyone can add articles and are paid (from user subscriptions) based on how popular their articles are.

MER

MER stands for Media Efficiency Ratio. MER is a metric that shows you how much you get back from each dollar (or pound etc) that you spend on ads. It’s like ROAS, except combining results from all of your ad spend. An eROAS if you will (or a Blended ROAS or ecosystem ROAS). The equation is:

MER = Total Revenue ÷ Total Ad Spend

Messenger Rooms

Facebooks version of Zoom. A large scale video messaging service.

Meta Description

A Meta Description is a summary of a webpage that doesn’t appear on the page. It is instead read (and often displayed) by search engines in their search results, and social networks when a link to that webpage is posted. Meta Descriptions are very important when it comes to SEO, as they are used to convince users that a page contains the information they are looking for.

Meta Tag

A tag that is used to define what something online is about. While there is still an HTML meta tag that can be used on websites, due to its widespread misuse, search engines no longer use them to rank websites. Similar types of tags to this are still used internally on websites and on many platforms to categorise content, most notably on YouTube.

Metaverse

A unified AR and VR project where people can go into an entirely similuated related,or see things superimposed onto reality. It’s like Lawnmower Man except driven by Facebook and with a scary amount of ad tracking built in. I hate it.

Metrics

Metrics are measurable statistics that are used in digital marketing to improve performance such as CTR or CPC.

MFA Sites

Made for Advertising Sites. Low quality websites that focus typically focus on a niche,and which only exist in order to gain ad reveneue. These low quality sites make the internet worse.

Micro-Influencer

An influential person on social media with less than 10,000 followers. Often thought to be more influential than their more-followed counterparts as they can interact directly with more of their followers.

Microsite

A microsite is a website made for a specific purpose, often by a company that already has a website. They can be a small part of the larger site or contained separately. For example, a soft drink company may launch a competition, and so create a microsite that deals only with that competition. Microsites can be very effective ways of advertising, as they can look and feel radically different from a companies main website, and be much more focused.

Microsoft

A technology company founded by Bill Gates. Microsoft makes a wide variety of the software infrastructure that makes the internet run.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge is a web browser made by Microsoft that replaced Internet Explorer.

Middle of Funnel

In digital marketing MoFu means “”Middle of Funnel”” and refers to content that draws people deeper into a website by demonstrating its value. The funnel in question is the marketing funnel and is the journey people take from entering a website to undertaking an action (such as making a purchase). MoFu or Middle of Funnel in this sense refers to things like webinars, testimonials, or reviews. Basically, any content that helps people make an informed judgement about your site – and which ideally demonstrates your the site knows what it is talking about. The overall goal is to demonstrate the value of your site.

Minimum CPM

The minimum CPM amount you will accept for ad impressions – often an option in ad network UIs, or agreed contractually with an ad network.

Minimum Guarantee

A minimum guarantee, or MG, is an amount an ad network contractually agrees to pay a publisher (monthly/quarterly or annually) usually conditional on the publisher hitting unique user / ad impression goals.

Mobile Advertising

What Is Mobile Advertising?

Mobile Advertising refers to advertising which is built specifically to appear on a mobile phone (or cell phone in US). There are two primary types of mobile advertising – In-App or Web-Based. In terms of effectiveness and price, there is not really any difference between the two types as of yet.

Web-Based Mobile Advertising

Mobile Web-Based advertising is split into two types:

For sites that have been optimised for mobile
For regular desktop sites which are just being resized on your phone screen.

For example: The main difference between these two types of site views is obviously size. Mobile optimised sites make use of the reduced screen size in a better manner, which is why they exist in the first place. This translates to ads too: notice the banner ad on the top of the Mobile Optimised Site is a good size proportionally and easily visible.

For the Non-Mobile Optimised site a leaderboard ad is visible, but it’s somewhat lost in the clutter of the page, which is just the desktop site resized for a mobile screen. This happens because IAB standard ads which are meant for a desktop screen will still appear on the site if it is loaded on a mobile phone and mobile devices haven’t been excluded from targeting settings.

Ads displayed in this way will not perform well, as they appear too small for people to make an informed choice about clicking on them (ie, most clicks will be accidental). However if you have not made a mobile version of your site, but still want to monetize people visiting fret not. There are several companies that have come up with a solution – run a type of overlay ad targeted to mobile phones only, which is about the size of the ad displayed on mobile optimised sites. These will then appear at the top or bottom of the screen as well as the misplaced desktop ads.

In-App Advertising

In-App advertising targets users in mobile apps and can appear in any format. They can appear as small strips at the top or bottom of the app (often changing out ads over time), as well as sometimes appearing as full-screen ads during loading pages or in-between app usage. The effectiveness of In-App ads is highly variable as it depends on the app and ad, but as it is a fast-growing marketplace it should not be ignored. Here are two examples:

Mobile Advertising Opportunities

As Mobile ads are viewed on smartphones this has created new opportunities for advertisers. Here are some examples of the biggest things in mobile advertising:

Cost Per Install Advertising

Who should use it: People trying to increase App Downloads. Where better to advertise apps made for smartphones than on smartphones themselves? Despite desktop ads that lead to downloading an application being roundly rejected by the internet, install ads are thriving on phones. This may be because of the relatively low occurrence of viruses on phones, or else simply due to naiveté. Regardless, paying to have an app downloaded is exceptionally commonplace, with the only real pitfall being tracking. With Install Rates being as low as 1% – even if someone clicks an ad to download an app it is still unlikely that they actually will install it. This is why CPI advertising is used instead of CPC for app install ads, and if you’re looking to get involved this is what you should do.

Call Only Ads

Who should use it: Companies that sell over the phone. It’s now possible to make hyperlinks go straight to a phone number. On a desktop computer, this isn’t really helpful. On a smartphone, it’s a revelation! Having ads link straight to phone numbers make a lot of sense for a lot of companies. If your companies make sales over the phone, this is definitely a good option for you.

Location-Based Ads

Who should use it: Companies with a storefront. Being able to geo-target advertising isn’t anything new. Shops have advertised locally since before the internet was invented after all. The ability to target people as they come closer to a shop is a game-changer however. By targeting mobile phones and a small radius around your location, it is now possible to hit people as they are passing by your store. Shop owners should use this type of ad to hit people at their moment of need. “”Where can I buy a hammer?”” is a good keyword for online hardware shops. “”Where can I buy a hammer?”” is an amazing keyword for hardware stores targeting people within a mile of them.

7 Things To Know About Mobile Advertising

Mobile Ads are ones you see on your phone at home, or on the go.
62% of Paid Search clicks on Google are via mobile. If you are running Google Ads, it’s worth making ads that work best on mobile (and device targeting them).
Most people prefer to see ads that are local to them, and nothing is more local than Mobile!
87% of Facebook’s advertising revenue came from mobile. It’s *really* worthwhile to make mobile-specific ads when running Facebook ad campaigns (and device target them).
Ads on smartphones can target proximity to shops. Get close, and get an ad!
The standard size for Mobile Interstitials (the sort of pop-up ad which appears in your browser window game screen) is 320×480. This is because that is what would fit on the screen of an iPhone 1, and the size was never updated!
According to the Boston Consulting Group, 3 out of 10 people would stop seeing their friends in person rather than give up their smartphones. 46% would give up a day of the weekend!

Mobile Advertising Advice for Site Owners

It took a while to take off, but mobile advertising is now an exceptionally large industry. It takes a bit of know-how to cash in on it, however. The most important thing to do is to consider it a specific revenue stream. You can’t expect your desktop ads to cover mobile users too as they look weird in most cases. Use whatever technology you can to ensure that different ad types appear to mobile users. Overlays and footer ads, as shown above, are commonly accepted setups. AdWords runs both of these ad units, and only shows them when a click is likely, so they can be less intrusive than they immediately seem. Another reasonable choice is adding MPUs within content to users. Ideally, these shouldn’t appear more than once every 2 screens – as in a user can scroll down two full screens before seeing an ad again. Over-filling a mobile site with ads will drive away users faster than on desktop sites. The reasons for this seem mainly to be:

Mobile browsing is sometimes restricted by the amount of data users can download, so wasting it on ads is angering to users.
Users expect information fast on smartphones, and ads can be heavy and really slow things down.

This is why ad-blocking is actually provided by mobile networks in some cases. This means that mobile advertising cannot be relied on, unfortunately. If your site is large enough, seek out a mobile advertising network to work with and take their advice on maximising revenue.

Mobile Advertising Advice for Ad Buyers

Mobile advertising has not yet been standardised by the IAB (although it is on its way). This means that you cannot create a “”mobile ad unit”” and then run it across any site you choose, such as with a 300×250 or 728×90, as different sites run different ad sizes. It’s not just the ad sizes that vary either, but the technology that runs them differs too, as does the screen size of the devices they are intended for. This all means it currently is difficult to buy mobile inventory at scale for a reasonable cost. There is however an incredible amount of ad inventory available to buy from each individual vendor, so if you can strike up a good working relationship with a large mobile network it might be worth your while. As always, we recommend testing out what is best for you. With Mobile advertising it may take a while to do a lot of testing as the industry is fragmented, however, if you can find a positive ROI, then get stuck in.

Moderated

Moderation is the act of reviewing comments or forum posts to ensure they don’t breach rules set out by a site. A site or comments section which is moderated is one where someone is checking to make sure that things posted adhere to the rules of the site. Moderation widely can be described as being in two forms: passive or active.

Passive moderation means when a moderator only acts if people flag up, or complain about a post or comment.
Active moderation means that a moderator is either proactively reading the majority of posts or comments to check for problems, or in some cases only allowing posts or comments which have been through an approval process.

Generally, a good idea on any site, as people say weird stuff on the internet (and bots post spam).

Moderator

Someone who reads comments or posts on a website and decides whether or not that content is allowed. Moderators can be paid or be volunteers, and are often also used as community managers.

Modified Tweet

A modified tweet (or MT) is a form of retweet on Twitter, in which changes have been made (often to conserve space).

Mommy Blogger

A blogger who talks about their experiences as a mother. Successful Mummy Bloggers will often be paid to review parenting products.

Monetized

If something is monetized that means that it has been set up so that money is earned from it. For example, a webpage with ads on it or that has been sponsored has been monetized.

Month-on-Month

Month-on-Month (or MoM) means comparing data from one month to the previous month. For example, you could say “In June we had MoM revenue growth of 5%” which would mean that June had 5% more revenue than May. A month is a good amount of time to measure changes in performance over. It’s long enough that stats from a month are quite reliable, but not so long that they are covering different seasons. A month in this type of reporting can mean:

A Calendar Month
A 28 Day Period
A 30 Day Period

Calendar months are the most intuitive, however, as calendar months are different lengths they can be slightly problematic to use when comparing to other calendar months. 28 days is a good reporting period as by using four complete weeks there is always the same number of weekdays and weekend days. However, only one month is 28 days long so reporting on 28 days is inherently an underestimate on volumes. 30 days is also a good reporting period as it’s the average length of a month. However, there can be 8-10 weekend days in a 30 day period making them inconsistent to compare.

Calculate the MoM change of your metrics with our Month-on-Month Calculator >

Month-on-Month Formula

Use this equation to calculate the change in metrics from one month to the next.

Month-on-Month Change = ((Any Metric ÷ Same Metric from the previous month) -1) x100

Top Tip

To calculate your Month-on-Month change you must subtract 1 after dividing your metric by the previous month. This is because you are looking to see how much performance has changed. If you just use your metric ÷ the previous month then you are not showing the change in results. Instead, you are showing how the metric compares to last month. This can be very confusing, so let’s take the simplest example:

This month you made 200 sales. Last month you made 100 sales.

With metric ÷ the previous month you get 200 ÷ 100 = 2. If you turn this into a percentage it would be 200%. You can then say: “This month’s sales were at 200% the level of last month.”

If instead, you use ((Any Metric ÷ Same Metric from the previous month) – 1) you get (200 ÷ 100) – 1 = 1. You can then say “This month saw 100% more sales than last month.” Or similarly, “We had a 100% increase in sales compared to last month.” Or even, “Sales went up by 100% this month.”

The second version is what is used as standard simply because it’s easier to understand and easier to use conversationally.

Monthly Active Users

A metric that social networks use to describe how many people are using their site. The point of this metric is that it only takes into account people who are using the site in any given month, rather than people who have opened an account but never visit the site.

Monumetric

An ad network for WordPress sites that uses ad rotation technology. They only take sites over a certain size and have a setup cost, but also provide very high levels of revenue.

MRR

MRR stands for Monthly Recurring Revenue. It is the predictable amount of revenue a business receives each month (via subscriptions etc).

MTD

An acronym for Month To Date. This is a way of filtering data by only considering the current month (up to the current moment).

Multi-Size Ad Slot

An ad slot that can load more than one size of advert within it.

Multi-Touch Attribution

Sometimes referred to as multi-channel attribution, this is a way of attributing conversions across multiple channels. For example, if a person clicks on a social media ad, then a link in an email, then a display ad before making a sale, then each of these three channels would receive some credit for the sale. The amount of credit that each channel receives must be decided upon, however.

Multiple Customer Management

Multiple Customer Management is the way in which ad networks can manage the Google Ad Exchange and Open Bidding (Google’s Header Bidding network) for website publishers. MCM replaced Scaled Partner Management in July 2021. It is intended to be more transparent (in terms of delegation and revenue share) and has far more features than SPM did. Multiple Customer Management also allows three special types of programmatic deals:

Preferred deals – where advertiser and publisher agree on a price for inventory, but not how much inventory will be bought. The advertiser then has first option on those impressions at the agreed price before it goes to the normal open auction
Programmatic Direct Deals – a deal at a fixed price arranged between advertiser and publisher. This can be for a specified, or unspecified amount of inventory.
Programmatic Guaranteed Deals – where advertisers buy a specific amount of inventory from a publisher at a specific price

Multivariant Testing

Testing multiple changes at once to work out which combination is better. This can be used in marketing to run tests on different creates faster – however it is hard to get enough results for each variation to make the test results valid.

Native Advertising

Native Ads are ads that are intended not to look like ads. For example, they could be an advertorial or even standard ads which are intentionally styled like the website they are on so as to appear as part of the site. Native Ads are essentially the product placement of the online advertising world.

Navigational Search Query

A search aimed at finding a specific website or webpage. While these searches generate a lot of volume they are not a good Paid Search of SEO opportunity, as the searchers intent has already been decided.

nCPA

New Cost Per Acquisition. The amount it costs for sales (or actions) from new customers. A useful metric to understand whether your marketing is effective on people who haven’t purchased from you before.

Negative Keyword

Keywords which are targeted away from as opposed to target towards. For example, an airline would target keywords around holiday words but would add a negative keyword of “”crash”” to ensure that its ads didn’t appear next to stories about plane crashes.

Negative Targeting

The process of targeting an ad away from a user or piece of content. For example, an airline may want to target all content on a website about travel and holidays, however, it would want to negatively target content about plane crashes.

Nested Comments

When a reply to a comment is slightly indented or hidden under the comment it is replying to (so a user must expand to see the replies). This is a useful way for forums and comment sections to make it possible to break out topics within a thread.

Net 60 Terms

A common payment condition in online advertising, Net 60 means that you will only be paid 60 days after the activity has taken place (or sometimes 60 days after the month in which the activity has taken place). This is generally so that the payer has enough time to get paid themselves before giving money to the payee.

Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score is a way of measuring how likely your audience is to recommend you. It works by asking users how likely they are to recommend a product or service on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the most likely). The scores are then broken down into three categories:

Promoters – people with scores of 9-10. These people will probably tell others how great your product or service is, and keep using it themselves
Passives – people with scores of 7-8. These people were happy enough with your product, but will probably never think about it again. This means they won’t necessarily be repeat customers and can be lured away by competitors.
Detractors – people with scores of 0-6. These people don’t like what you’re doing, and will likely spread the word about how bad they think you are.

The percentage of people who fit into each of these categories is then worked out. The net promoter score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. The resulting per cent is how likely people are to recommend your product or service.

Netiquette

Etiquette on the internet.

NFT

A unique identifier for a digital good. NFTs utilise blockchain technology to make it possible to confirm that a digital version of something is the original and not a copy. For example, an image or essay made on a computer can have an NFT attached so that it has value as a unique item and can therefore be sold.

Niche

A specific or specialised interest or section of the population. Websites are often spoken about in terms of which niche they fit in, as each niche has its own audience/community.

No-Follow

A type of link marked so that no link equity passes from the webpage the link is on to the webpage the link leads to. It’s a way for a website owner to tell search engines that while the link appears on their site, they are not endorsing that link by including it.

Non-Exclusive YouTube Video

A video where an influencer promotes a bunch of different brands at once. This type of influencer advertising is cheaper than exclusive videos but is also much less effective.

Non-Guaranteed Inventory

Non-Guaranteed Inventory is the term used when an unspecified amount of inventory is purchased. This is usually a mechanism for selling off remnant inventory, and so sold at a discount rate (“”whatever we can’t sell to other people, you can have at a discount””).

Non-Human Traffic

What is Non-Human Traffic?

Non-Human Traffic (or NHT) is a type of traffic made up of any visits to a website in which a human is not involved. It is generally generated by bots, which are programs created to visit websites for various reasons. These can be nefarious or completely reasonable reasons, but they mostly boil down to finding and gathering information automatically.

Technical Information

Non-human traffic reportedly makes up more than half of all internet traffic. This is because of the vast variety of bots out there. Their purposes include (but are not limited to):

Indexing pages for search engines
Scanning prices for price comparison websites
Testing website speed and useability
Phishing for personal information to be used in scams
Forcefully trying to gain access to and take over a website
Advertising fraud – either generating ad impressions or click fraud

As you can see, there are good bots and bad bots. While some bots will identify themselves to analytics programs, many will not. This is where NHT becomes a problem for sites relying on advertising for revenue. Bots will not only skew analytics for a website, but they will often also generate masses of ad impressions. While this could possibly earn more money on a CPM campaign, as this fake inventory will not yield any ROI for the advertiser it is undeniably a bad thing. A ton of extra ad impressions might feel like a good thing, but all it will really do is drive down your CTR and decrease the likelihood of future bookings.

Top Tip

Any company which earns money through providing metrics (ad platforms, third-party ad servers, analytics platforms, Search Engines etc) will be working to reduce the amount of non-human traffic it records. As a website owner or advertiser, there is basically nothing you can do about it, however. With online advertising, your goal remains the same regardless of the amount of NHT your ads are getting. If you are generating conversions or leads, the NHT will simply factor into that as something to optimise away from. If you are paying for views or impressions, your CPV or CPM is already based on what is reasonable, even with non-human traffic occurring.

Basically: Focus your energy on what you are doing. Leave the fight against non-human traffic to the companies who are able to spend much more time and money on it. If it is a core part of their business, they will come up with a solution eventually.

Other names for Non-Human Traffic (synonyms)

NHT, Invalid Traffic, Bot Traffic

It’s the opposite of

Valid Traffic

Not to be confused with

Ad traffic, Skynet, Animal trafficking

Non-Linear Video Ads

A non-linear video ad is a video ad that is not based on simply watching a video to get the message across. They can include items outside the ad which make up part of the ad (such as images or text which relate to the video) or else links inside a video that can affect the video (which is why they are referred to as non-linear).

Non-Organic Traffic

Non-Organic Traffic means traffic that has been paid for. This would include users on a site who came from clicking on an online ad.

Non-Session Data

Non-Session Data is information that cannot be gleaned from a user by their usage of a site. This should mean that the data is unobtainable to the site, but through a combination of informed guesswork and cookies, many analytics programs can still provide this data to sites. There are also many companies that can take your data and match it up to user records, although the legality of this varies from place to place so it is not recommended.

Non-Standard Ad Unit

In the Preparing Your Site section we told you to stick with IAB standard ads. This was because these ad sizes have been shown to maximise revenue, and are common enough to minimise setup effort. However, sometimes an ad network will ask you to put another ad unit onto your site. This is usually because they are selling lots of it, which makes it a good idea to oblige (assuming they have already proved themselves good for your site). Apart from the three standard ad units, there are a few other legitimate and widely used non-standard ad units. Below is a list of some of the most common (for further information, please see our Ad Size Guide):

300×600: This is a highly successful ad unit in terms of both performance and the eCPM it commands. It has not quite made it into the standard ad list because there are not enough sites that are designed to take it currently. Also known as a Monster MPU, the 300×600 can be run in its own ad slot but is more commonly set up as a multi-sized ad slot (ask your ad network) along with a 300×250 or 160×600.
125×125: This ad unit is used mainly on recruitment sites, but is also still present randomly around the web. If your ad network has a good track record with this ad size, then it is worth considering.
Pop-Unders: Most people haven’t really noticed, but Pop-Up ads are essentially dead – they have been replaced by their marginally less annoying cousin – the pop-under. These are the web pages that appear behind your current browser window, to be noticed only when you close it. These ads can command a reasonable eCPM, but are exceptionally annoying to users so should be limited in the number of appearances they make to a user each day. Most networks are capable of running pop-unders but we would strongly recommend against using them. Reputable companies no longer use these sorts of ads, so the risks you are taking with your site’s reputation and user count may not outweigh the money you will make. Also, due to pop-blockers being fairly common now, the amount of inventory available for these units is very low (and very hard to predict).
Interstitials/Floaters/Overlays: These are called different things in different places, but these are kind of a workaround for the pop-up issue that the advertising industry invented, in an attempt to be classier about the whole thing. They are the ads that appear on top of the page, in the same browser window, sort of floating. They can be interactive and/or affect the sites appearance, or sometimes are just an image or video playing. The rule of thumb is that they last for 15-30 seconds before automatically closing unless the user interacts with them somehow (they also must have a close button). These can make a lot of money, but again annoy users so need to be shown rarely (again – once per user per day). We recommend allowing these ads, not only for the money but also because standard ads can now be built to spawn these units anyway, so you may as well have some control over the process and earn extra bucks in the meantime.
InText/InLine Advertising: These are the little boxes that pop up when you hover over certain words on some sites. There are only a few companies who do this sort of thing and they are especially talented at convincing publishers that InText advertising will make you rich. It will not; but it is a reasonable income stream and so worth considering although, again, users do find it exceptionally annoying. The ads are also tricky to add and remove from your site, so if you decide use in-text advertising you will likely be stuck with it for a long time

7 Things To Know About Non-Standard Ad Units

Standard Ads make your life easy. Non-standard ads make your site interesting.
Odd ad units can be great earners, but carry a risk of being hard to sell.
If you sell bespoke ad sizes, you should have an in-house design agency able to help advertisers make them. That, and really great ad specs.
Most people don’t even notice ads anymore (it’s called ad blindness). Non-standard ad units can break this spell.
I, for one, would love to see more triangular ads on the internet. Or any really.
The most standard non-standard ad sizes are:- Overlays/Floaters – Reskins – PushdownsThere is no single standard size for any of these.
Be wary of choosing bespoke ad units. They come with A LOT of problems.

Off-Page Ranking Factor

An SEO term for things that affect where web pages rank in search engines that are not on the webpage itself (for example links from other websites).

On-Page Ranking Factor

An SEO term for things that affect where web pages rank in search engines that are on the webpage itself (for example, keyword usage).

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO means optimising what is on a webpage (including things that aren’t visible – eg meta descriptions) in order for that page to rank higher in search engines.

Online Advertising

Any activity where a person or business pays to promote something online. This main three pillars of online advertising are Paid Search,Paid Social and Display Advertising.

Online Publishers Association

Now known as Digital Content Next (DCN), the OPA is a trade association of websites with a membership that claims 100% reach in the USA.

Open Rate

Open Rate is the percentage of people who were sent an email who opened it. It is one of the core email marketing metrics, along with Delivery Rate, CTOR, and Conversion Rate. It is occasionally shortened to just OR – but only by email marketing professionals. Open Rate is an odd email marketing metric, as it is not used to measure how good the content of an email is, but rather the meta-variables around it, such as:

Subject line
Preview Snippet (the small part of an email you can see in your inbox)
The Date & Time the email was sent.

It can also help measure the general loyalty and interest of the users being sent the email.

Understand your email campaigns better with our Open Rate Calculator >

Open Rate Definition

Open Rate is defined as the percentage of people who opened an email out of all the people who had that email delivered to them. Please note the use of “”delivered””. While the definition of what counts as a “”delivered email”” varies slightly between email platforms, it does not include emails that have bounced or were not accepted at all. This is important to note as Open Rate is not the percentage of people who opened an email out of the number of people you sent an email, but rather out of the number of people who “”received”” that email.

Open Rate Formula

The Open Rate equation is:

Open Rate = (Opened x 100) ÷ Delivered

Average Open Rate

The general consensus is that Open Rates generally hover between 15%-25%. If you are getting an open rate below 15% then you should start testing your subject line, preview snippet, and the time (and day) you send your email. Only do one of these things at a time so you can try to work out whether or not it is having a positive effect. If you are getting above 25% then good work, keep it up.

Technical Information

There are a few important things to note about Open Rate:

Each email address that receives an email can only record one “”open””. This means that even if someone receives an email, opens it, and then marks it as unread and opens it again – it will still only count as one open.
What counts as a delivered email varies depending on the email platform. The general rule is that an email is counted as delivered once it has been accepted by the receiving server from the delivering email platform – which means that only emails that don’t bounce are included. However, whether or not an email getting caught by a spam or junk mail filter counts as a bounce is not consistently agreed upon. This means that for some email platforms an email still counts as delivered even if it is quarantined as spam and never seen by a user at all.
Some email software (such as Outlook) Previews an email automatically both when the email software is launched, and when an email is clicked on (even if it is immediately deleted). These “”previews”” are generally counted as opens, which means that the number of opens is generally inflated (although there is no consensus on how much it is inflated by).
Since iOS15 Apple Mail will automatically open all emails, with the intention of making tracking harder.

7 Key Points About Open Rate

Getting people to open emails is the 2nd obstacle to overcome in email marketing (after getting past junk filters in the first place).
Open Rate is *always* inaccurate. Email Platforms can’t track opens directly. Instead, they insert a tiny image into emails & count only when it loads. HOWEVER most email providers don’t allow images by default, so won’t count.
To optimise your open rate take a look at: 🤵 Who your email is from ⁉️ Your email subject line 🔎 Your preview snippet 🕒 When you send your email 📅 How often you send emails ÷ Segmenting your list
Adding images to your email will increase your open rate. Opens are tracked by a pixel loading. No one will “”download all images”” if there are no images to see, and so the tracking pixel won’t be loaded either.
Even though Open Rate is a deeply flawed metric, it’s still useful in the short run. The fact that it is deeply flawed makes it less useful for long-term analysis though as those flaws are inconsistent. In practical terms, this means that Month-on-Month analysis is more valuable than Year-on-Year.
If someone has an inbox that loads previews of emails – that still counts as an open (if they allow images).
If you optimise your open rate, you will likely see your CTOR drop (more opens without more clicks makes for a worse CTOR). Optimise both together (and the landing page too to keep your conversion rate up).

Opera Ad Manager

A way to run ads in Opera Apps,including Opera News,and the news feed in the Opera Mini broswer app. ”

Opportunity To See

It is traditionally thought that an ad/marketing message needs to be seen around 5 times before it becomes effective (as in users need 5 opportunities to see it).

7 Things To Know About Opportunity To See

In a *terrible* example of marketing jargon, OTS is used to mean both:
- Each time someone might see an ad (eg impressions)
- The average no. of times people see an ad (eg frequency)
OTS is not a consistent metric across all channels. An online video ad only needs to be 50% on screen for 2 seconds to count, while a TV ad has to play for a full 30 seconds.
OTS is a way of hedging bets – they are opportunities to see an ad, not a guarantee that an ad was actually seen. To me, this really explains how ad impressions became a common metric.
In online advertising, frequency is essentially the same as OTS as a metric. The difference is that that OTS is an estimated average whereas frequency is based on live data.
According to Ryte, Opportunity To See is most analogous to page views (per user) in terms of SEO metrics as websites are essentially an advertising medium.
The idea behind OTS is planning your marketing spend. If you want people to see an ad 5 times each, what mix of channels do you need to book to be sure to hit them 5 times?
OTS is a traditional marketing metric meaning the ratio between the number of times an ad was seen, and the number of people who saw an ad.

Opt-In

‘Opt-in’ or ‘Opting in’ means requiring a user to make an active, positive choice to increase their interaction with a website or other media. Generally, this implies that the default option selected by the original creator of the content is minimal interaction where the website is entirely passive in its dealings with a user. ‘Opting in’ can therefore often refer to an (unticked) tick box that when selected allows that user to receive further content to their inbox or can even refer to a button that gives consent to download cookies onto a browser. For instance: GDPR guidelines introduced by the EU in 2018 turned good practice into law by requiring websites to ask for clear, concise consent from website users by ‘requiring positive opt-in’ without any pre-ticked boxes or default consent. In email marketing, there are two different kinds of opt-ins.

Single Opt-in: Usually, an (unticked) tick box on a website asking a user to subscribe. It doesn’t require any further confirmation from the user, making it a fast way for site and list owners to grow their email list but also increases the likelihood of incorrect email addresses, inactive users and a higher unsubscribe rate.

Double Opt-in: After a single opt-in has been selected by a user, a second opt-in is sent, usually via an email that then requires confirmation. Most email marketing now requires a double opt-in for the sake of keeping a ‘clean’ or good quality list of interested subscribers with confirmed email addresses.

Opt-Out

In email marketing, an opt-out means unticking a pre-ticked box that says “”I would like to receive this email”” or having to tick a box that says “”I would not like to receive this email””, as opposed to ticking a box that says “”I would like to receive this email””. Due to GDPR, opt-outs are not a legal way to collect email addresses of any European citizen in order to build an email them.

Optimised Pricing

Google Ad Manager’s way of algorithmically increasing the floor price of ad inventory that it deems as underpriced (based on historical bids).

Optimising

What does optimising mean?

Optimising means making changes to improve performance. It is a catchall term in digital marketing. It can be used to refer to any process that alters how a campaign is delivering, to improve its performance. This can include improving any metric such as CTR, CPC, CPA, VfM, Page Load Speed, Conversion Rate (CRO), or anything really. It can also include manual optimisation (by a person), or automated optimisation (by an AI). It is usually based either on analytics gathered from previous marketing efforts or else best practices.

What is optimising?

Optimising should be an ongoing activity for any digital marketer. This is because performance can almost always be improved. It should be undertaken in a methodical way. This means reviewing stats at practical and regular intervals. For example, checking how your AdWords ad groups are performing on the same day each week is a good idea. We don’t recommend messing with success, however. If something has metrics that are constantly improving, then attempting to optimise it could have the opposite effect. If you really do need to optimise something which is improving, then consider a/b testing. This way you can test your improvements, rather than damaging your main campaign. Note: Change in and of itself is not optimising, merely fiddling! Changing online advertising often leads to negative results, even when the changes are objectively good.

Technical Information

Many platforms will automatically optimise content. From Facebook automatically showing people posts they are interested in, to display networks showing ads to get more clicks, this is very common. However, this does generally not mean that digital marketers should not do their own optimisation as well. Working with in-built optimisation programs often simply means working slower. In AdWords for example, leaving at a week between changes gives Google’s algorithms a chance to catch up. On other platforms, it can be as simple as seeing what is or isn’t working according to the platforms AI and responding. This can mean making new ads, moving your budget around, or simply stopping what you’re doing.

Top Tip

Any ongoing digital marketing needs a spreadsheet. You should be recording stats on an ongoing basis. This is so you can effectively monitor the effect of changes you make. Most of the time, you will populate this spreadsheet with data that can be downloaded directly from your ad platform. However keeping a spreadsheet forces you to manually update your information, and creates a regular opportunity to review how things are going. Having your own spreadsheet also gives you a chance to create your own audit trail of changes for clients/bosses etc.

Organic Search

Organic Search refers to non-paid-for traffic which comes to a website from a search engine.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic means website traffic that is not paid for – ie users finding your site through search results or links from other sites (or directly).

OS

An acronym for Operating System. It can be useful to target different ads to different operating systems, as well as split out reports by OS in order to identify problems.

OTT

OTT refers to content that is streamed via streaming services.

OTT Advertising

Video ads on streaming devices that are added into free-to-watch streaming services. OTT Ads have been touted as the new big advertising channel as they are the digital equivalent of broadcast television ads for streaming services.

OTT Devices

Devices that offer streaming services (such as streaming boxes, HDMI sticks, Consoles etc).

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing means marketing activities where you go out and try and find customers. For example, advertising (including online), as well as cold-calling, or having marketers in-store (such as offering free perfume samples).

Outreach

The process of getting in touch with other websites or businesses. Seemingly simple, due to the high volume of spam on the internet it can be difficult to connect with other organisations without an introduction, which is why this has become an industry in and of itself.

Overdelivery

When an ad delivers too many impressions/clicks/conversions etc.

Overlay

What is an Overlay (or Floater)?

An Overlay (or Floater as they are known in the US) is an IAB standard ad unit that appears as a kind of pop-up within the page the user is viewing. They can vary in size but are usually only allowed to appear for 15-30 seconds before they automatically close (unless a user interacts with them). This ad unit can contain video or interactive elements, and/or affect the appearance of the site. They can basically be anything, from characters from the site busting out of the screen and destroying the site itself, to a streamed TV show appearing on top of the site. This ad unit is quite intrusive to users in general so it is generally set with a frequency cap of 1/24 hours. This means each user will only see the ad once per day at most, which is basically the bare minimum a site will choose to show anything to anyone. However despite this, overlays are some of the most effective, and therefore expensive ads around, so should always be included where possible.

7 Things To Know About Overlays / Floaters

An overlay is like a pop-up ad but within the webpage, you are looking at.
An overlay is a super effective, but super annoying type of ad.
Generally, the more invasive an ad is, the better it performs. You have to decide for yourself whether annoying your users is worth it.
On mobile, the standard overlay size is 320×480 (it was designed for the screen size of the iPhone 1, iPhone 3, & iPhone 3G).
Overlays can be used to great effect for lead generation. According to WPBegginer, they increased daily sign-ups by 600% by using one.
An overlay is known as a floater in the US (and sometimes casually called a pop-up too – but that’s technically wrong).
Exit-intent Overlays can be set to appear when a user considers leaving a site (the site monitors sudden scrolling up, lack of action for a long time, or a mouse moving towards the close button).

Overlays / Floaters Advice for Site Owners

These ads can make a lot of money, and although they are annoying to users, as long as you put a 1/24 frequency cap on them it should be ok. The technical setup for these ads can be more complicated than most ads, so make sure you have enough time to test these ads before you set them live.

When running this ad unit on its own it must be spawned from a special type of ad code built into every page. To save ad serving costs, you can piggyback the ad code on the one you use for a 728×90 as they generally load first. This means that when the 728×90 ad code loads, it will check if there is an overlay available, and if not, no overlay impression will be recorded (or paid for). Depending on the rich media vendor, these ad units can still work when iframes are in place, however, it is much less likely that they will work without some extra effort and heartache from you. So, again, DON’T USE IFRAMES.

If an advertiser wants to run this ad unit as spawning from another ad unit, then make sure to charge them for both ad units. Also, ensure that you still place a 1/24 frequency cap on it as it is essentially no different from other overlays. Tip: To ensure this ad type always appears on top of everything else, make sure its z-index is 999,999,999

Overlays / Floaters Advice for Ad Buyers

These ad units can be highly effective but cost a lot too. Therefore if you have the design capabilities to make good use of this type of advertising, then you should do so. If you would like to avoid the problems which often occur when running these ads, then ensure that you create a floater which spawns from another ad unit (such as the 300×250). This will put you in control of the technical aspects and likely create a better outcome for you. Ensure the websites you are working with don’t have iframes, and always be sure to test the advert before it gets set live for best results. Running overlays through 300x250s also means that you are able to run this ad unit on any site which has a 300×250 (and no iframes) instead of just sites that are built to accept overlays.

Owned Media

Owned Media refers to advertising using channels an advertiser controls. This includes your own website, social media channels, blogs and any platform you own and control directly.

Page CTR

The percentage of clicks all ads on a page received (Page CTR can also be used to measure link clicks from a page in general, but this is uncommon). Page CTR is useful to judge whether ads on a page are working in general, rather than assessing whether an individual ad is performing well.

Page Experience Update

The Page Experience Update was a Google algorithm update for search that rolled out in Summer 2021. This update scores how well pages are optimised for users in terms of loading speed, usability, security, and ad experience. This update was notable for the fact it focussed on users. The main component of this update was the use of Core Web Vitals, which measures user experience in three ways:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) – this is how long it takes for the largest item visible above the fold to load
FID (First Input Delay) – this is how long it takes before a user can interact with content
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) – this is how much the page moves after loading

Google measures each of these metrics by placing them into buckets of Good, Needs Improvement, and Poor, depending on your score. These metrics can be measured in a number of ways, including through the free PageSpeed Insights tool. As well as formalising Core Web Vitals being considered for search, Page Experience also covers pre-existing ranking signals such as mobile usability and security (the use of https).

Lab Data vs Field Data

It should be noted these metrics are measured using “”Field Data”” as opposed to “”Lab Data””. What this means is that instead of page speed being measured by a central computer, real-world results are collected (via people using Google Chrome) and that data is averaged out over a 28 day period. This is a more accurate way of measuring page speed results as a specialized page speed testing computer will not encompass all the nuances found in the huge variety of machines, programs and operating systems found in the real world. While this is a more accurate measure, the fact that results are averaged out over 4 weeks means that there will be a lag between updates to the site and measured results.

Page Impression

Also known as a page view, a page impression is a digital marketing metric that counts each time a webpage’s code is loaded. A page impression is different from an ad impression, as ad impressions count each ad being loaded (and there can be many ads on a single webpage). The difference between ad impressions and page impressions is a prime example in digital marketing of things that seem simple but are easily (and commonly) confused.

What it looks like: Page Impressions vs Ad Impressions

To help explain the difference, this infographic shows why page impressions and ad impressions are different.

Top Tip

The word “”impression”” when used alone almost always refers to an ad impression rather than a page impression. If you are unsure, ask for clarification!

Other names for Page Impression (synonyms)

Page View

Page RPM

What does Page RPM mean?

In digital marketing, the Page RPM is the amount a publisher receives from advertisers every time 1,000 pages are viewed. This is calculated by adding up all the revenue from all ads on every page shown, and then dividing by page views and multiplying by 1,000. It is a useful measure as most analytics platforms will report on page views (as opposed to ad impressions). Being able to understand how much revenue 1,000 page views translates to is therefore very useful. For example: Imagine you have 200,000 page views in a month, and earn $2,400 from advertising in that month. This means your Page RPM will be $12. This is because 200,000 page views divided by 1,000 is 200, and 2400 divided by 200 is 12.

Work out the Page RPM of your site with our Page RPM Calculator >

Page RPM Definition

RPM stands for Revenue Per Thousand (M is the roman numeral for 1,000). Therefore Page RPM is the Revenue Per Thousand Pages visited. Websites are not actually paid directly for page views however, they are paid for advertising. More page views will likely equal more advertising revenue, however, ad campaigns will almost never actually refer to page views (except for sponsorship deals). Page RPM is, therefore, a convenient calculation rather than a payment model.

Page RPM Formula

The Page RPM equation is:

Page RPM = (Ad Spend ÷ Page Views) x 1000

Alternate Equations You can calculate RPM in the following ways:

Revenue divided by page views. Then multiply the result by 1000.
Weird version: CTR multiplied by CPC multiplied by 1,000.

Technical Information

Consider this more complex example: A website runs three ad units: 728×90, 300×600 and 300×250. In January it receives 33,620 page views over the month. The amount the site earns breaks down as follows:

	Ad Impressions	Revenue	Impression RPM
728×90	31,520	$124	$3.93
300×250	28,321	$96	$3.38
300×600	23,215	$50	$2.15
TOTAL	83,056	$270	$3.25

The Impression RPM ranges from $2.15 to $3.93 and the overall Impression RPM is $3.25.

If every time a page loaded all three of these ads loaded too, then you could simply add up the Impression RPMs to get the Page RPM. Unfortunately due to technical problems (and other reasons), this is rarely the case. The total revenue for the month is $270, and the total page views were 33,620. This means the Page RPM is actually $8.03.

As you can see, this is significantly higher than the Impression RPM of any ad unit. This is because it is the revenue of all ad units combined. What you will also notice is that it is less than the three RPMs combined (which would be $9.46). This is a trend you should always expect – Page RPMs are much higher than impression RPMs but not as high as simple maths assumes!

Note: These Impression RPMs will actually be calculated from smaller deals too. For example, the 728×90 won’t have just sold a single deal for $124 – it will have sold lots of small deals likely made of up CPC, CPA, CPE and CPM campaigns. The money it makes from all those campaigns is added together, and calculated as an Impression RPM.

Top Tips

Page RPMs are most convenient to compare the value of different time periods (eg January 2017 vs January 2016). By using this measure you can tell easily whether you are making more money per page as well as more money overall. Page RPMs are also useful to compare the value of different pages or sections of a site – as they can, of course, be calculated on smaller scales. This could be useful if you are trying to determine which section of your site earns the most money and is, therefore, most worthy of your attention (or of emulation).

Note: Revenue per thousand pages is calculated instead of revenue per individual page as so many pages are seen on the internet per day, and interacted with so little that the amount paid per advert is actually minuscule. It is only by grouping in sets of 1,000 like this that any notable figures can be gathered.

In other words, the revenue per page would usually be a fraction of a penny and it is disheartening to work with such small figures!

Not to be confused with

Impression RPM, RPM or REM.

Page Speed

Page Speed is how fast an individual webpage loads. It can be measured in many ways but is generally considered as how long it takes for a page to load completely. Improving Page Speed is part of Technical SEO, with faster page loads times helping pages to rank higher on search engine results page. Fast load times are also important to eCommerce, with multiple studies reporting that load times over 2 seconds cost sales.

Not to be confused with

Site Speed – which is the average Page Speed across a sample of pages, or a sample of page views.

Page View

A page view is a metric for how many times a webpage is loaded.

PageRank

The name of the algorithm Google uses to count links to a webpage, and judge how important those links are. PageRank (along with many other algorithms) decides where web pages should appear on search engine results pages.

Pages Per Session

Pages Per Session is a website analytics metric which means the number average number of web pages that were visited by a user from when they logged on to a website, to when they logged off.

Paid Media

Paid Media refers to any advertising you have to pay for. This includes PPC or Display Ads, influencer marketing and any other advertising channel which you have to directly pay for.

Paid Post

A post on social media (or on a blog) that was motivated by money. This can mean allowing someone else to post on your blog or social media account, or creating content in return for money. Paid Posts should be always be marked as such (legally, and to keep the trust of an audience).

Paid Search

What Does Paid Search Mean?

Paid Search refers to ads placed in search engines above ‘organic’ (ie non-paid for) search results. Most search engines add in these ads, and these are how search engines make money.

Technical Information

On Google, people can use Google Ads in order to advertise on specific keywords. Google has repeatedly assured people that their search and ads divisions are kept strictly separate. However (unsurprisingly) optimising ads for search, and optimising web pages for SEO are very similar processes. Due to this people refer to gaining traffic via search engines (whether through paid or unpaid listings) as SEM – Search Engine Marketing.

Top Tip

Most charities are able to get a $10,000 (in USD) per month grant from Google. This is to advertise on Google Search via Google Ads. Find out about the Google Ad Grant here.

Paid Search Advice for Site Owners

Search ads are one of the largest potential sources of traffic for websites. It operates slightly oddly however in that instead of being an opportunity to boost poorly performing parts of your site, it works best by boosting your best pages. Studies have shown that if you run a paid search ad above a high ranking organic search result of yours, you’ll get more clicks than having either alone. It’s a sort of 1+1=3 effect. This means that you should find pages that are already performing well on search engines, and then run ads for those pages.

This might seem like a sort of scam run by Google, but in fact, it happens for a much simpler reason than that. If you have an ad and a high ranking search result on the same page, then your brand is taking up more of the page. It really is that simple – more screen space means more clicks.

You can find out which pages are performing best on search by looking in Google Search Console. Look at the pages which get the most traffic from Google, and then drill down to find the best keywords for those pages. Target the keywords which have the highest CTR in Google Ads, and use those keywords in the ads themselves. There are many other useful things you can do with Paid Search ads, but this is the simplest and most effective method of getting good value for money.

Other names for Paid Search (synonyms)

PPC stands for Pay Per Click – and you can buy clicks on many platforms. However, the term PPC is generally only used to mean Paid Search. Similarly, CPC stands for Cost Per Click and can be used for Display ads. However, in Google Analytics CPC is used to mean Paid Search too. Also sometimes referred to as SEA (Search Engine Advertising).

Not to be confused with

Paid Social, Organic Search, SEO. This last one is the most important – please note that you cannot pay Google to improve your SEO. You can pay people to improve the SEO of your pages. If someone says they can improve your Paid SEO, then that person doesn’t know what they are talking about (or they are lying).

Paid Social

Traffic which comes to a website from advertising on social networks. This term usually only applies to ads that appear in social network feeds, rather than display ads that appear alongside some social networks.

Pangle Ads

TikTok Ads that run on TikToks Audience Network (websites that partner with TikTok and run their ad code).

Passive Moderation

When a moderator only checks if posts or comments on a site are suitable if someone flags them. This type of moderation is designed to let a websites community mostly police itself.

Passives

Passives is a term used when calculating Net Promoter Score. It refers to people who have been asked “”on a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend a product (with 10 being the highest)”” and have scored 7-8. These people are referred to as passives, as although they were satisfied with the product or service, they are unlikely to use it again or recommend it.

PECR

An acronym for Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation, PECR is an EU regulation around marketing calls, cookies and privacy that sits alongside GDPR.

Performance Advertising

Performance advertising focuses on, unsurprisingly, the performance of a campaign – in terms of conversions, clicks or other KPIs. It generally works by paying very low CPMs (or eCPMs) and buying inventory en masse, so as to optimise towards the best-performing sites later.

Performance Buy

A performance buy is an ad buy for performance advertising purposes.

Performance Campaign

A Performance Campaign is an advertising campaign that focuses on, unsurprisingly, the performance of a campaign – in terms of conversions, clicks or set KPIs. It generally works by paying very low CPMs (or eCPMs) and buying inventory en masse, so as to optimise towards the best-performing sites later.

Performance Max

Commonly referred to as PMax. A type of Google Ads campaign where everything is automatically optimised – inc. targeting (across all Google properties),creative type (mixing assets you set),and delivery.

Performance Network

A Performance Network focuses on providing masses of inventory (sometimes anonymously) with the promise of being able to optimise individual campaigns to the sites which are working best for them.

7 Things To Know About Performance Networks

Sometimes you just need results from your ads, no matter where they are served.
The opposite of a brand network. Your brand won’t gain any value for running on a performance network, but your ads will get you what you pay for.
Performance Networks are often “”blind networks”” – which means that they won’t tell you which sites your ads are running on (even if you ask nicely). Sometimes, they don’t actually know themselves.
It makes a lot of sense to run a performance network as your backup ads. Let a brand network sell whatever they can for as much as they can, and then let a performance network mop up the rest.
If you run Performance Network ads on your site, prepare yourself for some terrible ads. By selling your inventory for cheap they might boost your fill rate, but that comes at a cost.
AdSense is essentially a performance network.
You get what you pay for – cheap clicks or leads will generally not lead to good customers. This is why you should generally buy conversions from performance networks (but nothing else).

Performance Spend

A Performance Spend is an advertising campaign that focuses on, unsurprisingly, the performance of a campaign – in terms of conversions, clicks or other KPIs. It generally works by paying very low CPMs (or eCPMs) and buying inventory en masse, so as to optimise towards the best-performing sites later.

Phishing

Phishing is a type of scam through digital communication in order to obtain personal information such as usernames, passwords, credit card details, or other confidential information. Phishing scammers typically use emails, text messages, and instant messages to lead targets to a fake website that looks legitimate and have them fill in their personal information.

Why is it called Phishing?

The first time the word “phishing” was used and recorded was around 1996 when hackers were stealing accounts and passwords from America Online. These hackers used email lures and “fished” for passwords and financial information from internet users. The reason that the “ph” was used instead of the “f” in the spelling of the word is that some of the earliest hackers were known as “phreaks”, meaning the exploration, experimentation, and study of the telecommunication systems. The “ph” spelling was used because the phishing scams relate to these hacker communities.

What are the most common Phishing attacks and how to protect against them?

Email Phishing

Email Phishing is one of the most common Phishing types that attacks anyone from executives to internet users at home. Anyone who opens an unknown email is at risk of being scammed. In order to differentiate a real email from a phishing scam, internet users need to be sceptical and be educated on the information of the brand or the company of the sender. Before clicking on anything in the email, make sure to check the legitimacy of the sender’s email address, logo, URL, and anything in the message that seems remotely sketchy.

Cloud Storage Phishing

Cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Dropbox have become the target of phishing scammers. These scammers steal users’ personal data by sending victims files that require them to log in to their cloud accounts. In order to protect yourself from these scammers, you need to be watchful when a file comes through.

Mobile Phishing

This is a type of phishing where scammers attack victims through mobile applications on their smartphones. When users download scammed applications, they will be tricked into entering their personal data. In order to protect yourself from these scams, make sure to read the app reviews before downloading, set high security setting on your mobile phone, and use a reliable mobile security tool.

PHP

PHP is a programming language used on the internet.

Phrase Match

When targeting keywords in Google Ads for paid search, phrase match means inputting the keywords with quotation marks around them (eg “”free soap””). By doing this, not only is the keyword itself targeted in Google Search (eg free soap) but if the keyword appears in a sentence then it is still targeted (eg where can I find free soap near me?). The only rule for this is that the words within the quotation marks have to appear in the specified order.

The word for a post on Pinterest.

Pinner

Someone who posts on Pinterest.

Pinterest is a social network that focuses on collecting images and ideas for inspiration from around the web. It has a more permanent nature than Instagram, as images that are pinned are added to collections known as boards, and can be revisited easily at a later time.

Pinterest Ads

The ad platform on Pinterest. It’s pretty good.

Pixel

A pixel is what makes up the images displayed on your computer. They are minute dots of colour, which all together make up an image. In online advertising, a pixel is often used to attach code to an ad, as it is the smallest possible thing a webpage will load. It is commonly referred to as a 1×1 as that is the dimensions of a single pixel.

Placement

Placement is a generic term meaning some combination of an ad and the place it is served. It can just mean all of one ad size for example or all ads on a homepage, or it could mean all ads on a section of a website, or even just a single ad on a single page of a website.

Platform

A platform is a generic term that means a computer/server which does something. An Ad Platform delivers ads, for example, an RTB platform deals with Real-Time Bidding, or a Social Media Platform would mean Facebook or X (Twitter) etc.

PNG

A png is a type of image file (with the file extension .png). It is one of the best types of image file as it loses the least amount of quality when compressed, while still being a good file size. PNG stand for Portable Network Graphics.

Podcast

An audio show that is available for download or streaming.

Podcaster

Someone who makes podcasts.

Polite Loading

Polite Loading is a common requisite made by websites for ads on their site meaning that ads are set to load only a certain amount before stopping to let a page fully load. For example, the first 40k of an ad would load, and then stop for the rest of the page to load, so that the page is not slowed down too much by a large ad.

Pop-Blocker

A pop-blocker is an add-on or plugin for a browser that prevents new windows from being opened on a browser without the user’s consent. This affects pop-under and pop-up ads and has dramatically reduced the amount of inventory available for either unit.

Pop-Up

What is a Pop-Up (or Pop-Under)?

A pop-up ad comprises of a webpage that opens up in a new window in front of a user’s current browsing window. This ad unit has been mostly replaced by the slightly less annoying pop-under which is the same except it appears behind the users current browsing window (or sometimes on a new tab).

These ads are often confused with overlay/floater ads which also “”pop-up”” but in fact, the terms Pop-Up or Pop-Under only refer to ads that take up whole new browsing windows. Pop-Up/Under browser windows can be set up to have regular browser window functionality missing such as scroll, navigation and menu bars and can be set to any size. These ads can either contain a bespoke ad of any description (size not being a problem when the window size can be determined by the advertiser) or just be a link to a webpage. These ads are generally spawned when a new page is opened, but can also be set to spawn when a user clicks anywhere on a page.

Pop-Up/Pop-Under Advice for Site Owners

These ads can command a reasonable eCPM, but again are exceptionally annoying to users so should be limited in the number of appearances they make to a user each day (generally a frequency cap of 1/24 is acceptable).

Most ad networks are capable of running pop-unders but we would strongly recommend against using them as reputable companies on the whole no longer use these sorts of ads. In general, the least problematic of advertisers you will see with these ad types are either dodgy sites or ads for gambling as, so the risks you are taking with your site’s reputation and user count may not outweigh the money you will make.

Also, due to pop-blockers being very common the amount of inventory available for these units is very low (and very hard to predict). If you do allow them, demand to be paid on a CPM model or else you may be annoying your users for nothing. Tip: As many pop-ups/unders are webpages with multiple links it may not be possible to track clicks on them (despite claims otherwise from advertisers).

Pop-Up/Pop-Under Advice for Ad buyers

In theory, these ads are the most attractive proposition there is – any sized ad you want or else taking someone directly to your webpage and all for very low CPMs. In reality, however, these ads have become very disreputable in general so they have become cheap to buy because dodgy sites/products use them to advertise on dodgy sites. High-quality sites will in most cases not allow them, and if they do it will be for a very high price which is generally not worth it. Unless you have a dodgy product/site to advertise and don’t mind where it is advertised it is best to steer clear.

Post

Post is a generic term for anything you put on social media or a blog. It can also be used as a verb (ie “”I posted that on Facebook””). While the term came from pre-digital communication (ie post meaning mail), it is telling that a post is different to a message in digital. A post is an item that is put somewhere and then left to be read or viewed, while a message (often called a Direct Message or DM online) is between two people.

Post-Click Conversion

A Post-Click Conversion, or PC Conversion is when a user converts after a click. This click can occur anywhere (on a link, an ad, an email, etc). The conversion does not have to happen immediately, only within the Post-Click Window. The length of a post-click window is set by the advertiser or the website but is usually either 7 or 28 days long. This type of conversion is used as a billing metric for CPA campaigns, but can also be used to simply demonstrate the success of other types of campaigns. In analytics, when only the last click is counted this is referred to as last-click attribution.

Post-Click Conversion Example

Sheila sees an ad for pizza on Facebook but ignores it. That same day she see a tweet on X (Twitter) from the pizza company, and this time she clicks on it. Sheila changes her mind at the last second though and closes the browser window before the website loads. The next day Sheila receives an email from the pizza company too good to resist, and she clicks the link in it. Sheila’s got dinner plans already though so she doesn’t place an order. All the delicious pizza ads she’s seen linger in her mind, however, and so two days later Sheila goes to the pizza companies website and places an order.

Which channel would get attributed this sale – Facebook, Twitter, or Email?

In this case, both X (Twitter) and the email provider would record a post-click conversion in their own stats. Facebook wouldn’t record a post-impression conversion as it happens outside their post-impression window of 1 day. The pizza company would most likely only attribute the conversion to the email they sent. This is because:

They wouldn’t have recorded the click that happened on Twitter, as Sheila closed the window immediately.
Most companies use last-click attribution, so only the final click before the order would get attributed.

Post-Click Window

The Post Click Window, or PC Window, is the amount of time after a user has clicked on an ad and bought the product advertised, that the website the ad was on will still get paid for that conversion if they are being paid on a CPA basis. The advertiser will decide the length of the Post-Click Window.

Post-Impression Conversion

A Post-Impression Conversion or PI Conversion is when a user buys a product after seeing an advert for it – the purchase does not have to happen immediately, only within the Post-Impression Window. This is used for CPA campaigns only.

Post-Impression Window

The Post Impression Window, or PI Window, is the amount of time after a user has viewed an ad and bought the product advertised, that the website the ad was on will still get paid for that conversion if they are being paid on a CPA basis. Not all advertisers will pay on Post-Impression conversions, as they are difficult to verify. When used, the advertiser will decide the length of the Post-Impression Window.

Post-Moderation

In this case, post means “”after””, so Post-Moderation means moderating comments after they have been posted. In practise this means all comments or posts on a site go live as soon as a user presses submit, but may be checked and removed later by a moderator.

Power5

A set of features on Facebook Ads focussed on automation. The idea is that by using all of these 5 features for your Facebook Ads,you would maximise results (by allowing Facebooks algorithms to do their work) while minimising effort. The tools are: Dynamic Ads,Auto Advance Matching,Account Simplification,Campaign Budget Optimisation,& Automatic Placement.

PPC

Pay Per Click (or PPC) is another way to say CPC (which stands for Cost Per Click). It is a type of advertising rate which means advertisers pay when their ad is clicked on. As paid search ads originally only sold on a PPC basis, PPC became the shorthand name for paid search. However Paid Search now supports many payment models, so PPC is not a useful name for it. The nickname does persist, however. Also, any type of online advertising can be bought on a Pay Per Click basis (eg Paid Social, Display Ads, Sponsored Posts etc).

PPC Equation

The Pay Per Click equation is:

PPC = Amount Paid ÷ Clicks

Work out how much you Pay Per Click for your campaigns with our PPC Calculator >

This is an example of a paid search ad. It might be running on any ad model, but when people say PPC they likely mean this type of ad:

Top Tip

If you buy clicks, you should *only* expect clicks. If you want conversions of any type, a Pay Per Click campaign is not a good idea (run a CPA campaign instead). More clicks do not necessarily equal more conversions.

7 Things To Know About Pay Per Click Advertising

Not all clicks are created equal. Some people click on ANYTHING, and ad platforms’ algorithms will sell these clicks for cheap (as they rarely lead to conversions). Paying less for clicks often isn’t the best plan.
According to WordStream’s benchmarks, average PPC rates on Google Ads range from $0.21 (for Dining & Nightlife ads) to $15.82 (for Legal & Government ads). Most hover somewhere in the $1-$3 range though.
Don’t worry about the eCPM for Pay Per Click ads. A (theoretical) perfect Pay Per Click ad would get 1 click for every impression. Therefore the more impressions you get, the further you are from perfect. This means that when you get more impressions for the same money, you’ll also get a lower CPM despite running worse ads.
There are some pages on the internet that say CPC stands for “”Cost Per Conversion””, and frankly nothing (in Digital Marketing) has ever made me angrier. It. Does. Not.
Surprisingly, ads on search engines were initially welcomed with open arms PPC Protect have a great history of PPC here). Early search engines were bad at distinguishing real sites from spam – so paid search results were generally considered more likely to be legit.
Google AdWords (now called Google Ads) didn’t start PPC advertising. It launched in 2000, but a website called Planet Oasis launched the first Pay Per Click model in 1996, and an early search engine called GoTo launched the first bid-based PPC ads (in 1998).
PPC (Pay Per Click) means the same thing as CPC (Cost Per Click). All other payment models were standardised to start with “”Cost”” instead of “”Pay”” (eg CPA – Cost Per Acquisition etc), but PPC is the oldest term so it persists.

Other names for PPC (synonyms)

CPC, Cost Per Click

Not to be confused with

Paid Search – some Paid Search ads run on a CPC basis, but not all Paid Search ads are Pay Per Click, nor are all PPC ads Paid Search.

PR

Public Relations (or PR) is the process by which a company tries to manage its image or reputation by controlling the way it is talked about in the wider world.

Pre-Game

Pre-game ads are usually a type of video (although occasionally an MPU) ad that comes up before a flash game is loaded.

Pre-Moderation

When all comments or posts on a site are checked by moderators when they are submitted, and only posts or comments that are approved will be set live.

Pre-Roll

What Is A Pre-Roll?

Pre-Roll is commonly used to refer to any type of video advertising. It is also often called Video-On-Demand (VOD) in online advertising. Pre-Rolls are an incredibly effective yet expensive form of advertising. They are prevalent across most sites with any amount of video content and are highly sought after by marketers and ad networks alike. Pre-Roll (and all video ads) are usually sold on a CPV basis. This means that video ads are paid for per time they are viewed. They can also however be run on any advertising model such as CPM, CPC, or CPA.

Work out the Cost Per View of your campaigns with our CPV Calculator >

Pre-Roll Definition

Pre-Roll actually means ads that appear before a video, and Video On Demand actually refers to a video that can be loaded at any time (eg content on Netflix or YouTube). However in online advertising when people use these words, they generally are used to mean any video advertising. The terms Pre-Roll and VOD ad are both are used pretty much interchangeable with the following terms:

Pre-game (video ads that load before flash games)
Mid-roll (video ads that interrupt a video in the middle)
Post-roll (video ads that load after a video)

However, Pre-Roll is not generally used to describe video companion ads or ads that run videos inside them. This ‘other’ type of video ad includes:

Video MPUs (MPUs with a video player built-in)
Video Overlays (a banner ad that appears on top of a video)
Companion Ads (other ad units which appear beside the video).

Technical Information

There are in essence two major types of VOD content – skippable and unskippable. For the most part, you are unable to choose between these when buying from (or signing up to) an ad network, so other metrics must be considered.

Apart from initial implementation, the use of metrics is what creates the main degree of difficulty with these types of ads. Advertisers will often want their whole video viewed (as they spent a lot of time and money on it). This encourages them to request metrics that track the % of a video viewed by users on average. The justification for this type of metric (VTR) is that the more of the video a user watches, the more engaged the viewer was.

The issue with this is that most video ads are clickable. If a user clicks a video ad, the ad will stop while the user goes to the destination website. So when someone clicks a video ad, despite the ad arguably doing its job and creating traffic for the site, it will harm the metric that some advertisers want — % watched.

Because of this dichotomy of goals, deals involving pre-rolls should have the desired metrics pre-agreed to ensure both site owner and advertiser are happy with the outcome.

Pre-Roll / VOD Advice for Site Owners

If you have video or flash game content on your site then we highly recommend you look into providing pre-roll advertising. The CPM for pre-roll ads is generally much higher than other forms of online ads and so could be a comparatively great earner for you.

It can be tricky to set up your site to take VOD ads, however, especially with regards to making sure you have the ability to provide % viewed metrics. You should therefore preferably have a web developer you can rely on to set up your VOD ads.

If you sign up with an ad network, however, they will likely help you through your setup, so it’s a good idea to take a look at them. A couple of reasonable video networks to get you started are YouTube Video Ads and BrightRoll.

Tip: You are unlikely to get the full amount of impressions from your pages containing videos. This is due to issues loading, as well as a high level of skipping on video ads. It is also standard practice to put a 1/24 frequency cap on your VOD ads. All of these combined mean that you should be seeing at least 1,000 video views per month before considering this type of ad.

Pre-Roll / VOD Advice for Ad Buyers

If you have the ability and budget to produce and buy VOD advertising then you should seriously consider it. Still a somewhat fragmented market, video ads can be bought from most regular ad networks as well as some specialising in video only.

Before purchasing a video ad it is vital to make sure that you have decided what you want from it. If it is a branding exercise then you should hope for high user view time percentages. However, if you are using these ads to channel sales then a high CTR is likely your goal. Whichever you choose, make sure you communicate what you are looking for to whoever you buy the ad space from, so that they can optimise your campaign towards your goal.

Premium

The word “”Premium”” is used as a throwaway adjective used in the advertising world to imply that something is better than others in its class. As it is an entirely subjective compliment, it is as reliable an indicator of goodness as is “”fresh””, “”homemade”” or “”rustic”” within the food world, and therefore should be mostly ignored.

Press Release

A statement sent out to the press explaining some new development. Usually used in order to help/encourage the press to report on something. For example, if Sony released a new type of TV, they would send out a press release explaining what was new about it, so that reporters could get the details right (and also so that Sony could control the story somewhat).

Priority

Priority in online advertising is a setting in ad servers that is used to decide which ad gets served first to each user. For example, if two ads both have to deliver 100 ads today, the one with the higher priority will go first for each user.

Product List

A place where products are listed, such as in search results, category pages, sales pages etc. Examining the performance of product lists can be an incredibly effective way of boosting sales. For example, if an item has a very high CTR on a product list, but is quite far down the list, then it might make sense to move it higher up, as the more people who see that product the more people who are likely to click on it.

Programmatic

A type of advertising where an algorithm is used to decide which ads are placed in which positions (using a real-time bidding model). Programmatic is mostly used for display advertising. For example, an advertiser might set a maximum bid of $2 per click on any site to do with fishing, and then that advertisers ad would bid on every fishing-related ad space that came up.

What Is Programmatic?

In short, PA is a way to place your ads where your target audience is likely to see them without too much time and effort. Sounds like magic? These days, it’s just an algorithm at work. Special software finds websites (or other mediums), which your target audience is likely to see or visit, checks if there is any free ad space, and makes a bid (which you have pre-set). If your bid wins, your ad appears on the website. It’s that easy.

PA is one of the most efficient ways to target your customers. You identify the parameters of your target audience, say how much money you are willing to pay for the ad, and click a button. Running profitable digital marketing campaigns is far more than managing bids. Programmatic advertising allows you to reach potential clients with web display ads, radio and podcast ads, billboards, and even TV.

7 Benefits of Programmatic Advertising

1. Improving Campaign Flexibility

As an advertiser, you get full control over your ad placement campaign via PA. This means you can adjust your marketing efforts midway. For example, if the parameters of your target audience change, you can adjust them immediately without having to spend days reviewing your entire ad placement strategy. The program does it for you in a matter of seconds. The ability to change the direction of your campaign as well as its funding parameters allows you to stay ahead of the competition and stimulate brand exposure.

2. Cutting Costs

The ability to dynamically target the right medium for your ads allows you to cut costs tremendously. You can optimize your campaign with relevant and real-time data (or let the program do it for you). As a result, you are spending less money on inefficient ads.

3. Saving Time

How much time does it take your marketing team to identify the places your target audience is likely to visit? How much more time do they spend negotiating the price for ad space? How tough is it to change the parameters midway without hindering the campaign quality? All of the above efforts can be simplified with the assistance of PA. You explain your needs and budget limits, pay the money, and voila! The ads appear where they should without any time wasted on your part.

4. Reducing the Risk of Error

How much guesswork does your campaign involve? When it comes to ad placement, marketing specialists have to make numerous tough decisions coupled with some guesses in order to achieve average results. With an automated PA campaign, guesswork is out of the picture. You can be sure your audience is adequately targeted without risking time and money on misplaced ads.

5. Maximizing the Audience Reach

Programmatic advertising allows you to achieve better brand awareness at a lower cost. By allowing the program to evaluate the advertising potential of a certain medium for your audience, you are maximizing your reach tremendously.

6. Doing Real-Time Analysis

PA allows you to purchase digital advertising space in real-time. While buying ad space, the software also collects and analyzes data. You can get invaluable insights from the gathered information to adjust the ads accordingly while the campaign is in full swing.

7. Analyzing Market Dynamics

When using programmatic advertising, you can get access to the data to show you changing market dynamics. You can compare traffic ratios, clicks, and conversions to make a quick analysis and react by changing your campaign setup.

Programmatic Guaranteed

A way of block buying and selling ad space within a programmatic platform. This allows you to manage traditional 1-2-1 advertising deals (eg selling your homepages ad space for 3 days) in the same place you auction off your other ad inventory.

Project Manager

A Project Manager (or PM) makes sure that a project is planned properly and follows that plan (including timings). They traditionally sit outside of a companies normal command structure and are in charge of a specific project only.

Promoters

Promoters is a term used when calculating Net Promoter Score. It refers to people who have been asked “”on a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend a product (with 10 being the highest)”” and have scored 9-10. These people are referred to as promoters, as they are likely to tell other people about how good they think the product or service is.

Pronouns

Pronouns are the terms a person would like to be referred to by (eg he/him, she/her, they/them etc). Many social networks now allow you to add your pronouns to your profile.

PSA

In digital marketing, PSA stands for Public Service Ad, which is an ad for a charity or other good cause which is delivered for free. They are sometimes used by Ad Networks, Ad Agencies, Publishers or even by Ad servers as default ads.

Publisher

A publisher of a website is the person or company responsible for the content on a website. This generally means the owner of the website. However, some organisations will have “”Publisher”” as a specific job title or role within that organisation. In these cases, the responsibilities of the publisher can vary but generally revolve around being a more technical version of an Editor in Chief. This means they are less responsible for the quality of content, but rather that the site is profitable, runs properly, and publishes on schedule.

7 Things To Know About Being a Publisher

If it’s your website, then you are the Publisher.
Website publishers are legally liable for their content. If you are a publisher, research what that means in your country/state.
Publishing a website is about more than just pushing out content (although that is important too)!
There are about 1.5 billion websites in the world. Only about 200 million of these are active, however.
There are about 500 million blogs, publishing 2 million blog posts daily. Think about (for a second) what an insane level of competition that means for your blog!
A massive 30% of websites are published using WordPress. This is (probably) because it’s free, convenient, and flexible (and also can be great for SEO).
Many giant companies are publishers of multiple giant websites. This includes traditional publishers like Condé Nast, multi-media giants like Disney, & content companies like the Leaf Group.

Publisher Ad Tag

A publisher ad tag is a piece of code that publishers put directly on their site to call ad campaigns from ad servers.

Push Down

A Push Down is a special type of display ad that pushes the content of a webpage downwards. It is a sort of combination between an overlay, an expandable ad, and a leaderboard or billboard ad. This type of ad is quite rare, but seemingly quite effective – possibly due to the ‘dramatic’ entrance it makes when actually pushing down the content of the page.

7 Things To Know About Push Down Ads

A display ad type that makes a dramatic entrance. There is no single type of Push Down ad – it simply refers to any ad which pushes down content when expanded.
This type of ad is usually just a Billboard (970×250) or Leaderboard (728×90) – but dressed up like they’re something fancy. You can expect a boost on performance from regular Billboards and Leaderboards from this sort of ad.
Some types of Push Down ads only initially show a small section (such as a CTA with a down arrow), and require users to actively click or hover over for them to open.
Some types of Push Down ads are simply expandable leaderboard or billboards ads, which push down content when opened. In general, simple expandable ads are favoured over these as they are easier to implement.
According to Unicast, Push Down ads have a 249% higher interaction rate than normal banner ads.
The IAB once listed these types of ads as a “”Rising Star”” – meaning they were gaining prevalence and had great performance. They never became commonplace, however, likely due to being more technically complex than simple banner ads.
The least intrusive type of intrusive ad. A Push Down doesn’t exactly get in the way of content – more like it simply demands your attention for a second while it … pushes.

Q1

Q1 is short for Quarter 1 and is a term used to describe the first quarter of the year, which spans January, February, and March.

Q2

Q2 is short for Quarter 2 and is a term used to describe the second quarter of the year, which spans April, May, and June.

Q3

Q3 is short for Quarter 3 and is a term used to describe the third quarter of the year, which spans July, August, and September.

Q4

Q4 is short for Quarter 4 and is a term used to describe the fourth quarter of the year, which spans October, November, and December.

QR Code

A QR code is a set of pixels that can be read by an app, usually used to direct users to a webpage. It is an abbreviation of Quick Response Code. It is intended to be an easy way to get users to your website, as a QR code could be placed on a poster (for example), which users would then only need to take a picture of on their smartphones to access the site. It should be noted that QR codes should never be used on websites as they actually make it harder to travel from one page to another than using traditional links.

Qualified Leads

Qualified Leads are leads that are likely to become sales, as they have had some secondary test performed on them after being gathered to demonstrate their quality.

Qualify

The process of seeing how ‘good’ a lead is. For example, someone may sign up for a test drive on a website by handing over their email address. This email address is a lead to a potential sale, however, this person might be anything from on the point of making a purchase to someone who just wants to have a nice day out. In this case, the lead could be qualified by asking them some follow up questions to see if they are actually intending on making a purchase. Leads that pass this ‘test’ are then known as Qualified Leads and are far more valuable.

Qualitative

Qualitative means the qualities of something that cannot be measured. For example, if you think that one ad looks better than another you could say it is qualitatively better, as your opinion cannot be numerically measured.

Quality Index

A version of the Quality Score metric that Yahoo! used.

Quality Raters

People hired by Google to rate the quality of search results. The purpose of this to check if Google’s many algorithms are surfacing the best content. They do not directly change any search results.

Quality Raters Guide

The Quality Raters Guide is a document that provides guidelines for human evaluators who are tasked with rating the quality of search results. The guide covers a wide range of topics,including how to assess the quality of websites,what factors to consider when rating results,and how to provide feedback to the search engine.

Quality Raters Guidelines

A guide provided to Google’s army of Search Quality Raters. Search Quality Raters are tasked with reviewing Google search results to see if they are working as Google intends them to. The Quality Raters Guidelines is what these Search Quality Raters use to make these judgements. The QRG, while not an SEO guide, reveals insights into Google’s thinking about search which has led to many SEOs scrutinising even the smallest changes or updates in them.

Quality Score

Quality Score is a metric that Google Ads (formerly AdWords) uses to work out whether they should show your ad to users. Google gives a score to:

The relevance of your keywords to your landing page
The relevance of your ads to your landing page
Expected user experience

It then combines these scores to come up with a number on a scale of 1-10. Ads with a Quality Score of 10 are considered to be great for users, and so will be shown often (and for little money). Ads with a Quality Score of 1 are considered to be pretty terrible and will cost more to show to users. Google does this because it wants to provide its users with a great experience while making as much money as possible. By showing ads which it considers “”better”” more often, users trust the service more and are more likely to click on the ads. This in turn makes them more money. To improve search marketing campaigns on Google Ads, improving quality score is a must.

Quantitative

Quantitative means the qualities of something that can be measured. For example, if an ad has a higher CTR than a higher ad, it could be said to be quantitatively better.

Quarter

A quarter is a three month reporting period (as in a quarter of the year). There are four pre-defined quarters: Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.

Quarter-on-Quarter

Quarter-on-Quarter (or QOQ) means comparing data from one quarter to the previous quarter. A quarter generally refers to a quarter of the year (3 months). For example, you could say “”In Q2 this year we had QOQ revenue growth of 5%”” which would mean that the second quarter of this year had 5% more revenue than the quarter before it.

Quartile

A quartile is a statistical term that means the quarter in which something statistically resides. For example, if your ad performance was in the bottom quartile, it would mean that it was in the bottom 25% of ad performances.

Queries Per Second

Queries Per Second (QPS) is the number of times a request is sent to a server per second. With regards to online advertising, it is used as an informal measure of how successful an Ad Server or Ad Platform is doing – the more queries per second (Ad Calls), the more popular the service.

Query

A query is any request for information. For example, a search in a search engine is a query, as is the specific setup or a report run in an analytics platform.

Quora

Founded in 2009, Quora is a social network based around knowledge. Users of the site may post questions, which anyone may then answer. Users also have the option to request answers from specific users if they like, and Quora will also prompt users who have previously answered questions on the same subject to attempt to answer. These questions and answers make up the social network’s feed for individual users.

Answers to questions can then be upvoted or downvoted by any logged-in user. This is so that the top answers will be shown more often to other users reading that question. The idea behind this is to promote the best answer to any question.

There is also a commenting section beneath answers (which can be switched off), in which debates over answers often occur. Comments can also be upvoted and downvoted. Popular answers are also promoted by Quora in “personalised digests” for each user, which uses categories users have previously expressed interest in to gather together answers they may want to read.

Like Yahoo! Answers before it, Quora depends on having a steady base of informed users to answer questions on a huge variety of topics. To do this, it lets users add credentials to their profile, which are shown with their answers. This encourages more professionals to answer questions they are experts in. Professionals are also encouraged to answer questions as people are allowed to provide links to their own companies within questions, but it is seen on Quora as a positive (as long as those links are actually helpful and relevant to the question).

Although often overlooked as a social network, Quora had over 300 million monthly active users in 2019, and is easily one of the top ten social networks.

Making money on Quora

As well as self-promotion being commonplace within Quora answers, Quora has an advertising platform. Through it you can pay to promote answers (similar to promoted tweets), or simply run text ads:

They also have a scheme called “Knowledge Prizes” where companies can offer money for the best answers to questions, with the winner of the prize being allowed to keep the money or donate it directly to charity.

On top of this, Quora operates a “Partner Program” where people are paid to ask questions — with more being paid for better questions. This scheme is only via invitation, however.

The best way to utilise Quora is simply to build your authority as an expert on there. Questions on Quora often are picked up in Google search, so by using your own content to be helpful on the platform, you can improve your search traffic as well as your social traffic.

Top Tip

Find stats about questions you’ve answered by going to www.quora.com/stats while logged in.

7 Things To Know About Quora

It’s quite a lot like Yahoo! Answers, but not as dumb.
Unlike most other social networks, Quora is a good place to promote your business/website/services. As long as links within answers are useful and relevant to the question, it is fine to add them.
Over half of Quora users report a household income of over $100k, and 65% have a degree.
Quora answers often turn up in Google search results, meaning it is a great SEO tool (you can also research what articles to write by seeing what questions have been asked on there).
According to Alexa, Quora users skew young — almost half are 18–24, and only 4% are over 34.
Like Wikipedia, Quora is only as reliable as the people adding information. Always check the credentials of any writers whose answers you are relying on.
On average questions get 5 answers, and answers take on average 410 views before they get an upvote.

Quote Tweet

A quote tweet is a term on X (Twitter) for when you retweet the URL to a tweet and add a comment. X (Twitter) recognises this format and will nest the tweet you are quoting within your tweet.

Rank Brain

A machine learning algorithm used by Google to improve search results.

Reach

Reach is a metric (most commonly used in social media) referring to the number of users who saw something. The term reach can also be used to describe the size of an audience that a website or ad network can access.

Real-Time

When something occurs in Real-Time, that means it is actually occurring at the speed of life, as opposed to after a delay, or in some condensed or contracted period. For example, if you are seeing stats in Real-Time, then you are watching what occurs as it occurs (whereas stats will mostly be provided at a later date).

Recency

Recency is a metric that refers to how long it’s been since a user has done something, and is often expressed as an aggregate of lots of users. For example, if the recency of an ad is two days, then that means on average people will have seen the ad two days ago.

Launched in 2005, Reddit is one of the top ten largest social networks in the world. Reddit is made up of sub-forums (called subreddits) which span a huge variety of topics. Many of these subreddits are the home to large and distinct online communities, while others can be functional hubs for a topic or simply fun ideas. Subreddits are allowed to have their own rules and moderators, however, these are subject to Reddit’s sitewide rules enforced by its own moderators. Reddit refers to itself as the “”Frontpage of the internet”” as so many jokes, interesting facts, and stories originate there. This is powered by Reddit having a system where users can upvote (or downvote), with the most popular posts being ‘promoted’ to the homepage of the site. Once on the homepage, users from across the site can see a post, where previously it would have been confined to being viewed by users of a particular subreddit.

7 Things To Know About Reddit

Reddit is the 7th most visited site in the world and has over 1.2 million subreddits on it. It has over 150 million daily page views.
Reddit *can* be a great opportunity for digital marketers… if they’re not jerks about it. Be helpful, be interesting, be a real person, and follow the rules.
Since its launch in 2005, Reddit has only spent $500 in total on ads.
If you’re new to Reddit, take a minute to understand what it’s about before getting stuck in – build your credibility before starting to promote your own stuff. You can only make one first impression (on a subreddit, as in life).
If you’re an *actual* expert on something you could start an AMA (“”Ask Me Anything””) where Redditors ask you questions (and for help and advice). This can be an incredibly effective marketing tool.
Subreddits can have vastly different cultures. Read the rules and respect where you’re at.
There are a huge variety of topics covered on Reddit. Look hard enough and you’ll find a subreddit for you.

Reddit Talk

Reddit’s version of Clubhouse. A voice chat function that can be opened in a sub.

Redditor

Someone who uses the website Reddit (as a registered user).

Reels Remix

Instagram’s version of TikTok Duets. You can record a reel that is a response to someone else’s (and they appear side-by-side).

Referral Traffic

Referral Traffic is traffic from a link on another website (not including search or social media sites).

Referrer

A referrer means a site or service which has a link to your site. Can be used as a dimension in Google Analytics so that you can see how many people came to your site from different referrers (as well as other metrics).

Regram

Instagram’s version of reposting or sharing.

Remnant Inventory

Remnant Inventory is the unsold inventory after Brand or Performance networks have been exhausted.

Remnant Network

A type of Ad Network which is used to monetize inventory that remains unsold. These types of networks will command the lowest CPMs and are generally just Performance Networks being re-purposed.

Repin

The equivalent of a share on Pinterest – when you pin something to your profile/board which another user originally pinned.

Reskin

What is a Reskin?

A reskin is a branded image that replaces the background of a website. It literally means putting a temporary skin for an advertiser over the top of your website’s design (hence the term re-skin). Often sold as part of a Sponsorship or Homepage Takeover, these ads can be very effective if costly. Reskins are always essentially co-branding exercises. This means that if your site has a brand that other brands would like to be associated with, this is one of the most effective ways to monetize that. The major problem with reskins is the fact that there is no single reskin definition for all websites. This is because they are all designed differently so there is no simple generic design spec available for all reskins.

More than this, the type of reskin available varies from site to site. Some are clickable or even interactive. Some include the space around the logo at the top of the site and some only include strips down the side.

In almost all cases a designer from the website will have to work with the advertiser to implement a reskin. This means this option is not available to most sites unless it is planned-in from the get-go. The only times reskins are available at scale is through Ad Networks who have worked with a variety of sites to standardize reskin specs. This however is not nearly always the case and must be checked out individually.

Top Tip

The most important thing when buying or selling these ads however is to have someone technically proficient on the other end. These types of ads require collaboration between sites and advertisers, so put your tech people in touch! Ad networks can take this burden off everyone’s hands sometimes, but not in all cases.

Reskin Website Advice for Site Owners

If you are able to reskin your site it can be a quite lucrative if possibly troublesome proposition. Ideally, you would want to set up your site so that reskins can be added at will like any other ad unit. This means designing your site to accommodate reskins from the outset, so plan ahead. Reskins can be sold for a CPD as part of a Sponsorship or Homepage Takeover. This means you can monetize the brand value of your site as well as the impressions you have to offer. You should be careful however that you are very specific with the advertiser on what you have to offer. Tell them from the outset whether your reskin can be clickable (and if the clicks can be tracked). Also, don’t forget the specifications of the file they have to supply.

For this type of advert, testing is essential. Make sure you always insist the files/code are delivered to you a suitable amount of time before it is scheduled to go live. Having one or two days to test prior to launch (to give time for troubleshooting) can be priceless.

Also, be careful to not make any contractually binding impression promises if possible. You are not selling on a CPM model and shouldn’t be bound by it. These types of ads will have more problems than others for a variety of reasons. This means you could see quite a high discrepancy between the amount of impressions you predict and the amount you deliver. There will also be an especially high variance between ad units and the reskin.

Reskin Website Advice for Ad Buyers

Reskins can be a highly effective if expensive form of advertising, especially as part of a Sponsorship or Homepage Takeover. They are only a good idea however if you have the budget and a designer available to create a high-quality reskin. Those are quite big “”if’s”” – this ad type can be excessively troublesome due to not being standard in any way. The site you work with will also have to play quite a big part in ensuring they run properly. This can be quite difficult even for the most seemingly proficient of sites.

Our overall recommendation would be that if you do use this ad type, that you run a small test to work out the kinks with your chosen site before committing to a full-on campaign. Also, ensure whatever metrics you want to be recorded are possible before getting started as nothing is a given with this ad type.

Response Rate

What is a Response Rate?

Response Rate is a term often used for surveys and email marketing but can be applied to any advertising. It means the percentage of people who saw something and then completed the desired action. For example, if you sent 100 people a survey to fill in and 20 of them replied, then the response rate would be 20%. For online advertising, an example would be if 1000 people saw an ad, and then 20 bought something because of it, then the response rate would be 2%.

Work out the RR of your campaigns with our Response Rate Calculator >

What does Response Rate mean?

The Response Rate, as with CTR vs clicks, is theoretically a better metric to use than just responses. This is because it helps you work out the speed at which surveys/emails/ads are causing conversions. In this way, it is easier to compare campaigns that are reaching different amounts of people. A conversion is a catch-all term for an acquisition (sale) or action which results from a CPA campaign. It comes from the idea of converting a non-customer into a customer. Response Rate is an inconsistent measure, unfortunately, as there are many ways to measure what constitutes someone having seen an ad/email/survey. These are listed on Wikipedia here for surveys. For advertising the problems include:

Non-Viewed Impressions – ads loading but never appearing on screen (due to lack of scrolling etc)
Non-Unique Users – the same person seeing an ad on multiple devices, and being counted as multiple people
Broken Ads – Ads claiming to have loaded, but actually appearing blank
Multiple Ads appearing at the same time – if a user sees the same ad 4 times on one page, is it fair to count the response rate as the same as people who only saw one ad?

Response Rate Formula

The Response Rate formula is:

Response Rate = (Conversions ÷ Users) x 100

Other names for Response Rate (synonyms)

RR, Conversion Rate (people often think of them being the same)

Responsive Ad Unit

A responsive ad unit changes size to fit the space it is given. This is especially useful when a website is viewed on a mobile device, as the ad unit will fit any size screen as appropriate.

Responsive Ads

A type of text ad in Google Ads where you can add multiple different headlines and descriptions, which Google will then use to experiment with different combinations until it finds the best-performing ones.

Results Pageviews / Search

In Google Analytics Internal Search report, this is how many times someone viewed a search results page after doing a search. This would include someone going through multiple pages of search results, or returning to the same search results page after searching (eg by pressing the back button).

Retargeting ads

Ads which are shown people who have taken some action before. For example visitors to a webpage can be retargeted with ads – the point being if they visited your webpage they are more likely than the general public to be interested in your message.

Revenue

The total amount of money taken in by a person or company, before any expenses (such as taxes etc) are removed. Also referred to as turnover.

Revenue Share

When using an Ad Network, the income from advertising will be split between the Ad Network and the Publisher. The amount either one gets is called the Revenue Share or Rev Share (ie “”this Ad Network wants a 60% Revenue Share).

Revue

Revue was launched in 2015 and bought by X (Twitter) in 2021, which then shut it down in January 2023. It was essentially Twitter’s version of Substack. Revue was an email newsletter service run through a X (Twitter) profile, with the option of charging to receive your newsletters. X (Twitter) kept 5% of the revenue; you would get the rest. You could import an audience list, and keep your audience list when you left. The main advantage of Revue was being able to add a subscriber button to your X (Twitter) profile. This was helpful as it is such a prominent placement, especially for larger X (Twitter) accounts.

It was also helpful for Revue to be directly on Twitter, as when you subscribed, the platform already knew your email address, so you didn’t need to fill in any forms (just click a button). This would have increased subscribe rates by removing friction. It should be noted that you could change the email address you wanted to subscribe with if you liked.

You could also read a sample issue of the newsletter before you committed to it, which, again, increased subscription rates.

RFP

An acronym standing for Request For Proposal. This is what is put out when an organisation is looking for a marketing agency to tender for work. An RFP explains what the goals and budget of a project are, and asks for agencies to pitch for the business.

Rich Media

Rich Media just means ads that are more than just simple images, or animated gifs. Occasionally referred to as RM.

Rich Media Vendor

The server from which the ad gets send to the ad server.

RLSA

An acronym standing for Retargeting List for Search Ads. It is a feature in Google Ads to target people who have already visited your site.

Roadblock Ad

This is where all ads on a page are sold together to one advertiser. The ads must deliver together, however, they are not necessarily on a sponsorship basis, so don’t have to remain on the page all the time.

ROAS

What is ROAS?

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) is a metric used in online advertising to calculate how much revenue you earn compared to the amount you spend on ads. It is a form of ROI that only takes into account money that is directly spent on ads. ROAS answers the question – if I spend $1 more on these ads, how much can I expect to get back in return?

Calculate your Return on Ad Spend with the ROAS Calculator >

Why Use ROAS?

Return On Ad Spend is a useful metric to:

compare the profitability of different ads, ad campaigns, or ad platforms
plan how much you will get back if you spend more money on a set of ads
test if a freelancer or agency is making the most of your ad spend
report on to key stakeholders about online advertising as it is easily understandable

ROAS is arguably a better measure of success than conversion rate. This is because it considers the amount earned from ads and not just conversions. This is especially important if you sell multiple products through one set of ads. To put it another way, a high conversion rate means your ads are doing well at generating conversions (regardless of their value). On the other hand, a high ROAS means your ads are doing well at generating money.

ROAS Definition

ROAS is an acronym that stands for Return on Ad Spend. It is a high-level measure of the efficiency of an advertising campaign. This is the amount you get back from an ad (or ad campaign, or ad platform) divided by the amount you spend on that ad (or ad campaign, or ad platform).

Please note: ‘Return’ does not mean profit. If you sell an item for £5, your return for this metric is £5. This is regardless of how much the item costs you to procure or produce. Similarly, ‘Ad Spend’ in this metric only considers money spent directly on the ads. This figure does not consider the cost of creating, running, or tracking ads. The ad spend is the budget that is spent within the ad platform only (such as Google Ads or Meta Ads).

ROAS Formula

The Return on Ad Spend equation is:

ROAS = Amount Gained From Ads ÷ Amount Spent On Ads

Notes:

Return on Ad Spend is sometimes expressed as a number (such as in Meta Ads). In this case, a value of 1.2 (for example) is equivalent to 120% using the above equation.
Return on Ad Spend can also be expressed as a ratio of ad spend to ad gain (eg 3:7). In this case, you can input the related figures in the above equation to work out a more comparable figure.

Average ROAS

According to an often-quoted (but impossible to find) study by Nielsen, the overall average Return on Ad Spend is 2.87 (or 287%). This means that for every $1 you spend, you receive $2.87 in return. This broad average is only helpful as a general benchmark. This broke down stats by industry and channel (not digital channels, unfortunately) and showed a range of ROAS levels from 2-4 (or 200% to 400% if you prefer). If you are looking for a benchmark, somewhere between doubling and quadrupling, your money is good (but not remarkable).

ROAS Example

If I spent £10,000 on ads and earned back (in sales) £200,000, my ROAS would be 2000%. This means that if I spent £1 more, I could expect to earn another £20 (as 2000% of £1 is £20). A ROAS of less than 100% means that you are getting less back than you are putting in. For example, if you spent $200,000 on ads and received £10,000 in revenue, you would have a ROAS of 5%. This means that for every $1 you spend, you can expect to receive only $0.05 in revenue. Remember: This metric only considers ad spend and no other money spent on marketing. Therefore, you should aim for a ROAS far above 100% to cover your costs. To ensure you are covering costs, you should calculate your ROI instead.

Top Tip

The ROAS you record depends on the type of attribution you are using. For example, if you use ‘last-click’ attribution, then you are strongly favouring ads that appear at the bottom of the funnel (such as search ads). Imagine someone clicks on a display ad on Monday, a social media ad (for the same thing) on Tuesday, and a paid search ad (for the same thing) on Wednesday. If you used last-click attribution, only the Paid Search ad would count as a conversion. This would mean the paid search would see a good ROAS while the other two channels would not. To counter this problem, you should consider multi-channel attribution, such as time-decay.

7 Key Points About ROAS

Return on Ad Spend answers the question: “”How much will I get back for every $1 I spend on these specific ads?””
ROI is helpful to measure whether a whole marketing campaign is profitable. ROAS helps measure if the individual parts of the campaign are profitable.
ROAS is usually shown as a percentage but can also be a number or ratio. When you are earning more than you are spending: – As a percentage: ROAS > 100% – As a number: ROAS > 1 – As a ratio: the left number > the right number
Return On Ad Spend is useful for comparing ad campaigns and platforms and ensuring that whoever runs your ads knows what they are doing.
According to a 2015 Study by Nielson, the average ROAS across all industries was 287% (eg you get £2.87 for every £1 spent). While it is too broad an average to be very useful, it’s also a reasonably low benchmark to aim to beat.
For ROAS to be populated on ad platforms, the ad platform needs to know how much revenue you are making from their ads. To do this, add their tracking code to your site.
If you have a ROAS below 100% (and your goal is revenue), move the budget elsewhere. A campaign generally needs a week to get going, but after that, you should cut the bits that aren’t working.

Other names for ROAS (synonyms)

ROAS is called “”Conv. Value / Cost”” in Google Ads.

Not to be confused with

ROI. ROAS and ROI are roughly the same, but ROI considers all expenditures, while ROAS is only about ad spend.

RoC

RoC is short for Run of Channel, which means when a set of ads are booked to run anywhere within a channel.

ROI

What is an ROI?

ROI stands for Return on Investment and means the amount of money you get back from the amount of money you put into something. If your ROI is 10% then that means for every $1 you spend will make $0.10 profit.

Calculate the Return on Investment of your campaigns with our ROI Calculator >

What does ROI mean?

For advertisers ROI is the most important measure of success for all campaigns, however, it can sometimes be hard to pin down. When undertaking brand advertising, for example, the amount of valuable exposure to your brand is very difficult to measure. Considering that all advertising has some amount of value to your brand (in that it’s reminding people that it exists), this means there is always an incalculable x-factor that advertising provides. It’s important to note that this can have a negative value as well as a positive – a very annoying ad, or an ad shown too much or in inappropriate placements may harm your brand.

A simple way to work out the amount gained is by using your overall eCPM for your site. After running an ad campaign you can roughly work out if your site saw an increase in impressions, and then work out if the increased money is worth more than the amount you spent on the ad campaign. Of course, there are other reasons why your site may have received more traffic, so this method is not foolproof by any means.

It’s best to stick to basics (unless you are paying someone to analyse your results!), which really is what ROI is great for. It tells you how much money you get back for every penny you spend. So if your ROI is 1 then for every $1 you will make a $1 dollar profit.

ROI Formula

The ROI equation is:

ROI = (Amount Gained – Amount Spent) ÷ Amount Spent

Top Tip

Remember:

The amount gained includes all profit, including increased/decreased brand value
The amount spent includes all costs, including admin and fees

Not to be confused with

Rate of Return

Role-Based Address

A role-based address is an email address that uses a job title rather than the name of an individual and can often refer to a shared inbox. Many email addresses contain by default or necessity the name of the person it is being sent to. This is classified as personal information and therefore communications with these addresses by marketers need to be specifically consented to by the owner of the address. Role-based addresses require less strict controls as they refer to a job title rather than a particular individual and don’t contain personal information.

RoN

RoN is short for Run of Network, and means when a set of ads are booked with an Advertising Network, and can run anywhere within that network.

RoS

RoS is short for Run of Site and means when a set of ads are booked to run anywhere on a site.

RoW

RoW means Rest of World in online advertising and is shorthand for when ads are being geographically targeted, meaning everywhere but the places which are already targeted. For example, if a German company had two sets of ads: one for Germany and one for Rest of World, then the Rest of World ads would deliver everywhere outside of Germany.

RPM

What does RPM mean?

In digital marketing, the RPM price means that every time something happens 1,000 times, it will earn you that price. The something you sell can be anything – such as ad impressions, page impressions views etc. So for example, if you sell 1,000,000 ad impressions at £2 RPM, as a result, you would pay £2,000. This is because for every 1,000 ad impressions you sell, you are being paid £2. Note: Revenue Per Thousand in online advertising is the most advantageous type of deal for website owners in most cases. This is because you are simply selling ad space without promising how ads will perform in that space (ie it’s an easy type of deal to manage).

Work out the RPM of your campaigns with our RPM Calculator >

RPM Definition

RPM stands for Revenue Per Thousand (M is the roman numeral for 1,000). It is the amount the publisher is paid per thousand of something (eg impressions or pages). It is essentially synonymous with CPM. This is because most people use CPM to talk about buying or selling advertising. However, when selling advertising you are actually paid on an RPM basis rather than a CPM. RPM and CPM are not actually the same however – the RPM is almost always lower. The difference between the two is all the costs involved in making the advertising run. These costs include things like the fees paid to agencies and services, as well as revenue shares with ad networks. Therefore the RPM a website receives from running advertising is almost always lower than the CPM the advertiser pays. With display advertising, it is likely to be around 50% lower in fact. Note: As RPM is generally thought of like the mirror image of CPM, it is almost always used as shorthand for Impression RPM (as CPM does mean Cost Per Thousand Ad Impressions). It doesn’t inherently imply a thousand of anything however and could mean Page RPM just as easily.

RPM Formula

The RPM equation is:

RPM = (Ad Spend ÷ Impressions) x 1000

Alternate Equations You can calculate RPM in the following ways (as well as by using our RPM calculator):

Ad Spend multiplied by 1000. Then divide the result by whatever actions you are measuring.
Ad Spend divided by whatever impressions you are measuring. Then multiply the result by 1000.
Weird version: CTR multiplied by CPC multiplied by 1,000.

Note: It would actually not end here most likely. Ad networks could have their own ad serving fees too, and often give agencies discounts of up to 20%. Therefore it wouldn’t be surprising if the final figure from a £3 CPM was more like £1.50 Impression RPM. The ad network would only present the final revenue to the website, however, and the agency would never break the figures down like this, so neither would find this out. This is one of many reasons why direct deals can be advantageous to both advertisers and websites. However this, of course, doesn’t take into account the added value of the expertise both advertiser and website are getting, and the consistency of revenue/opportunity they are provided. It is much more difficult to go it alone!

Technical Information

RPM is mostly used as a measure of how much ads are earning rather than an actual price for selling ads. This means that instead of a website saying to an advertiser

“We sell ad space at £2 Impression RPM

What actually usually happens is a website will sell ad space based on many different ad pricing models (such as CPC, CPM etc). They will then convert it to an RPM basis for their own optimisation purposes (ie seeing which ads actually paid most for space). This technically means that most of the time an eRPM or effective RPM is being used (like an eCPM), however, this term is almost never used. It should also be noted that although a CPM will be agreed at the start of a deal, an RPM won’t usually be finalised until after a campaign finishes. This is because there are lots of uncertain factors that could affect revenue and change the final RPM. These factors include things like click fraud or companies going bankrupt. In either case, the revenue could change significantly and a website would be paid less, despite the original CPM remaining the same.

Average RPM Rate

There are no stats available for average RPM as it is an underused term. However, CPM average rates in 2015 were around $3 (about £2). This means between £1-£6 (approx. $1.50 to $10) is probably a reasonable range for display ads. This, in turn, implies that a good estimate for average RPMs would be between $0.75 and $5.

Not to be confused with

Impression RPM, Page RPM, the RPM of vinyl, Revolutions Per Minute

RT

RT stands for ‘retweet’ in social media. A retweet on X (Twitter) is when a user posts something that another user has posted. There are two ways this can happen – either by posting so the retweet appears in their timeline exactly as it was originally posted, or else by copying the text and appending RT and the username of the original tweeter to the beginning of the tweet.

RTB

RTB stands for Real-Time Bidding. It’s a system where publishers set the minimum CPM they will accept for an impression, and then advertisers bid on each individual impression as it comes up, by setting their own criteria and budget with the RTB platform.

RTB Platform

RTB Platform is short for Real-Time Bidding Platform and is a type of company that uses Real-Time Bidding to serve ads. They work in a similar way to eBay for example, but much faster, and only selling ad space.

SaaS

A business model where users are charged a subscription fee for using software as opposed to a one-off fee. In return for the ongoing subscription fee, SaaS companies generally work on a continuous program of updates, fixes and improvements to their products. Many digital marketing products work on this model (such as social media schedulers).

Safari

Safari is a web browser made by Apple. It comes bundled with many Apple devices, however is not used widely outside of their platforms.

Sales Confirmation Page

A sales confirmation page is a webpage that confirms a purchase has been made online. It appears after payment information has been entered and the transaction has been completed.

7 Things To Know About Sales Confirmation Pages

Straight after someone buys from you, their trust levels towards you are likely at max. This makes it a great time to ask for something else (eg “”Sign-up to receive updates”” etc).
Both Google & Facebook Analytics (and ads) let you set up goals/conversions by selecting a target URL. Sales Confirmation Page URLs are a vital part of analytics and targeting ads.
You may think that the eCommerce module in Google Analytics makes setting up sales as Goals unnecessary. You’d be wrong! Goals can be cross-referenced with a lot more stuff.
Adding an “”Other people also bought”” or a similar box to your sales confirmation page is a great way to target users at the point they are most interested in making a purchase.
Nudge people to create an account with you *after* a purchase. This way you reward customers with a streamlined sign-up process, rather than annoy them with a long sales process.
When running ads for sales, you should exclude recent visitors to your sales confirmation page so that you are not needlessly annoying your current customers (and wasting your ad spend).
Equally as important as your sales confirmation page, is your sales confirmation email. Make customers feel valued & secure that they made the right choice in their purchase.

Salesperson

In digital marketing, a salesperson is someone whose job is to sell advertising space or services to people/other companies. If you’re buying ad space, it’s useful to remember that your relationship with the salesperson is the key to how good a deal you get, now and in the future.

Screaming Frog

An excellently named SEO tool that scans websites for SEO related issues.

Scroll Hijacking

When scrollbars are made to behave differently than usual (for example stopping at a point and setting of an animation). This is a risky design idea, as many users find it unsettling to have something as fundamental as scrolling changed in any way.

SEA

SEA is a rarely used acronym that stands for Search Engine Advertising. It is generally referred to Paid Search, PPC, or CPC instead. Advertising on search engines places your search results in the sponsored section above the organic results on search engine results pages. SEA combined with SEO makes SEM – which covers both improving organic and inorganic search results.

Search Engine

A search engine is a website that attempts to index all websites and then allows users to search for a word or string of words, and it will attempt to show them which websites are most relevant to that search. Google is the most notable example.

Search Query

The actual words used in a search engine by a user. Contrasts to keywords, which are groups of words which advertisers target in order to hit a set of relevant Search Queries.

Search Query Report

A report in Paid Search platforms which tells you the actual search terms which your ads showed for. These SQRs are powerful tools to tell you what you should (and shouldn’t be targeting).

Search Ranking

Search Ranking refers to how high up in search results a website appears for a certain term on search engines. For example, if you had a website about sweets and when users searched for the words “”gummy bears”” it came up third, then your Search Ranking for “”gummy bears”” would be three. The higher the search ranking, the more likely users are to click on your page.

Second Price Auction

When the winner of an auction pays 1 penny more than second place. This ensures the lowest price for bidders (while encouraging high bids). This is how bidding in online advertising *used to* work.

Segmentation

Segmentation can take place in any form of digital marketing, and simply involves breaking subscribers, potential customers, or site visitors down into different categories, and then tailoring marketing towards them. Segmentation allows list administrators to tailor their content to specific user needs, increasing the likelihood of their receiving the content that they would like to see.

It generally falls into two categories, which can be used separately or together in order to create the most highly targeted campaigns possible:

Behavioural segmentation
This is usually based on user activity on your site or purchase activity. For instance, you could use it to target your customers who always open your emails but never click a link, or who have an abandoned cart in their account on your site (if you have permission to email them).

Demographic segmentation
This is based on user data that they may have given you during sign-up, or that you have learned from your analytics or other methods. It might refer to their geographic area, for example, allowing you to tell them about an event or sale near their location.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing (or SEM) is a type of marketing where you focus on improving the performance of a site in search engines, through SEO or through paid search.

SEM is often used by many people to mean Paid Search advertising only. However, this is incorrect and simply came about because of historical reasons (in the same way that PPC being used to mean Paid Search did).

Paid Search used to only allow PPC ads, so PPC came to mean Paid Search and many people still use it this way. Similarly, SEO used to be a mainly technical skill (often done by IT managers) and so was not considered a type of marketing. On top of this, when a way to advertise in search engines came along that was run by marketing managers, of course, the word marketing was used in an acronym to describe it! Marketers love coming up with new names for things in order to sell them!

However, SEO now encompasses many things (and is not strictly a technical discipline). It is a fully formed digital marketing discipline. This is why Paid Search and SEO now together come under the umbrella term of Search Engine Marketing.

7 Things To Know About SEM

SEM = Search Engine Marketing SEO = Search Engine Optimisation SEA = Search Engine Advertising (but no one calls it that!)
On Google Search Results you can now aim to have your content incl. as:
- Ads
- Organic results
- Direct answers to the search
- Factual Info
- Local Results
- News
- Videos/Images
- Tweets
- Products
Due to more information being displayed directly in search results pages, around half of all searches end without any results being clicked.
Some use SEM to *only* mean Paid Search, but then people also mix up:
- PPC & Paid Search
- CPM & RPM
- CTOR & CTR
- etc Digital marketing is full of slight misunderstandings. Don’t cling to yours!
The odd (but obvious) thing about search engine marketing, is that the more space you take up for any results page, the more likely someone is to click on your results. Bigger is better in search.
When people search about 7% of the time they click on ads, compared to 45% clicking on non-paid results.
If you have an ad *and* top positioned organic result on the same search results page, then both together perform better than the results of each one alone combined. It’s a sort of 1+1=3 effect.

Sentiment

A feeling of opinion on something. Sentiment analysis is often used wherever there are comments (on social media, blog posts, etc) to see how people are generally responding to a piece of content. For example, a program might have a list of positive (eg great, love, best etc) words and negative words (eg terrible, hate, worst etc) and scan a comments section to see how many times words of each type were used.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the process of improving where your webpages appear on organic (non-paid for) search results pages in search engines. A good way to think about it is that search engines want to show people the best possible search results. The best possible search result would be one which answers a search query in a satisfying way. This means that having the best possible page for a subject is also having the best possible page for a search engine. Therefore if you make a good webpage for a certain topic, it is very likely that it will be listed highly by search engines. Overall, SEO is a very involved process but basically involves improving your site to conform to what search engines want, creating original content, and being linked to by lots of high-quality sites.

SEO Definition

Search Engine Optimisation is not really one specific thing – any activity involving working to improve ranking on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) can be considered as SEO. It can, however, be broken down into broad topics (which often overlap). It is useful to think of SEO in these terms so you can focus your efforts when necessary. Note: This is not a complete list – there are literally hundreds of ranking factors for search engines.

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO refers to any SEO activity that is done to an individual webpage. This could include:

Improving content – by writing the best page on a topic.
Including images – having an image with a title, and alt-tag which relate to the topic of the page helps.
Improving readability – a page that is understandable by an 11-year-old is ideal.
Improving metadata – this means the title and description that appear in search engines.
Including relevant headings and sub-headings – so that people know they are on the right page.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO refers to any SEO activity that is done to improve the ranking of a webpage without editing the webpage itself. This could include:

Linking to the page in social media posts – if people share your post, that can really boost your pages SEO.
Getting links from other sites to your webpage – this includes guest posting.
Listing your webpage in directories – this is a simple form of link building.
Branding activities – making people like your site in general will improve the chance people will choose your webpage in SERPs.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO basically includes any SEO activity which isn’t to do with content. This could include:

Improving the speed your pages load at – page speed is an increasingly important ranking factor.
Setting up AMP pages – this is again to do with page speed, but for mobile devices.
Not using sneaky tricks – Having invisible text, for example, would be a big no-no.
Having a site structure that makes sense – linking pages on related topics helps search engines know which pages are important.
Having a sitemap registered with Google – Use Google Search Console to do this.

Local SEO

Local SEO is different from other types of SEO in that it isn’t about a webpage – it’s about a business. If a business is based in a specific area, then Local SEO means making people in that area more aware of that business. This could include:

Setting up profiles on mapping sites – all location-based businesses should control their listings on Google My Business, Bing Places, Apple Maps Connect, Facebook Maps, and Trip Advisor, as well as any other relevant services.
Being listed in local directories – if there is a directory for just your area, that is exceptionally useful.
Being mentioned in local newspaper stories – links from newspapers have great value anyway, and this is doubly effective.
Listing your address and phone number on your site – everyone should know how to find you if they try.

Technical Information

SEO is (mainly) about individual web pages, not websites. Search Engines find the best web pages for individual search terms by gathering details on every single webpage and user (person) they can. Sometimes information on people is only general (ie browser, location etc), sometimes it is specific (search history, age etc).

They do this to try to show each person the most relevant webpage for each individual search. This means that a search by one person may show different results than the same search by another person. Search Engines constantly are testing and improving search results, so it is very difficult for any webpage to be the number one result for everyone, or to stay the number one result forever. Search Engines find webpages by sending out “”spiders”” to crawl the web (get it?) which are a type of bot. These bots simply follow every link they find and report what they see. This means having a webpage that is linked to by lots of places makes it easier for a bot to find it. It also means that a webpage won’t necessarily get listed by Google the moment it is made (unless you list it with Search Console).

Google uses complicated algorithms to decide which pages to show each individual. What actually goes into these algorithms is a secret, however, the SEO industry does testing to continuously try to work out what helps and what doesn’t. The algorithms are updated regularly, with big changes and small changes happening. This makes keeping up to date a full-time job.

If you don’t have enough time to devote to making this your full-time job (and very few people do), then follow our top tip below – write the best page you can, and then improve SEO if necessary.

Top Tip: Don’t try to write for SEO – try to write for your audience. Making the best webpage on any subject is always the most important thing. If you make the best webpage, then it will be rewarded appropriately with web traffic.

7 Things To Know About SEO

A webpage that people like is usually a webpage that search engines like.
Search Engines want to show people the best results. Always try to make your page *the best page* in order to improve your search ranking.
Search Engines want to show people the most relevant & useful results. Make a useful page & improve your relevance to improve your search ranking.
The main types of SEO are: Technical (backend work); On-Page (making & optimising page content); Off-Page (the internet saying your page/site is great); Local (optimising for your local area).
According to backlinko, Google uses over 200 ranking factors. Try to do your best for as many as possible (without going mad).
The speed at which a webpage loads makes a HUGE difference to where it gets listed in search results. Make your site loads as fast as possible.
High-quality links to your page are (still) a great way at improving your SEO.

SEO Advice for Site Owners

SEO needs to be a mainstay of your digital marketing strategy. Whatever your site is about, you should have web pages which are focused on every related topic you can think of, which are optimised to that subject. Ideally, you should only have one page per subject, as having multiple pages on one issue means they are competing for interest from search engines. For example, if you have a site about cheese, then one specific page for each type of cheese would be ideal. There will always be some cross over (eg a page about soft cheeses, and a page about brie), but trying to focus pages on different topics works best.

Note: SEO is a slow process. You should work at it continuously, but don’t expect results overnight. If you write good pages and optimise them well, then over time your traffic from organic search should improve. Unlike other forms of digital marketing, however, this improvement should remain steady for a long time.

This of it this way – SEO is like building a house out of bricks, whereas social media is like making a tent. You could live in either, but a brick house will last longer, require less daily upkeep, and will weather more storms.

Top Tip: If you make a webpage which is designed to fool Google’s algorithms into thinking it’s the best webpage, then when the algorithm changes you may find yourself in trouble. Black hat SEO just doesn’t make long term sense.

SEO Advice for Ad Buyers

In terms of buying SEO – it’s not directly possible. You can pay for sponsored posts on other sites, or get influencers to discuss your brand. You can’t simply pay a search engine to improve your listing though.

However, if you undertake PPC advertising, such as Google Search Ads, then you can improve the effectiveness of your search results. For some reason, people react better to search listings and PPC ads when they are shown together, than either of them separately. It creates a sort of 1+1=3 effect.

To utilise this most effectively, use Google Search Console to work out your most popular pages. Next, find the most popular search terms used to go to those pages. Then advertise on Google Ads targeting those keywords. If you do it right, you should see more traffic to that page than you were previously getting from search traffic alone (discounting the extra traffic you are now paying for).

Not To be confused with:

SEM – That stands for Search Engine Marketing and can include SEO, but isn’t SEO itself. PPC, Paid Search, or SEA – This refers to paying to advertise on Google or Bing, and is not the same as SEO (although they work well together). SMM – That stands for Social Media Marketing, and while it can be used to improve SEO, it is not SEO.

SERP

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. A SERP is a webpage loaded by a search engine in response to a search query made by an individual. Each SERP contains links that the search engine considers most likely to satisfy the intent of the searcher. Search Engines work out which links to show by using spiders to index the web, and then algorithms to search that index and test the success of different results. Search Engines are constantly trying to serve up the best items they can, and so a low level of testing is constantly happening.

A SERP refers to an individual page from an individual search – eg page one on the search “”dogs”” that you specifically made, not all search results about dogs made by everyone. It is a useful way to talk about SEO, and page rankings for individual searches, as well as the technical make-up of search engines output.

SERPs used to include only organic search results, however, they now have many different types of results included on many different search engines. These include paid search results, as well as map results, video results, shopping results, news results, and more.

SERPs Domination

SERPs Domination is when a single website is returned for all the results on the first page for a single search.

Serve

Serve in online advertising means delivering an ad (ie “”there were 30 million ads served last month).

Server

A server is a central computer that stores and delivers information to other computers.

Session

A session is from when a user logs on to a website to when they leave. It is a metric used by analytics platforms, and has different caveats depending on which one you use – often a period of inactivity will count as the end of a session, even if a user did not leave the site.

Session Duration

Session Duration is a website analytics metric that means how long on average a user spends on a site in one go.

Sharing is a term mostly used in social media that is a softer way to talk about posting content. The idea is that rather than displaying content or advertising it, you are simply sharing something good with people. While posting any content online can be referred to as sharing, the term is mostly used to mean reposting other people’s content. This can be via a ‘share’ button on content on a website or app, or on a post on a social network. Pretty much all social networks have a way to repost content. Having your content shared is the most valuable form of engagement (short of a conversion). In this sense sharing is the currency of social media – it’s what people are trying to earn when they post. It is also the most precious thing one account can give to another.

Share of Voice

Share of Voice (or SOV) is a metric used to show what percentage of marketing messages on a particular topic or channel is coming from one advertiser. For example, if an advertiser booked a homepage takeover on a site, then they could be said to have a 100% Share of Voice on the homepage of that site.

Shopify

A popular and powerful eCommerce platform for people to set up their own online shops.

Showrooming

Showrooming is the opposite of webrooming. It means looking in a physical shop for an item to find out about it, with the intention of buying it online later.

Side Hustle

A job on the side of your main job. During the pandemic, these became especially commonplace, with many people starting online businesses from home.

Single Keyword Ad Groups

AKA SKAGs. An Ad Group on a paid search platform which only targets a single exact match keyword. The idea is that the keyword can be entirely focussed on in the ads and on the landing page,increasing the chance of success.

Single Opt-in

An Opt-In which only has one step. For example, entering an email address into a box and then pressing enter. While this is a better user experience, it also leads to a lot of abuse, with inaccurate information being input and spambots taking advantage.

Site Speed

A general term for the speed at which a site loads. Site speed can be broken down into multiple metrics. Site Speed is a ranking factor in SEO.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a list of all the web pages on a site, arranged in a useful manner.

Skippable

Skippable in online advertising refers to ads (usually video ads) that do not have to be watched by a user (they can press a button to skip them). This is usually a function of ads that are delaying a users progress to the content they were looking for. Advertisers typically do not have to pay for ads that are skipped which makes them good value for money. These skipped impressions are usually not counted (or are counted separately). On YouTube, skippable ads play for 5 seconds before the skip button appears. However depending on the ad platform ads can play for 5, 10, 15 or even 30 seconds before they become skippable.

Skippable Ad Example

This is what a skippable ad looks like. There is often a countdown before the skippable button appears:

Advice for Advertisers

Many advertisers who run skippable ads try to “have their cake and eat it.” That is to say, they pay for skippable ads but also try to cram a full ad into the non-skippable bit at the start. This is working against the strengths of the format.

People don’t like ads — especially ads that get in the way of the content they are trying to view. This is why skippable ads make sense. The vast majority of viewers were never going to pay attention to your ad whatever happened. Allowing them to skip gets rid of this uninterested audience.

Once they are gone you can speak to an audience who have already demonstrated a level of interest. This engaged audience is potentially much more valuable to you and will likely convert at a higher rate than the full audience you started out with. Getting rid of the completely disinterested audience in this way is a similar process to qualifying leads. And qualified leads are much more likely to convert than unqualified leads.

This isn’t to say you can’t put some memorable branding or messaging in the first few seconds of the ad to make skippers remember it. However, the period before the “Skip” button appears should be used to hook viewers into voluntarily watching your whole ad.

Think of it this way — if your ad goes through the complete arc of intro to CTA before the skip button, you are giving people a familiar sense of completion. Everyone has seen ads before and we have all internalised the typical points that are hit by them. So if you take people through that journey and then offer them a skip button, you are in fact encouraging people to mentally (and physically) dismiss your message. It’s a bad combination.

Advice for Website Owners

If your ad network runs skippable ads, it is very likely that you will not be paid for the impressions on ads that are skipped.

Skippable ads often perform very well for advertisers, as users who do not skip are expressing an interest in the ad. Therefore out of the impressions that are counted, there is often a high conversion rate.

These two facts together make skippable ads more expensive than their non-skippable counterparts. Publishers who run skippable ads are using more impressions in order to provide engagement, but are also able to promise higher levels of engagement. This usually makes skippable ads a good deal for both the advertiser and the websites running them. Advertisers are paying more for higher-performing ads. You are being paid a premium to “waste” ad impressions — but that premium should make up for the ad impressions wasted.

On top of this, providing better performance for advertisers will encourage them to run more ads on your site, and will make you more money in the long run.

Top Tip

As with all intrusive ad types, we recommend that websites run them infrequently so as to not annoy their user base. Websites should not run more than one video ad in a row, even if it is skippable, as losing users will lose more than revenue than doubling up videos will earn.

Slack

An instant messenger tool used by companies. Sometimes referred to as a Social Network.

Small Business

AKA SME (Small To Medium Enterprise) or SMB (Small to Medium Business). Official definitions of a “”Small Business”” vary from country to country and industry to industry. The definition is usually based on the number of employees. It varies by industry as it is often based on a company’s relative size compared to its competitors. It can also be judged on revenue as well as a variety of other criteria. In Australia, a small business is said to have less than 15 employees, whereas many government assistance programmes for Small Businesses in the USA state they must have less than 5,000 employees. The advantages of being a small business are often overlooked because of the precarious nature of competing against larger companies. Being able to change and adapt to overcome problems quickly is something larger companies are often unable to do, however, while small companies can (and must) do it frequently.

7 Things To Know About Small Business Websites

Small businesses can use their small size to their advantage. Small websites can be completely changed quickly (and without much disruption to business), compared to large websites which require months of detailed work and planning to revamp.
Small websites should use AdSense as their ad platform (as it’s easy to set up and manage, and it’s not worth wasting time on anything more complicated yet).
Email Marketing is the most popular digital channel for small businesses (with around 50% take-up), followed closely by social media marketing (at 48%). All small businesses should be doing both of these.
Small websites are freer to try new things (as they have nothing to lose).
The vast majority (70%) of small business websites don’t have a Call To Action on their homepage. Tell people what it is you want them to do, and they might just do it!
Small businesses can often adapt much faster than their larger competitors. This means you need to stay on top of the latest trends, as they are more to your advantage than bigger businesses.
Around half of small businesses still don’t have websites, so if you do then you’re ahead of the curve.

Snapchat

The central concept is Snapchat is that messages shared are only temporary. All messages delete themselves after a set period (defined by the user who sends the message), or when all users leave a chat. Users can also post onto their “”Story”” where “”snaps”” are kept for up to 24 hours. Users may save their own Snaps into the Memories section, but may not save other users Snaps. Snapchat is also famous for its filters, which can be dynamically applied to videos making it seem like someone has the face of a dog, or a crown of flowers, or is vomiting rainbows (these filters change periodically). These filters are used for advertising purposes, with advertisers able to create filters (for a fee) that are only available in certain physical locations (like one of their stores).

7 Ways To Think About Snapchat

It’s a place to share videos, pictures, & messages without worrying (too much) about them coming back to haunt you later. Although – if you think a post will come back to haunt you, you probably shouldn’t post it anywhere anyway.
95% per cent of Snapchatters say that using the app makes them feel happy. Compare that to how you feel on the social networks you use for a minute.
At its best, Snapchat is a unique, interesting, and creative way to communicate like no other. At its worst… well you know.
A Snapstreak is the number of days in a row that two users have shared at least one Snap each per day with each other. The current longest streak is 1,814 (about 5 years).
Despite its fame, Snapchat is not one of the top ten largest social networks (it’s close though).
According to Statista, in 2019 over half of all US internet users aged 15-25 were on Snapchat. It is still huge among young people.
For social media marketers, only the best/richest should attempt Snapchat. Their advertising options are very expensive, and organic social is a very different beast to other platforms.

Snapchat Memories

A place on Snapchat where users of the platform can save snaps for later. Memories are only accessible by the user who saves them (they are not public).

Snapchat Stories

A place on Snapchat to curate snaps from the past 24 hours into a publicly viewable set. These expire”

Social Listening

The process of monitoring social channels for people talking about your brand or things related to your brand (including your competitors). Social listening is used as part of audience research, as well as spotting opportunities and problems in real-time.

Social Media

Social Media refers to websites entirely made up of user-generated content, in which users can interact with things other users have posted.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing (or SMM) is the blanket term for any type of marketing using social media. This includes:

Organic Posting – people posting on their own profile or on their business
Social Media Advertising (or SMA) – Paid adverts, or boosting posts
Social Media Optimising (or SMO) – Similar to SEO, but for social media platforms. This involves optimising posts to increase reach, engagement, or other goals.

Influencer Marketing (working with people who have lots of followers to boost reach), and Content Marketing (using content to gain customers) are both related to SMM. Find out more about Social Media Marketing here >

Social Media Optimisation

Social Media Optimisation (or SMO) refers to any activity which is aimed at improving results from social media. It is the social media equivalent of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Typically paid ads on social media are not considered part of this activity. Posting content on social media isn’t enough to get good results. By both optimising your content for social media and optimising your content on social media you can vastly improve what you gain from your social media marketing. This is important as Social Media Marketing is an “”always-on”” activity – meaning it takes up a lot of time. Make sure that is time well spent. Like SEO, SMO is vital to maximising results from other digital marketing activities. Making sure your social media marketing is both appropriate and effective will have positive knock-on effects. This includes every strand of marketing but particularly for branding, as social media is so visible to the public.

Types of SMO

As with SEO, there are several types of SMO.

On-Page SMO – This is any activity taken on a webpage to make it more likely to be shared by visitors, and that the page looks good when it is shared.
Technical SMO – Means making sure there a page can be shared without technical issues. This work can include adding share buttons to pages, as well as making sure meta-data is editable.
Post SMO – This means working to improve what your posts achieve. It typically includes activities such as working out the best times of day to post, what topics to post on, what sort of images or videos to include, which hashtags work best, and more.
Profile SMO – Making sure profile pages are filled out fully and optimally can improve how both visitors and the social networks themselves see you.
Community Building – the equivalent of link building, community building means increasing your follower (or equivalent) count so that more people see your content. This activity also includes tending to your community by replying to and moderating comments on your posts.

Social Media Scheduler

What is a Social Media Scheduler?

A Social Media Scheduler is a tool used to plan social media posts. While some social networks have built-in social media schedulers, there are also many third-party ones available such as Buffer, Hootsuite, StatusBrew. They are a vital tool for social media managers who often need to post specific content at specific times, as well as post in real-time and respond to real-time events and comments. Social Media Schedulers work by users inputting future social media posts and adding a date and time. The scheduler will then automatically post that content to the user’s account(s) at the specified time and date.

Many social media schedulers come with the option of uploading a spreadsheet of posts to schedule all at once. This can be especially time-saving for social media managers.

While social media schedulers used to be widely free to the user, they are now generally a paid-for service. Due to this they often now have additional services tacked on to them such as reporting, link shortening, and recommending content to post.

7 Things To Know About Social Media Schedulers

Use a scheduler to get out important posts – but also post in real-time. Your scheduled posts should be in addition to (not instead of) you posting and reacting on social media as usual.
Many schedulers have limits on the number of posts you can schedule. Use this limit to help you decide what a cost-effective scheduling schedule is for you.
Use analytics to work out what are the best times each day to post, and use that to inform your schedule. Regularly review these times and do some testing – stop the worst performing one(s) and try a new time.
You can often add a limited amount of profiles to a scheduler. If you are working to a budget you should use this limit to bring into focus which are your most important profiles (and close the rest).
Social Media Schedulers used to commonly be free-to-use. That model changed mostly when Hootsuite starting to charge users a few years ago.
Social Media Schedulers are a real time saver if you use them right. Try and always have 2-4 weeks of posts scheduled. *Note*: Double-check the posts in the week they go out in case current events have changed their meaning since you scheduled them.
According to Datanyze, HootSuite is the most popular social media scheduler, followed by Sprout Social.

Social Media Suspension

When someone is banned from social media. Social media suspensions usually have a specific duration attached (eg 1 day, 3 months, permanent etc) and are caused due to someone breaking the rules set out by a social network.

Social Proof

A way of expressing that people like/agree with an action, often by using usage stats. For example “”Why not join our newsletter list. 5,624 people already have!””. Social Proof can be very effective at getting people to do something.

Soft-Bounce

In Email Marketing, Soft-Bounces refer to what are usually temporary issues – the recipient email inbox is full, the email itself was too large etc. They are usually nothing to worry about but simply mean your message has not got through.

SoLoMo

Short for Social, Local, Mobile, SoLoMo is a marketing mindset that seeks to integrate three trends for consumers (ie being influenced by social, wanting messages to be local to them, and consume mostly on mobiles).

SP

SP stands for Sponsored Post and means a social media post has been paid for by an advertiser. Using #SP Social Media is supposed to inform a user’s followers that the post is in fact advertising, although the effectiveness of this is disputed.

Spam

Spam refers to unsolicited emails but also can be used to describe emails that use deceptive headers, From names, reply-to addresses, or subject lines. Emails that have been requested can be classified as spam by email servers, so make sure not to write emails that sound like a scam! The term Spam actually refers to a type of processed meat. According to Today I Found Out, The term also came to refer to unsolicited emails via a Monty Python sketch:

The real origin of the term comes from a 1970 Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit. In this skit, all the restaurant’s menu items devolve into SPAM. When the waitress repeats the word SPAM, a group of Vikings in the corner sing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM! Wonderful SPAM!”, drowning out other conversation, until they are finally told to shut it. Exactly where this first translated to internet messages of varying type, such as chat messages, newsgroups, etc, isn’t entirely known as it sort of happened all over the place in a very short span of years, in terms of the name being applied to these messages. It is, however, well documented that the users in each of these first instances chose the word “spam” referring to the 1970 Monty Python sketch where SPAM singing was drowning out conversation and SPAM itself was unwanted and popping up all over the menu.

Spark Ads

A way of boosting organic posts on TikTok. It differs from TikTok Promote (or Facebook Boost) in that you can also boost other people’s posts (with their permission). It’s a novel idea,and helps influencers and brands equally.

Spider

A spider is a type of bot deployed by search engines that crawls websites to index their webpages and structure.

Split Testing

A way of testing whether one thing is better than another. For example, you could split test two ads that have the same text but different images in order to find out which image performs better.

Sponsorship

What is a Sponsorship?

In online advertising, a sponsorship is where an advertiser pays to have both ads and content on a site. This content could include logos, articles, videos, or anything. These are commonly used when sections of websites will receive extra traffic during an event (such as the Tennis section on a sports site during Wimbledon). They are also often used as Homepage Takeovers. To distinguish a sponsorship from a simple roadblock a reskin is also often included. (A roadblock is when all the ads on one page are used by one advertiser).

Work out the Cost Per Day of your Sponsorship with our CPD Calculator >

Sponsorship Definition

In offline marketing, a sponsorship is where an advertiser pays to have its name placed on all materials to do with an event or institution. It is primarily a branding exercise and can be looked on very favourably. For example, when an advertiser pays for a charity event, everyone knows that the advertiser has reduced the cost burden for the charity, and is making life better for both the charity and attendees of the event. This sort of marketing often requires very little from the advertiser. They just want their logo placed noticeably (and a thank you is always nice). The benefit to the advertiser is often a tangible boost to their reputation. In online advertising, a sponsorship is often less subtle. Many sites consider selling all the ads on one page as a sponsorship.

This is however not really a co-branding exercise at all. It, therefore, has none of the advantages of a sponsorship deal.

Display ads are not really looked upon favourably by most people, and so seeing all of them sold to one advertiser is unlikely to make users think of them favourably. This is why a reskin and/or company logo is often included in a sponsorship deal. Sometimes it is actually used instead of simply selling all the ads on one page to a single advertiser. Reskinning a websites logo itself is also a common way of differentiating this type of advertising.

Technical Information

A sponsorship is usually sold on a page or section of a website for a set period of time. This means it is commonly billed on a CPD basis. If it is billed on a CPM basis, this can cause problems, as all ad units will not necessarily appear at the same time for a variety of technical reasons.

7 Things To Know About Sponsorships

Don’t just sell ad space on your site, sell the full value of being associated with your site.
Don’t just buy ad space and get clicks, buy space on a site that works well with your brand and get kudos.
If scarcity increases demand, then selling all your ad space to just one advertiser sure will make it a scarce resource.
(Temporarily) partner with a brand like yours to become more than a sum of your parts. 1+1=3 (sometimes)
If people like another brand that is just like yours (which doesn’t compete with you) then why not join forces?
Selling all the ads on one page or section of your site is not only lucrative, but it is also convenient (as you don’t have to deal with multiple advertisers).
Sponsorship deals make the most sense for small sites (who shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about advertising) and big sites (who have a lot of brand value to sell).

Sponsorship Advice for Site Owners

For small sites, selling off all the ads across your site is a convenient way to maximise your profits from advertising while minimising your effort. This can and should include a reskin and an advertisers logo if possible. By selling your whole site (or a section of it) in bulk you can reduce worries about inconsistent advertising revenue. If you are a medium or large site, then selling sponsorships of parts of your site (or newsletter) is a great idea also. You should distinguish these from roadblocks or homepage takeovers, however.

Selling advertising space in bulk is a good idea and can increase the value of your ad inventory. Selling a sponsorship should be more than just advertising space however – it should focus more on branding.

To this end, you should sell it with the promise of positive mentions of your sponsors on the site. These needn’t be more than thank-yous necessarily. Calling out to your audience that an advertiser is making a significant financial difference can cut through banner blindness. Increasing the positive experience of this sort of sponsorship for your advertisers will help gain repeat business too!

Sponsorship Advice for Ad Buyers

If you are going to sponsor a site (or section of one) then make sure you get what you are paying for. If the deal includes advertising, then paying an increased rate to get a sponsorship makes sense only if there is an increased return on investment.

This means that you should be getting brand value out of any sponsorship deal. A reskin should certainly be part of one, and when possible your logo should be naturally included as part of the section of the site you are sponsoring.

Also, don’t underestimate the value of being mentioned (even as just a thank you) on the site. Once the advertising has been taken down, the text in articles on a site will remain, giving you a useful inbound link (which is nice for SEO). A sponsorship should always be a way of improving how your brand is perceived. Therefore make sure you only sponsor websites whose ethos aligns with your company, and which your audience looks upon favourably.

Not to be confused with

Roadblocks, Homepage Takeovers

Sprout Social

A popular and powerful social media management tool that allows users to manage their social media activity across multiple ad networks.

Squarespace

A website builder.

SSAI

When an ad-supported streaming service inserts ads before sending the stream to a device. This is done by cutting the stream and stitching the ad into the stream before transmission so the device at the other end cannot tell the ad from the content. This is done to stop ad blockers from detecting and blocking ads.

SSL Certificate

An SSL Certificate is a digital key that creates a secure connection between a website and a browser. Google prioritises secure sites over unsecured ones, so installing an SSL Certificate is important for SEO. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. When an SSL Certificate is installed on a site, the URL will start with https:// instead of http://.

SSP

SSP stands for Supply Side Platform and is a type of RTB Ad Network in which publishers place their inventory and the rules surrounding it, and advertisers come to bid on it.

Standard Ad Unit

We recommend you use IAB standard ads, as it makes the whole ad buying/selling process much easier. Imagine if every website made random sized ads that only ran on their site – the cost of running a large online ad campaign would be astronomical as web designers would have to design ads to fit every site. To combat this problem, the online advertising industry has standardised ad sizes over the years so that advertisers and publishers don’t need to work so hard to run ad campaigns.

A standard ad is what you see on most pages on the internet now, and they come in three main sizes: 728×90, 300×250 and 160×600 (or sometimes the 300×600). These measurements are in pixels and are horizontal and then vertical – see below (or on this site) for example:

: *Not to scale

These are the most profitable and widespread ads out there, so add them to your site to enter the online advertising world with the least effort and most reward.

WARNING: There used to be standard 5 standard ad units, but two of them were retired for being terrible. The other two were 468×60 and 120×600 – both of which look kind of tiny, and sell for much less money than the above three. Do not use these ad sizes in the hope of monetizing them well – they will let you down. (Please note however that sometimes a 468×60 is shown in a 728×90 slot or a 120×600 is shown in a 160×600 slot – do not panic about this, it’s just how it works).

Note: The IAB have now come up with a next-generation set of ad sizes, which are based on a ratio rather than absolute ad sizes (ie 1:1 for a square ad). These new ad sizes are meant to future proof websites against increases in screen resolution, however, they have not as of yet been adopted by many websites (if any). The current set of standard ads are referred to in this new paradigm as “”Transitional sizes””, meaning that we should keep using them for now. This is advice that we very much agree with.

Statusbrew

Statusbrew is a social media scheduling tool.

Steemit

A blockchain based social network that pays users for their content using the STEEM cryptocurrency.

Structured Citation

A business listing on a directory. Important for SEO.

Style Guide

A Style Guide is a manual that specifies the house style of a business. It typically includes details such as:

Font
Brand Colours
Editorial Choices (such as capitalisation, and spellings)
Logo and image usage
Tone of Voice

All businesses should create a style guide in order to keep their brand consistent. Having a consistent brand makes it much more effective as a marketing tool, and adds value to a business.

7 Ideas & Facts About Style Guides

Using consistent colours, fonts, and design elements make a brand more recognisable and feel more authentic (and 80% of consumers say they like authentic brands).
Either e.g. or eg is ok – it’s a choice. Whichever you choose, put it in your style guide so you don’t have to keep making that choice every time you write something.
A Cascading Style Sheet is essentially an automated version of style guides for websites. It’s still a good idea to have an explicitly written style guide too however so you know which rules are set in stone.
Including ‘don’t use’ examples in your Style Guide for things like your logo, slogan, or images can stop your brand from making the same mistakes over and over again.
Choosing a specific set of colours to use for your brand actually makes design work easier. Fewer choices can sometimes mean more freedom.
Your Style Guide should include instructions on Tone of Voice as well as technical instructions. Use examples to make sure you are understood.
The AP Style Guide is perhaps the most well-known style guide and is widely used for journalism corporate communications.

Subdomain

A subdomain is part of a larger domain, usually separated by a dot and at the beginning of a domain name. For example: example.com – example is the domain name test.example.com – test is a subdomain under example.com As test.example.com can lead to a different website than example.com it is essentially a different URL altogether. However, the owner of example.com would be the only one able to create any subdomains (such as test.example.com) and so you can be sure that the subdomain is related to the main domain. Most people use subdomains to separate out their site in a helpful way. For example, if a company has a strong brand name, and lots of products they might use subdomains to split them out.

Subscriber

This is the name for a person or group of people who have voluntarily decided to become notified of updates from a specific source of content. Amongst other things, users can subscribe to YouTube channels to become notified of new content there, or to a mailing list in order to receive emails from a particular source. Subscribers are the life-blood of many forms of marketing as they constitute an actively interested list of possible consumers. Proper management of a subscriber list can sometimes, therefore, make or break the success of a campaign.

Substack

A subscription newsletter platform.

Subtweet

A tweet that refers to someone without mentioning them directly (often as a way to mock criticise that person).

Super Follow

A service from X (Twitter) where people can Super Follow an account. Super Following an account costs the follower money, and the idea is that the account will then publish exclusive content for their super followers.

Surveillance Marketing

Marketing that collects and uses a surprising amount of data to target people. A terrifying and unneccesary paradigm the internet has stumbled into due to a lack of awareness around privacy concerns.

SVOD

Subscription Video On Demand (eg Netflix, Disney+ etc). These are streaming services which don’t run advertising.

Swipe file

A file that marketers keep with inspiration in it – ads and ideas that they have liked in the past.

SWOT

An acronym standing for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. SWOT is used to start planning a marketing campaign.

TCF

Transparency & Consent Framework. A way to gather consent from users to be shown online advertising (via cookie consent banners). This is then passed onto ad platforms and/or advertisers.

A secure messaging app that lets you set messages to delete themselves (like Snapchat). Sometimes referred to as a social network.

The Delta

? means change or difference,and is used in digital marketing to discuss either the rate of change or difference a campaign or action will make. Eg “”What’s the delta to our revenue from our Facebook campaign?””.

Thin Content

Content on a website that has little to no value to a user. This is generally thought of as very short content, however thin content doesn’t have a specific length, and is more about quality. Thin Content ranks badly by search engines (if it’s even indexed at all).

Third-Party Ad Server

A third-party ad server is a company that hosts ads on behalf of advertisers and manages the process of serving them to websites as necessary. They also usually manage analytics and can provide support for delivering more complex ads. Most Ad Agencies use them.

Third-Party Cookies

Cookies that are dropped onto a person’s computer when visiting a website that are not from the website itself. For example, cookies from an ad on the website.

Thumbnail

A small picture (often auto-generated from a larger version of the picture) that goes alongside content in an index or search result. Thumbnails are very important in getting people to click on your content.

TIFF

A TIFF is a type of image file (.TIFF is the file extension). TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format.

TikTok

A high concept social network, where users can post 15 seconds videos with a song or audio clip played over the top. Nominally for lip-syncing, videos, users upload all sorts of content with audio clips, and different clips have come to mean specific things on the platform due to this. Known as Douyin in China, TikTok bought and absorbed another small social network (musical.ly) and has become one of the largest social networks.

7 Things To Know About TikTok

Unlike other social networks, TikTok is said to have a strong supportive community, with far more positivity and far fewer trolls. Let’s hope it lasts!
As of January 2020, TikTok had 800 million active users worldwide (including 30 million in the US).
70% of Tiktok users are 16-24! It has the youngest user base of any major social network.
As well as lip-syncing and comedy videos, TikTok has a massive amount of educational accounts.
According to Influence Marketing Hub, TikTok had (by far) the highest engagement rates of any social network in 2019. Cloutmeter puts average engagement at 52%!
TikTok indexes videos by the soundtrack. Users can pick from a list of songs, or use the track from another video to accompany their own.
TikTok is an international version of the Chinese social network Douyin, which merged with musical.ly to become the powerhouse it is today.

TikTok Ads

The ad platform on TikTok. It can be found here.

TikTok Audience Network

The network of sites that run TikTok ads on them (not including TikTok itself).

TikTok Promote

A way to pay to show posts on TikTok to more users. As with Facebook Boost, there are almost no targeting options, so this product is favoured by organic social marketers, but not paid media marketers.

Calculate the CPM of TikTok ad campaigns with our TikTok CPM calculator >

TikTok Pulse

Influencers with over 100,000 followers can enrol in TikTok Pulse for an ad rev share of 50%. Advertisers can contextually target TikTok Pulse to have their ads shown amongst the top 4% of videos in a category.

TikTok Resumes

A way to apply for jobs through TikTok using a short video CV.

Tile

A tile is a common term for a square ad. It usually refers to a 125 pixels (wide) by 125 pixels (tall) ad unit, which also known as a Button.

Time after Search

In Google Analytics Internal Search report, the amount of time a user spends on the site after a search.

Time to Interactive

A measurement of how long it takes for a webpage to become interactive after it starts to load. More specifically how long it takes for a page to become consistently interactive for 5 seconds after loading. This measure is included in Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

Timeline

A timeline in social media refers to a type of feed where all posts are listed in reverse chronological order. While social media feeds are still sometimes casually referred to as “”Timelines””, most social networks now default to algorithmically arranged feeds when looking at posts from multiple users. Timelines still exist on users’ own profiles, however. For profile Timelines, there is typically a list of all the posts that either a user posted themselves, as well as options to view everything a user reacted to or commented on.

7 Things To Know About Social Media Timelines

Taking a trip down memory lane on your social media profile is fun. It won’t be weird at all to see how you spoke to your friends 10 years ago. Not one bit (that’s a joke – it is usually super weird).
A time-ordered social media feed means that every post gets equal prominence. It also means that if people start commenting on a post after you scroll past it, you’ll miss out on the conversation.
Facebook first replaced launched the Timeline to replace the “”Wall”” on Thursday, September 22, 2011, and was made available worldwide three months later on Thursday, December 15th, 2011.
Before social media timelines existed there was your current post (which was displayed prominently), and then old posts (which were archived)… and that’s it.
You can easily embed a X (Twitter) Timeline on your website (by going to publish.x.com), which will show Tweets filtered by: profile, the tweets a profile has liked, a list, or a hashtag.
If you want to go all-in on your Facebook Timeline, you can create backdated posts to show information about the history of your company/industry.
It’s both convenient and disturbing to be able to scroll through your whole social media history. This is why most politicians delete their whole timeline before they run for anything. Just in case.

Tip Jar

A way to pay content creators. This functionality is implemented in different ways on different sites (including Twitter), but usually involves a voluntary and no-strings attached one-off payment.

Title Tag

The title of webpage. This is what search engines typically use as the link to the page on their search results pages. It should be noted that Google have started to more frequently rewrite the title of pages that they show if their algorithm thinks more people will click on it.

TLD

TLD stands for Top-Level Domain. Top-Level Domain refers to the most important part (rightmost) in every domain name. For example, in searchengineland.com, the “.com” is the TLD.

What is the purpose of a TLD?

The primary purpose of a TLD is to help further differentiate and categorize a domain, such as its purpose, the owner, or country of origin. There were six original top-level domain names. They each have a unique purpose:

.com, which is for commercial use.
.org, which is for organizational use.
.int, which is for intergovernmental organizational use.
.edu, which is for educational use.
.gov, which is for government agency use.
.mil, which is for U.S. military use.

By creating new TLDs the number of domain names available increases.

How many TLD are there?

According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), there are 1,514 top-level (TLDs) currently in use (as of June 2020). TLDs are mainly categorized into five groups:

Infrastructure top-level domain (iTLD): This group consists of only one domain: ARPA. It is reserved by the IANA for The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Generic top-level domains (gTLD): These are the LTDs with three or more characters, such as .com, .net, or .edu.
Restricted generic top-level domains (grTLD): These domains are restricted and managed under ICANN.
Sponsored top-level domains (sTLD): These domains are sponsored by private organizations and industries, such as .int, .jobs, .travel.
Country-code top-level domains (ccTLD): These are LTDs with two-letter domains to indicate a specific location or country, such as .kr, .uk, .vn.
Test top-level domains (tTLD): These domains are for testing purposes, and are installed under .test.

How to choose the best TLD for your brand or business?

When you are starting an online business or extending your market share online, it is important to pick a TLD and/or ccTLD that is relevant and coherent to your brand. For example, if you would like your products to be sold internationally, then it is best to choose “.com”. However, if you would like your business to operate only in a certain country, say the UK, then it would be a better choice to go with the local ccTLD, in this case, “.co.uk”. Depending on what industry your company is in, you can go with a TLD that is relevant to your business, such as “.photo” for a photography business.

Top of Funnel

In digital marketing, ToFu means “”Top of Funnel”” and refers to the first real contact someone makes with a website. The funnel in question is the marketing funnel and is the journey people take from entering a website to undertaking an action (such as making a purchase). ToFu, or Top of Funnel in this sense refers to things like a blog – anything that is interesting to a very broad group of people. The idea is to draw as many people as possible into being interested in your site.

Topic Cluster

A group of related topics. A tactic in SEO is to find a target topic to create content about,and then to also create content on closely related topics and then link all the pages together in a logical way. ”

Topics

A Google initiative that aims to make behavioural targeting transparent. Sites/advertisers participating in Topics are told 3 topics of interest for each user (from the past 3 weeks browser history) to target.

TopView Ads

A type of TikTok ad which appears at the top of the “”For You”” page. This is TikToks version of ‘above the fold’ advertising.

Total Unique Searches

In Google Analytics Internal Search report, Total Unique Searches is a count of the number of searches without counting repeats. So if someone does the same search twice in a row, it will only count as one.

Tracking Links

A hyperlink that is designed to be easily trackable, often by adding UTM parameters, or else by simply being unique.

Traffic

Traffic in online advertising is a catch-all term for visitors to a site (the online equivalent of “”foot traffic”” for a physical shop). It is mostly used interchangeably with inventory (eg “”How much traffic do you get?”” and “”How much inventory do you have”” is the same question).

7 Things To Know About Traffic

AKA Visitors. Or Inventory. Or Hits. Or Pageviews. Or Visits. Or Data. Or Sessions. Ok ok, you caught me, it doesn’t have a strict meaning.
Slightly over half (52%) of all web traffic is generated by bots. Bots are used to automatically collect data from websites (inc. by Google), and *most* are not intended to be malicious in any way.
Legitimately increasing traffic is the best way to increase a website’s profitability. Improving a site can increase sales or ad impressions, but both rely on having enough visitors to start with.
Traffic is often tracked via the use of cookies.
According to Ahrefs, over 90% of web pages receive no traffic from Google Search at all. If you have web pages that get zero traffic – either fix them, delete them, or merge them with other pages.
Google Analytics is arguably the best way to keep track of your traffic. It’s free & simple to use (and set up) – but has advanced options and uses too.
Measuring and analysing your traffic is vital for almost any website so that you can understand and improve your site’s performance.

Trafficking

Trafficking in online advertising is the process of uploading, troubleshooting, managing, optimising and reporting on advertising campaigns.

Trigger Warning

A “trigger warning” (often abbreviated to TW) is a notice at the start of a piece of content such as a social media post, video, or a piece of writing. The purpose of a Trigger Warning is to attempt to forewarn the audience of potentially distressing material that may have a negative impact on viewers. The term is commonly used on social channels such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Why are Trigger Warnings important?

Trigger warnings allow PTSD survivors to mentally prepare themselves before being exposed to a triggered content or to avoid any situation that reminds them of the traumatic event. Unprompted triggering information can cause mental health disorder issues such as nightmares, panic attacks, and more.

How do I use Trigger Warnings?

When posting on Social Media, start your description with the abbreviation (“TW”), and then add two slashes (“TW //”). The next step is to add no-censored keywords with clear detail that people know whether they want to continue viewing the content or not (“TW // Eating Disorders”). If writing with a caption, go to the next line and add a period. Go to the next line and repeat until the description is hidden, and the viewers who decide to see the content can choose “read more” (note: this does not work on X (Twitter) as there is no limit).

What are common Trigger Warnings?

It is helpful to know some of the most common trigger warnings. They are:

Abuse (physical, mental, emotional, verbal, sexual)
Child abuse/paedophilia
Sexual assault and rape
Eating disorders
Self-harm
Needles
Depiction of pornography
Incest
Suicide
Pregnancy
Miscarriages/Abortion
Blood
Death
Homophobia, transphobia, sexism (any kind of discrimination)

TripAdvisor

An online travel company that features user-generated content (which is why it is sometimes referred to as social media).

Troubleshooting

The process of systematically testing for, finding and fixing problems (such as broken ads, websites or reports).

Top Tips

#1 Always triple-check that you’re not an idiot.

When something goes wrong, don’t just assume something is broken – always check for human error first. Most of the time when something isn’t working, someone has simply done something wrong along the way. This is the first thing to check in all situations. And always, ALWAYS, triple-check that it wasn’t you who made a mistake before even implying it was anyone else. Pro Tip: If you ask the tech person at the client’s end about an issue, and then the issue suddenly goes away without them saying they fixed it, they’re probably hiding the fact that they screwed up. You don’t need to be rude about it to the client when this happens as that helps no one. Do make sure your boss knows the sequence of events, however (and write it down so you know how to deal with the client in future).

#2 Respect smarts. Respect the heck out of them.

Know who to ask questions on any subject. There’s always going to be someone who knows a lot more than you about basically anything, so make sure you know who they are so that you can ask for help when you need it. This could be someone within your organisation or even just the helpdesk for a product. If you meet someone who knows what they are doing and is helpful, make a note (at least mentally). Don’t just accept their answer if they help you either – make sure you understand it (and ask questions if you don’t). Having this level of help on tap, of course, means making sure the helpful person likes you (at least a little), so make sure you don’t annoy them with too many questions. And don’t ask them to do your job for you! Lending knowledge is one thing, lending work hours is quite another.

#3 Own your responsibilities and let others own theirs.

Know whose responsibility everything is. This is really part of #2, but just knowing who should be fixing something means you don’t feel like everything is down to you alone! That person is also likely to be the expert on the subject, or at least might know one to ask when things go awry!

#4 Experimenting isn’t just for hippies and scientists.

Try out EVERYTHING. I literally mean that you should try and understand and test every variation of what you are doing. Play with every setting in any platform you are using. Tick every box you’ve never ticked, fill out every field, read every helpful article, run every type of report. This will mean setting up a test version of whatever you are doing to play around with. If you are the one responsible for using a platform, you need to know exactly what it can do. More importantly, you need to know what different settings do when you use them in conjunction with other settings ahead of time, or you may find yourself in hot water. And again don’t just use them, work out how they work so you can understand what to do when they go wrong.

#5 Your brain is smarter than you think if you give it a minute to relax.

Use your imagination. Don’t be afraid to take some time and just sit and think about a problem. It feels like slacking when you first do it, but sitting back and just trying to visualize what is happening can really help. For example, going from the first ad call in a rich media server to the final measured ad impression on a user’s computer, and thinking about all the processes on the way can help you realise which bit of a campaign is different than usual, and warrants extra exploration.

#6 You’re probably never alone, don’t act like it.

Bounce ideas off the person sitting next to you. Two heads are always better than one! Even if they aren’t doing the same job as you, their responses and questions might just help you to realise where you are going wrong, or what to try next.

#7 Wondering is for losers. Knowing is for winners.

Satisfy your curiosity. If you are wondering if there is a correlation between odd behaviour and a specific site, run a report and check it out! The more you understand, the better you are at your job.

#8 Sometimes things are really too good to be true.

Never let anything go. If something performs inexplicably great, don’t just accept it as a gift from the gods – work out why. Everyone will raise the alarm if something performs badly or is broken, but if something performs ‘too’ well, it might go unnoticed. That doesn’t mean it’s not broken though, and still able to cause you problems later on.

#9 Be a nerd about work stuff.

Read the newsletters. Almost every platform that you have a login for will send you some sort of newsletter with the latest updates. It’s almost always boring stuff, but reading them will keep you focused on a product’s capabilities, as well as help you stay on top of your game. It really doesn’t take that long either and is a comparatively nice and slow way to start your day. And remember, you’re doing this to get paid, so doing it better usually means being paid more.

#10 Go back to the very start.

Reread the manual! If there is a tutorial, training manual, or just your notes from when you were taught how to use something, make sure you reread them after 6 months or so. There is always something that you will have forgotten or not used, and rereading this simple material once you actually understand the product is almost always helpful.

#11 Dream a little dream … of your job.

Daydream about your industry. This is a terrible tip that I always hated myself for doing, but sometimes when I wasn’t working I’d just think about how advertising could be better, not in general, but in specific ways. I didn’t come up with a totally new way of doing things, but I did come to understand why everything is how it is, and how the pieces fit together. This made me much better at appreciating everyone/thing around me, and able to utilise the various skills, platforms and products available to a much higher level. Doing this gets your subconscious involved too, which means solutions may start to come to you at odd times without trying (I actually once dreamt the solution to an excel problem I didn’t even realise I was having!).

#12 Most of all

…and most obviously – stay calm, find a version of what you are doing that works, and try to understand why it works.

TrueView

A YouTube ad format where advertisers only pay when a certain amount of the ad is watched. The include: In-stream ads (ads before videos that you can skip after 5 seconds),Discovery Ads (ads that appear in search results or by videos – advertisers only pay when they are played).

Truth In Advertising

A non-profit organisation devoted to protecting consumers against false or deceptive advertising. For example they’re the ones who forced influencers to start using #SP on sponsored posts.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a multimedia social network owned by Automattic (who bought it from Verizon). Founded in 2007, it focuses on short-form blogging and reposting content to be commented on. It is one of the top ten social networks.

7 Things To Know About Tumblr

Tumblr is to blogs like Reddit is to forums.
A short-form blogging site, focussed on commenting & reposting? While Tumblr may sound like a mix of Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, the culture on there is *very* different from any of them.
There is far less advertising on Tumblr than on other social networks, but it is there. It takes the form of:- Sponsored Posts – Sponsored Days (essentially an HPTO) – Selling Premium Themes
As of May 2019, there were over 465 million blogs on Tumblr, with 172 billion posts in total (and 21 million more posts created each day).
Tumblr is an underused social network for social media marketing. Creating a truly interesting or entertaining Tumblelog for your brand has huge potential to reach a very engaged userbase.
There used to be *a lot* of adult content on Tumblr. However, after a series of incidents in 2018 (inc. being banned by Apple), Tumblr took action and cleaned up.
Tumblr is filled with niche communities and subcultures with their own in-jokes. If you want to connect with these audiences, learn about them first or you’ll just be ridiculed, ignored, or annoying.

Tumblr Blaze

A way to pay to boost posts on Tumblr to random users (with no ability to target ads whatsoever). Often used by individuals for their own random posts,Tumblr Blaze has been well received by the Tumblr community.

A tweet is a post on Twitter. They are limited to 140 characters, with the intention being that posts are concise. A link posted within a Tweet always takes up 23 characters, and an image attached to a tweet takes up 24 characters. Tweets often include hashtags as a way of categorising them.

TweetDeck

A social media scheduling tool.

Twitch

A streaming social network type service, where users film themselves playing video games and interact with people who are watching them. Many vloggers start here.

Two-Click Penalty

A two-click penalty is a method that Google uses to prevent click fraud. If Google suspects that clicks on display ads on a website are frequently fraudulent or accidental, it may implement a “”Two-Click Penalty””. When this happens, when people click on an ad on that site, an overlay will appear, asking them to “”Click to go the site”” (or similar). This means that ads need two clicks to get someone to the site. This, of course, reduces the amount of traffic that ads send (legitimately or otherwise) and so also reduces revenue from those ads (which is why it’s called a penalty).

UGC

UGC (or User Generated Content) means any content generated by the users of a site as opposed to the publishers. For example, all the posts on a social network are UGC, as are all the comments on any website. UGC is often sought after by marketers as it implies a strongly engaged user base.

UI

UI stands for User Interface and just means the webpage you can login to edit your settings for a web program such as an ad server or RTB platform.

Underdelivery

When an ad campaign does not fulfil the specified amount of impressions/clicks/conversions etc.

Unique User

A person using a computer. Different to a User in that the term “Unique Users” only includes each person once regardless of how many times they logged on. The term User on the other hand can include the same person many times (once each time they log on). Ad Agencies only really care about Unique Users, as opposed to Users.

Unmoderated

Moderation is the act of reviewing comments or forum posts to ensure they don’t breach rules set out by a site. A site or comments section which is unmoderated is one that has been left to its own devices – anyone can post anything without it being checked by anyone. Generally, a risky proposition on any site, as people say weird stuff on the internet (and bots post spam).

Unmonetized

If something is unmonetized that means that it has not been set up so that money is earned from it. For example, a webpage with no ads or any other ways of making money is unmonetized.

Unoptimised

If something is unoptimized, it has not had any efforts put in to improve its performance.

Unqualified Lead

An unqualified lead is one that has been gathered, but no further testing has been done to ensure that it is viable for the purpose it was intended. For example leaving a sign-up sheet for “”more information”” on a site will gather unqualified leads, as although the sign-ups are interested, they may not actually be able to do whatever you are looking for (such as afford the car on sale).

Unskippable

Unskippable in online advertising refers to ads (usually video ads) that have to be watched by a user before they can proceed to the content they were looking for. They are called unskippable, as most ads like this can be skipped (and are therefore skippable!).

Unstructured Citation

A mention of a website or business which doesn’t provide useful details (such as the URL, address, or phone number). These are still considered useful for SEO and branding (just not as useful as structured citations).

Unsubscribe

When someone unsubscribes from something, it means they have decided they no longer want to receive content that they had previously subscribed to.

Unsubscribe Link

All email marketing is required to have a working Unsubscribe link contained within it. An unsubscribe link allows subscribers to change their minds and to stop receiving content they had previously agreed to. Without this link, marketing emails may be breaching EU law and GDPR.

Unsubscribe Rate

In email marketing, the unsubscribe rate means the percentage of your users who are choosing to unsubscribe from your email marketing list. This is also known as the Unsub Rate and is generally related back to individual emails. The lower the rate, the better quality your list is, as it implies they are happy receiving the emails you send them. On the other hand, the higher the Ubsub rate the worse your email list is OR the worse an individual email was.

Work out the Unsubscribe Rate of your emails with our Unsub Rate Calculator >

Unsub Rate Equation

Here is the Unsub Rate (or Unsubscription Rate) Formula:

Unsub Rate = (Unsubscribes ÷ Delivered Emails) ×100

It should be noted that different Email Marketing Platforms call “”Delivered Emails”” different things. They are sometimes referred to as “”sent”” emails – but delivered seems more accurate so we are using that. The point is that they are emails that made it into inboxes (and did not bounce).

Unsub Rate Benchmark

According to numerous studies over the years, the average Unsubscribe Rate for emails is about 0.1%. This means that for every 1,000 emails sent you can expect 1 person to unsubscribe. It also means that you need to have more than 1 new subscriber every time you send 1,000 emails or your email marketing list will start to shrink. This figure of 0.1% is an overall benchmark for all emails across all industries. However, the benchmark for different industries varies between around 0.1% and 0.8%. As you can see – the unsub rate for any industry is generally far below 1%, so if you see an unsub rate even approaching 1% then you should be concerned.

Upweight

An Upweight in online advertising is a term to do with optimising ad campaigns. It means when a placement is performing well, that further impressions are moved to that placement to improve the overall performance of a campaign. Creating an upweight would usually involve making a new ad line that is only targeted at successful placements.

Urchin Tracking Module

UTM parameters are 5 tracking parameters you can add to the end of a URL which can be read by Google Analytics. They are source, medium, campaign, term and content. They are used to easily track what sort of link sent traffic to your site. Each should be used for different reasons, but ultimately are just to group links. You can generate a UTM link here.

URL

The web address of a website or webpage. For example, the address of this website is https://searchengineland.com. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.

User

A user is the analytics term for a person using a computer. Different to a Unique User in that the term “”Users”” may describe all the times any person logged onto a website regardless of if they are the same person repeatedly.

7 Things To Know About ‘User’

‘User’ and ‘Unique User’ are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. ‘Users’ is a simple headcount – ‘Unique Users’ requires tracking people across multiple time periods.
Every time you enter a website you are counted as a user.
As of July 2019, there were 4.33bn internet users (56% of all people!)
In Google Analytics, ‘User’ is used to mean ‘Unique User’, and ‘Session’ is used to mean ‘User’.
A ‘Session’ in Google Analytics only lasts 30 minutes – which is why ‘User’ counts generally differ from Sessions even when a short time frame is selected.
Reach is generally a measure of Unique Users rather than just Users.
If you go to the same website two days in a row you will count as two ‘Users’, but only one ‘Unique User’.

User Base

A user base is a group of users who frequently use a site, as opposed to visiting just one time.

User Experience Testing

User experience testing is the process of making sure that users have the best experience possible on a website, by searching for flaws on the site (often using a large group of everyday users of the site).

7 Things To Know About User Experience Testing

You probably know exactly how your website is organised, but do your users? What may seem intuitive to you might not actually make much sense to others. Always test your assumptions.
According to a study by Nielson Norman Group, the ideal UX Testing setup is to have 3 test groups with 5 people in them each. Statistically, 15 people should find *all* of your useability problems.
Selecting the right people for your test group is a critical part of UX Testing. Friends, Family, & Employees are all too knowledgeable (or kind) to make good testers.
Moderated UX Testing involves getting a test group and asking them to complete tasks while being observed. This type of testing is usually of higher quality but can be expensive.
Unmoderated UX Testing involves getting a test group & asking them to complete tasks remotely then collecting results. This type of testing is cheaper but less controllable.
Surveys, polls, heat maps, recording user sessions, & even just giving people 5 seconds to answer a simple question about a site (“”Where’s the menu?””) are all basic parts of UX Testing.
The best way to know if your website works how you think it works is to get people to test it.

User Interaction

A user interaction is often what advertisers are interested in gaining from their adverts. What counts as an interaction can vary from advert to advert, but generally include things like clicking on an ad, pressing play/pause/mute/unmute/replay on video ads, or rolling over/clicking to expand on expanding ads. User Interaction is basically the old name for engagements in digital marketing (although engagement is actually an older term).

User Journey

User Journey means the actions a user takes and the pages a user will pass through on a site before reaching their goal. It can be used to evaluate a specific goal, ie “”Let’s improve the user journey leading to the sales page””.

7 Things To Know About User Journeys

You should make the experience of visiting your website as pleasant as possible (then people will come back).
According to UX Mentor, there are 2 user journeys to consider: 1) How people *currently* use your site to get what they want 2) How people *could* use your site to get what they want
You probably know *exactly* how your website works. Other people probably don’t. Analyse what they do in order to help them to use it better.
Homepage -> Fill in form -> Confirmation Page is (probably) a better User Journey than Homepage -> Membership -> Join Now -> Fill in form -> Confirmation Page Short is (often) sweet.
Plan the ideal User Journey when you start a project with specific steps on how a user progresses to a goal. When the project is live test to see what they actually do & adjust accordingly.
People will take many different routes to & through your website. Try to make them all good journeys to improve your conversion rate.
The Behaviour Flow report in Google Analytics or HotJar are both excellent and simple tools to start analysing the User Journey through your site.

USP

An acronym standing for Unique Selling Point. This is a concept based around how a brand/product/service etc differentiate itself from other products and is a key point in any marketing message.

UX

UX is an abbreviation for User Experience, which means how easy and pleasing it is for a person to use a website or service. However, UX is generally is used to mean User Experience testing – finding and fixing the flaws in a website in terms of how pleasing it is to use.

Value Add

Value Add refers to the actual impressions given as free to an advertiser.

VAST

VAST is the equivalent of IAB Standard Ad sizes for Video Advertising, meaning that an advertiser can make a video ad that can be shown in many places online easily. VAST stands for Video Ad Serving Template.

VCG Auction

A VCG Auction is Meta Ad’s own type of ad auction. The winning advertiser pays the amount bid by the advertiser they beat to have their ad shown. This encourages high bids (to win auctions) but saves advertisers money.

Verified Badge

A verified badge is a way that X (Twitter) identifies accounts as being owned by who says owns them. For example celebrities often have parody accounts made of them, so X (Twitter) came up with a way of publicly identifying the real celebrities account. You can start the process of verification by going here.

Vertical Unit

A Vertical Unit is an informal way of talking about any ad size which is taller than it is wide (for example a 160×600 or 300×600).

VfM

What Does VfM Mean?

If you are unable to track conversions for your ad campaign, there is a simple way to combine both CPC and CTR into one easy to use metric. We call this the Value for Money metric (or VfM) which is just CTR divided by CPC. The point of this metric is to combine CTR and CPC, so by dividing CTR by CPC you come out with one single number – for which the higher the value the better. This is because:

an increase in CTR will increase the VfM (it is the number being divided – 3 fruit split between 2 people is better than 1 fruit split between 2 people)
a decrease in CPC will increase the VfM (it is the number being divided by – 3 fruit split between 2 people is better than 3 fruit split between 5 people).

Work out the Value for Money of your campaigns with our VfM Calculator >

What Is Your VfM?

Basically whatever your VfM comes out as is the amount of CTR each dollar (or pound or whatever currency) is buying you. So if you get a VfM of 1.5 then spending $1 will mean a 1.5% CTR. This can be useful to work out where your money is best spent. Working to improve a VfM as opposed to a CTR, will mean that you get the highest click-through rate, for the lowest cost per click. In most cases, however, it does not mean that increasing your CPC will actually increase your CTR. It is a useful measurement, not a setting!

VfM Formula

VfM = CTR ÷ CPC

Advice for Ad Buyers

To optimise your campaign using this metric you simply need to run a report on all ads/keywords/sites (it can be used on any set) then divide your overall CTR by your overall CPC. Remove any results which have served less than 1,000 impressions (as that is our recommended minimum level of significance), and then switch off any ads/sites/keywords which have a VfM lower than the overall level. As you may have realised, this will allow higher CPCs to continue running – but only if they are performing at a proportionally better rate than your average. For example, an average CTR of 0.1% and CPC of £0.20 comes to a VfM of 0.5, which would allow for a CPC of £0.40 and a CTR of 0.2%. Although the CPC is double what you are paying elsewhere, it is also providing clicks at double the rate and therefore strongly implies it is the better value. Technical Information

You can add VfM as a metric to Google Ads so you can use it to directly optimise your Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, and Keywords. To do this:

Go to any view where you can see results (apart from Overview), and click the Columns button on the right-hand side above the table of results.
Click “Modify columns”:
Choose “Customised Columns” at the bottom of the list and then choose “+New Column”.
Create the VfM column (or metric depending on how you look at it). Fill in the fields as follows and it should look like the image below:
1. Name the metric (I call it VfM as it’s short and a long name will mess up your Google Ads view).
2. Add a description — this is so that you can remember why you did this, so write a note for yourself.
3. Add the formula in. Google Ads will help you as it has built-in auto-completes. So if you start typing CTR then a small dropdown will appear with CTR as a choice.
4. Change the “column format” to Percent (%). This is so that you can remember it is CTR you are affecting with your CPC.
5. Click save.
Now it’s time to add VfM to a set of custom columns. To do this:
1. Check the box next to “VfM”. This adds it to the “Your Columns” list on the right-hand side (at the bottom of the list).
2. You can drag and drop metrics into a new order in the “Your columns” list and this is the order they will appear in left-to-right on the page.
3. OPTIONAL — I highly recommend saving your column set (with a name including your initials), so you can easily find it again.

Once you’ve done all this you will be able to see VfM on any metrics page.

Top Tip

Unfortunately, this measure only implies that results with higher VfMs are better – only conversion data can make that certain. However, a higher CTR will in most cases mean better-placed ads being shown more often (it does on Google Ads), which is a good thing anyway.

Video Ads

A video ad is an ad using a video to advertise a product or service. They are generally much more successful than static ads. Video advertising has become exceptionally common and occurs not only around other videos (as pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ads) but as ads on their own. On social media, video ads are used in the same way as image ads now.

Videos embedded within ads (such as in Video MPUs) are commonplace. Video ads generally earn or cost more money than text or image ads and are often charged on a Cost Per View (CPV) basis.

Video MPU

A Video MPU is an MPU ad that contains a video in it.

Video Networks

A Video Network is a platform which delivers videos. This can also be applied to a platform which delivers video ads (many companies do both).

View-Through Metrics

View-Through

View-Through refers to seeing an ad all the way through. It originally only referred to video ads, but now display ads sometimes also have their View-Through measured (as in the number of people who saw the whole of an animated ad).

View-Through Conversion

A View-Through Conversion is another way of describing a post-impression conversion — a conversion which occurred after a user has seen an entire ad, but not clicked on it (for example, they later visited the advertiser’s website and converted).

View-Through Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who saw an ad all the way through (but didn’t click on it) and then later went to the advertiser’s website and converted.

View-Through Rate (VTR)

The percentage of people who saw an ad all the way through out of all the people who had the ad load on their computer. This metric is usually only used for video ads.

Example: If 1,000 people loaded a video ad, and 100 of them watched the whole thing, the view-through rate would be 10%.

VTR is sometimes applied to standard ads (usually when they contain animations), but this is comparatively rare.

VTR Equation

Traditionally used for video advertising, a video is considered “Viewed-Through” if a user did not skip it or close the browser window before it ended.

It has proved a paradoxical metric: if a user clicks an ad, they are taken away from the ad. Even though they go to where the advertiser wants them to, they are not counted as a View-Through. Therefore, a high CTR will necessarily mean a low VTR.

How to Use VTR

Video advertising can be lucrative, but advertisers who want a high VTR need accommodating. Adding pre-roll video ads to your videos makes sense in terms of revenue. Allowing these ads to be skippable may lower the VTR of ads, but it will also annoy your users less. Keeping users happy will, in the long run, lead to more video plays. As most advertisers pay on CPV rather than VTR, it makes more sense than forcing unskippable ads.

To give videos a good chance at being viewed through to the end, reduce clutter on video pages. The fewer other things on your video pages for a user to click on, the less likely they are to wander off mid-video.

For most video ads, VTR is a secondary metric. CTR, CPA, or ROAS are the main metrics that should be optimized for in most cases — unless you are running a brand campaign. Otherwise, VTR should only be used as supporting evidence of an ad’s success.

Brand Campaigns

VTR can be a useful metric for brand advertising. If you specifically want people to see your whole ad to increase brand value, then capturing attention with your message can be a good way to do this. However, there are problems with using VTR as a brand metric — for example, forcing unskippable ads can harm user experience.

To properly measure brand value gained from an ad, a brand uplift survey should be undertaken.

Viewability

Viewability in online advertising is the measure of whether an ad has been seen or not, and it differs between ad servers and analytics platforms.

Viewability Rate

Viewability Rate is the percentage of ads that are actually seen by a user. A viewed impression is described as being at least 50% on-screen for one second. For example, if a website has 10 ad impressions, of which five are counted as viewable, then the site will have a Viewability Rate of 50%.

This metric is important as the ad pricing model CPVM only pays out on viewable impressions. However, the definition of a “viewed impression” is still debated.

Viewability Rate Equation

“Measured ad impressions” are used in the equation (as opposed to regular ad impressions). This is because verification vendors are unable to measure 100% of impressions. Measured ad impressions are therefore always lower than total ad impressions.

Best Practices

Place ads above the fold to maximize viewability.
Vertical ad units (such as 160×600) have the highest viewability rate as they stay on-screen longer. However, they usually have lower CTR than 300×250s or 728×90s, so use them in conjunction with other ad sizes.
The optimum placement is just above the fold, not at the very top of the screen.

Different companies use different methods to measure viewability. For example, Google uses its own system called Active View. The IAB has set general guidelines, but implementation varies, especially across devices with different screen sizes.

Viewable Impressions

A Viewable Impression (or VI) is an ad impression that appears on-screen. Even though we cannot know where every user is looking, if an ad appears on-screen there was at least the opportunity for it to be seen.

The IAB defines a viewable impression as:

At least 50% on-screen for at least one continuous second (display).
On an “in-focus” tab (the browser tab actively being used).
For video: at least 50% on-screen for two consecutive seconds.

A viewable impression is considered an “Opportunity To See” (OTS), a traditional marketing metric used to measure how often a user comes into contact with a message.

Performance

Viewable impressions generally perform better than non-viewable impressions. However, a CPVM campaign is only a marginal improvement over CPM. If your goal is tangible results (clicks or conversions), you should still buy on CPC or CPA.

Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing is when content is so interesting that people share it widely for free, often on social media. It spreads like a virus — rapidly and from person to person. These ads often don’t seem like advertising at all and can start organically as images, videos, or ideas.

Examples

A well-known example was the Ice Bucket Challenge, which raised awareness (and money) for ALS. Viral videos that spread in this way are considered successful as they generate exposure without additional advertising spend.

Viral Video

A Viral Video is a video shared at a high rate between users. Video ads that go viral are especially valuable as they gain free reach.

Video Blog / Blogger

A video blog is a blog presented primarily in video format.

A video blogger is the person who creates and publishes video blogs.

Voice Search

A voice search is a search made vocally instead of through text. This can occur on voice-only devices or on any platform that supports it (such as Google).

Results from voice search are often different from traditional search as they need to be read aloud. Instead of links, the results are usually direct answers extracted from websites.

W3C

W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, the main international standards organization for the internet. Led by Tim Berners-Lee, it defines standards that ensure the long-term stability of the web.

Wait Marketing

Wait Marketing is the process of advertising to people while they are waiting. In online advertising, an example would be pre-game ads shown during loading times.

This method is considered effective as people are more receptive while waiting and looking for distractions (similar to why magazines and sweets are placed at supermarket checkouts).

Waterfall

The “Waterfall” refers to the order in which ad networks are prioritized. For example: “That network is performing well, so we should move them up in the waterfall.”

Web Accessibility

A way of judging whether a website has been developed so that people with disabilities can use it.

Web App

A Web App is a website that functions like a program, such as Netflix.

Web Design

Web Design is the process of deciding what a website looks like. The term often also covers web development (the coding side). In practice, web designers often handle both aspects.

Web Designer

A Web Designer is someone who designs websites and other online materials. While the job is focused on visual design, it often includes some development work.

Webcast

A webcast is a broadcast on the internet.

Webinar

A webinar is an online seminar. These are increasingly common in professional and educational contexts.

Webpage

An individual page on a website.

Webrooming

Webrooming is when a person researches a product online but then purchases it in a physical shop later. It is the opposite of showrooming.

WeChat

WeChat is a Chinese social media platform that also includes a payment service. It is so widely used in China that many people rely on it instead of having a traditional bank account.

Week-on-Week (WoW)

Week-on-Week (WoW) means comparing data from one week to the previous week. For example, “We had revenue growth of 2% WoW” means last week had 2% more revenue than the week before.

Comparisons can be made across any 7-day period (eg, Monday–Sunday or Sunday–Saturday). Different platforms may use different week definitions, so ensure consistency when comparing.

WoW is best for identifying short-term trends. For longer-term analysis, use Month-on-Month, Quarter-on-Quarter, or Year-on-Year instead.

How to Calculate WoW

To calculate change correctly, you must subtract 1 after dividing this week’s metric by last week’s metric. Otherwise, you are showing proportional size, not change.

Example:

This week: 2 sales. Last week: 1 sale.
2 ÷ 1 = 2 → 200%. You could say: “This week’s sales were at 200% the level of last week.”
(2 ÷ 1) – 1 = 1 → 100%. You could say: “Sales went up by 100% this week.”

The second version is standard because it is easier to understand and more conversational.

Welcome Email

A Welcome Email is the initial email sent to someone who has joined a mailing list (such as signing up for a newsletter). It often contains useful or related content and is a highly effective marketing tool, as it reaches people when they are most interested.

WhatsApp is a secure instant messenger owned by Meta (Facebook). It supports group chats, which makes it useful for communicating with many people at once. Because of this, some people even refer to it as a social network.

White Hat

In online advertising, White Hat refers to ethical practices. For example, White Hat SEO would involve improving a site’s search ranking by producing high-quality content. The term comes from old Westerns, where the “good guys” wore white hats.

Whitelist

A Whitelist is a list of approved items. In advertising and marketing, it can mean:

Ad blockers: Some ads are allowed through if deemed non-intrusive, or if advertisers pay for inclusion.
Email: Whitelisting a sender ensures their emails are never marked as spam.

Wix

Wix is an online website-building platform that allows users to create websites without needing to code.

Word of Mouth (WOM)

Word of Mouth (WOM) is when people tell each other about a product, company, or service. It is considered one of the most effective forms of marketing, as personal recommendations carry strong influence. WOM is essentially the pre-internet equivalent of viral marketing.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) for building websites. It is estimated to power around 80% of new sites.

There are two versions:

WordPress.org: Self-hosted, open-source software that you install and manage yourself.
WordPress.com: Hosted service where the infrastructure is managed for you.

Both versions share many features, but differ in ownership and flexibility. WordPress.org offers full control, while WordPress.com provides convenience and hosting support.

WTD

WTD stands for Week To Date. In analytics, it refers to filtering results by just the current week (up until the present moment).

WWW

WWW stands for World Wide Web.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get.” It refers to a design program where you see the end product as you design it, rather than needing to work directly with code.

WYSIWYG editors are common in webpage builders and email marketing tools.

X (Twitter)

What is X (Twitter)?

X (Twitter) is a social media platform that is based around conversation topics rather than connections. Anyone can post their opinion on any topic by simply using a hashtag (#) to categorise their message (eg #Cats).

Unlike other social networks, connections on X (Twitter) are essentially one way. Each user on X (Twitter) has a feed, which contains posts from accounts they ‘follow’. A X (Twitter) user writes their message and those posts go on the feeds of their ‘followers’. Any user can choose to follow another user if they find them interesting, but no reciprocal relationship is required.

Users can tweet (post) as often as they like. However, for text messages, only 280 characters are allowed at a time. This limit was increased in 2017 from the previous limit of 140 characters. Users can also post videos, polls, and images.

In general, X (Twitter) has become a high-speed opinion mill that can be used to gauge public opinion in real-time. This can be useful to see what people think of an event (such as an election or live TV show) as soon as it happens. As well as members of the public being on the platform, celebrities, politicians, and businesses also often use X (Twitter) to talk to their followers. This high-profile user base is what gives the platform such value despite being much smaller than Facebook.

Note: X (Twitter) is often referred to as a micro-blogging platform, but this is just a jargony way of saying people Tweet about themselves.

How do I get started?

Sign up for an account at x.com and choose a username. You can change your username later, but it’s best not to as that will confuse people. Therefore try to choose a username you can live with in the long term. This username can be tagged in people’s tweets by putting an @ sign in front of it.

Fill out your profile as much as possible. This is so that X (Twitter) know who to promote your tweets to. You should also add your header picture and profile picture, as profiles without these two items are not considered trustworthy.

After that, start following people you are interested in. If they say something you find interesting, retweet it, like it, or comment on it. If you have something to say — say it! It may take a bit of time for you to find your best X (Twitter) voice. This is especially true if you’re tweeting on behalf of a company. This means tweeting even when no one is listening so you can practise writing concisely and interestingly. Also — it is important that your account is active otherwise no one will follow you.

The important thing when you are just getting started is to understand that it will likely take a while (potentially years) for you to gain real traction. This means you should check in regularly, be interesting, and don’t get put off by a lack of replies to your tweets from people you don’t know in real life.

You should also add hashtags to your tweets so that others can find them. X (Twitter) will suggest popular hashtags when you start typing after a hashtag (#), so use this system to find your most relevant hashtags.

Top Tip: Don’t add hashtags to your profile if you are posting professionally. Hashtags are links to X (Twitter) category pages, and if you want someone to stay on your profile page, then adding links to other pages just like yours is not the best idea.

How do I gain followers on Twitter?

When you first start, there will be lots of accounts that follow you in the hope that you follow them back. Some of these accounts will unfollow you when you follow them back so they can increase their ‘Follow Ratio’ (see below). Some friendly accounts will also follow you, as will some odd accounts. It’s likely that your first 100 followers will be a strange collection of people you know in real life and accounts you have no idea what their interest in you is.

To increase your followers, you should tweet using appropriate hashtags. Three hashtags per tweet is probably a reasonable amount, although there is some debate over this. Using hashtags will make your tweets be seen by a wider audience than just your own followers. This means they can be very helpful to new X (Twitter) accounts.

You should also join in conversations when you can. Tagging people you are talking to or about by using the @ sign then their username helps your tweets get attention too.

While every account is different, the advice every account should follow is to be interesting. This may seem self-evident, but the prevalence of people posting images of meals they are eating demonstrates it is not always followed.

Top Tip: On social media, the most popular items a professional account can tweet are new research, white papers, stats, infographics, and video. Basically, anything that is easily digestible and new. If you post items like this, your tweets are more likely to be retweeted, which in turn will probably drive more followers.

Work out your X (Twitter) Engagement Rate with our X (Twitter) Engagement Rate Calculator >

Who can see my tweets?

Messages (known as ‘tweets’) posted to X (Twitter) can be read by anyone. This includes people without a X (Twitter) account themselves. The exception to this is for locked accounts (where only followers of an account can see their tweets). When a user locks their account, it means that they must approve people before they are allowed to follow them. There are also direct messages (known as DMs). This is essentially Twitters internal emailing platform. There are rules around who can send Direct Messages to, which essentially boil down to – you can message anyone who follows you. To send a direct message, click the envelope icon at the top of your page.

Note: DMs are ignored by the vast majority of users due to the vast amounts of spam that is sent on the platform.

You can embed X (Twitter) feeds like this on any website by simply going to publish.x.com

When and how often should I tweet?

The general wisdom is to tweet 3-5 times per day. With these tweets, you should try to ‘give’ 90% of the time, and only ‘ask’ 10%. This means you should only have one in 10 tweets be about getting people to do something (such as buy a product or sign up for a newsletter). Most people also recommend that you retweet someone else at least once per day. Retweets are essentially the currency of Twitter, so by retweeting others you are somewhat encouraging retweets of your own tweets. Retweeting your customers, or your company is generally a good idea.

The timing of your tweets is up to you really – when is your preferred audience online? If you’re tweeting for business, then perhaps 9-5 is the best time frame for you. If you’re tweeting about sports, then perhaps the weekend is best. You’ll have to do some testing to work it out for yourself. To stop yourself from going insane, you should definitely use some sort of social media scheduler. These programs (some free, some not) mean that you can set tweets to go out in the future. This can be incredibly convenient.

Top Tip: Ideally you want your social media schedule to be consistent. This helps your followers know when to expect your tweets and improves that relationship. This means that you should plan a weekly schedule of when you will tweet and stick to it. In order to be able to stick to it, you need to not be over-ambitious. It may be ideal to post 100 times per day, but unless you have (and will always have) enough time to devote to this schedule then it’s a bad plan. Make sure you can fit your social networking into your existing schedule for the long term, and you will be much more successful.

How do I know how well I’m doing?

Like most social networks, the main metric for gauging success is Engagement Rate. On tweets you have posted you can click the little chart icon in order to find out the results for that tweet.

This bar appears under your tweets. Click on the three lines for stats on that tweet.

Alternately you can go to X Analytics to find out more complete stats about your X (Twitter) account. Like all social networks, X (Twitter) counts any interaction with a post as an engagement. Therefore you should make sure to look at what engagements actually occurred. For example ‘Details expands’ are when not all of your Tweet was shown on someone’s screen, so they had to click to see the end. While it does mean that someone was interested enough to read your whole tweet, it’s not nearly as valuable as a link click. Similarly ‘likes’ are nice in that they help you understand if your tweets are interesting at all, but that is the entirety of their value.

Top Tip: Don’t be distracted by the stats X (Twitter) provides. If you are there to drive sales, and you are not driving sales then it doesn’t matter if your engagement rate is high. Focus on what is important to you.

What shouldn’t I do on Twitter?

Don’t ever forget that everyone can see your tweets, and always will be able to. Therefore you shouldn’t imagine that you have the anonymity of the internet on your side when using Twitter, even if you aren’t using your real name. You should only say things on X (Twitter) that you would say out loud in public in real life. This isn’t a call for self-censorship, only for understanding that X (Twitter) is public. If you are tweeting for professional reasons, keep your tweets on topic. Perhaps you have strong political views, but your professional account isn’t the place to air them. There is no need to generate negative feelings towards your business by expressing opinions entirely unrelated to it. Also, keep in mind that X (Twitter) is a private company and they are allowed to ban you from their services. So follow their terms and conditions if you want to be allowed to keep using it.

X (Twitter) Benchmarks

The best benchmarks are always your own past performance. However, if you are looking for some pointers, here are general X (Twitter) benchmarks.

X (Twitter) Blue

A subscription version of X (Twitter) which has extra features such as an Undo button.

X (Twitter) Circles

X (Twitter) Circles is a feature from X (Twitter) where people can build a list of ‘trusted friends’ and then create tweets that *only* that list (or ‘Flock’) can see or reply to. Similar to Instagram’s ‘close friends’ feature.

X (Twitter) Engagement Rate

X (Twitter) Engagement Rate is the number of times a tweet was loaded into someone’s feed, divided by the number of engagements that tweet received. It is a measure used to show how interesting an individual tweet is, with a higher engagement rate meaning it is more interesting. Twitter’s algorithm will use this engagement rate to work out whether to show a Tweet to more people than usual or not – as it aims to show the most interesting tweets to as many people as possible. This same engagement rate calculation can be used to work out the engagement rate of a whole X (Twitter) account – with all impressions and engagements being added up and used in the calculation.

Work out the ER of your Tweets and X (Twitter) Account with our X Engagement Rate Calculator >

X (Twitter) Engagement Rate Formula

The engagement rate equation used by X (Twitter) is:

X (Twitter) Engagement Rate = (Engagements ÷ Impressions) x 100

Average X (Twitter) Engagement Rate

According to our polling, the median X (Twitter) Engagement Rate for a page is about 1%. Here are some key takeaways:

Over 1/3rd of X (Twitter) users have an Engagement Rate of under 0.5%
Over half of Twitters users have an Engagement Rate under 1%
Almost three-quarters of X (Twitter) users report an Engagement Rate under 2%

7 Things To Know About X (Twitter) Engagement Rate

According to our polling, only 27% of X (Twitter) accounts report an engagement rate of over 2%. If you can beat that, you’re doing well.
Engagements are defined by X (Twitter) as ‘Clicks anywhere on a Tweet, inc. Retweets, replies, follows, likes, links, cards, hashtags, embedded media, username, profile photo, or Tweet expansion.’
X (Twitter) measures how interesting something is. Facebook measures how many people were interested in something. Neither measure is “”better””, but they aren’t directly comparable.
An impression is counted on X (Twitter) when a tweet loads in a feed *NOT* when someone sees it (because a feed loads many Tweets at once, and you have to scroll down to see them all).
According to our polling, the median engagement rate for a X (Twitter) account is about 1%. [48% report over 1%, 52% up to 1%]
Engagements on X (Twitter) include “”detail expands””, meaning that a high engagement rate could simply be lots of people zooming in on a Tweet before deciding they hate it!
On Twitter, Engagement Rate is calculated as total engagements divided by total impressions. This measures how interesting a tweet or X (Twitter) page is *NOT* how many people were interested

X (Twitter) Fleets

Launched in late 2020 but turned off in August 2021, Fleets were Twitter’s version of the ‘stories’ functionality seen on other social networks. Fleets were intended to be a short-term version of Tweets (for fleeting thoughts). Unfortunately, they never took off. *cough* I’ll get my coat.

X (Twitter) Media Studio

Twitter’s built-in social media management platform.

X (Twitter) Spaces

X (Twitter) Spaces is a live audio space that users can launch to talk to other people. It was tested in November 2020 with a small number of users, and then launched to the public in May 2021. X (Twitter) Spaces is Twitter’s version of Clubhouse – which is a social network that focuses solely on this live audio space functionality. This audio chat function is now included on many social networks. The idea of X (Twitter) has arguably always been to enable conversation. This is why X (Twitter) buttons on other sites often say “”Join the conversation””. This makes an audio feature seem like an especially natural extension of this social network.

How it works

The person who launches a Space is in control of it and can decide who can talk and when. X (Twitter) Spaces are public. This means that anyone can join a space including people who don’t follow you. To stop someone from joining (or to kick someone out), the creator of a space needs to block that person. A X (Twitter) Space has no set time limit. They end when the host ends them. Spaces are frequently used for small scale panel discussions. In this way, they are like talks at conferences, which makes them an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise in a subject. They have also been used widely for promotion – including for movies with discussions with the actors.

Hosts of spaces can download the audio file by requesting a download of their data (go to settings > Your Account > Download an archive of your data). You then have to look through the data files to find the audio recording. You can do this for 30 days after the space has ended.

I strongly suspect this process will be improved before long. If you are investing time in making a X (Twitter) Space, you should definitely grab the audio file and make use of it again. Turn it into a podcast and/or video, create a transcript and use it as a blog post, and pull out quotes to use on social media.

Top Tip

You should let people know before you launch a X (Twitter) Space or take part in a chat. I would recommend telling people a week before, a day before, an hour before, ten minutes before, and when it launches. A X (Twitter) Space is essentially a form of webinar for people not speaking. And as everyone knows – webinars are classically very easy to forget about!

XML Sitemap

An XML Sitemap is a file that lists all of a site’s URLs so that search engines can properly index them. While they don’t, strictly speaking, improve search rankings, they are good for SEO.

Yahoo!

One of the oldest search engines.

Yahoo! Bing Network

The Yahoo! Bing Network is an ad platform joint venture from Yahoo! and Bing. It provides a way to easily place contextual ads on your website to earn money from online advertising.

Yammer

Microsoft’s answer to X (Twitter) and Slack. It’s generally used internally on a company’s intranet for staff to communicate with each other.

Year To Date

Year To Date (YTD) means everything that has happened in this year up until today. It is usually used as a timeframe for data. For example, you could look up YTD revenue — meaning all the revenue earned this year so far.

Year-on-Year

Year-on-Year (YoY) means comparing data from a date range in one year to the same date range in the previous year. For example, “In March we had year-on-year revenue growth of 20%” means that March of this year had 20% more revenue than March of the year before.

Year-on-Year Formula

Year-on-Year Change = ((Any Metric ÷ Same Metric from the previous year) – 1) × 100

Alternative Equations

((This Year – Previous Year) ÷ Previous Year) × 100

(Any Metric ÷ Same Metric from the previous year) – 100%

Excel Shortcut

In Excel you can divide this year by last year and format the result as a percentage. Excel will convert the ratio to a percentage automatically.

Different ways to compare Year-on-Year performance

Day-shifted Year-on-Year

Weekdays and weekends often perform very differently (e.g., B2B activity is higher Monday–Friday). If your comparison period isn’t a multiple of 7 days, shift both ranges so they start on the same day of the week (e.g., first Monday in February this year vs. first Monday in February last year) and keep lengths equal.

Relative to start comparisons

For events whose dates move year to year (campaigns, sales, launches), compare “Day 1 vs. Day 1”, “Week 1 vs. Week 1”, etc. Label each day from the start date and compare like-for-like to get a fairer read.

Year-To-Date (YTD) comparisons

When comparing year vs. year while in-progress, use YTD. If today is August 6th, compare Jan 1 → Aug 6 this year vs. Jan 1 → Aug 6 last year. This keeps day counts aligned and makes trend tracking straightforward.

Calculate the YoY change in your metrics with our Year-on-Year Calculator >

Other names for Year-on-Year (synonyms)

None commonly used beyond YoY.

Yield

Yield in online advertising is a generic term meaning “the amount you got out of something.” It can refer to volume (e.g., “this website had a yield of 20,000 ads”), to money (“these ads yielded $2,000”), or to eCPM (“these ads yielded an eCPM of £4.50”).

Yield Management

Yield management refers to improving yield. It can be a full-time role (Yield Manager), and ad servers can also automate parts of it.

YMYL

Stands for “Your Money or Your Life.” It encompasses websites that give health or financial advice (or sell related products). These sites receive heightened scrutiny in Google Search due to potential harm from low-quality content.

Yoast

Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress.

YouTube

YouTube is a video network owned by Google. It runs the most VOD ads of any video network and offers easy-to-set-up video advertising. Anyone can upload videos to YouTube; they can be watched on the site or embedded elsewhere.

YouTuber

A user of YouTube acting as a creator — uploading/managing videos, creating videos, or starring in videos on the platform.

Z-Index

The Z-Index is a CSS property that defines the stacking order of elements on a webpage (their position along the z-axis). Think of a webpage as a stack of papers viewed from above — the top sheet has the highest z-index.

This matters in online advertising: if an ad has a low z-index, it may appear behind other content. Generally the highest z-index used is 999,999,999.

CSS Markup

To change z-index, add CSS such as z-index: 999999999; to a positioned element.

Example of a background div behind text:

div style=”border: dotted 2px black; background: #dddddd; z-index: -1; position: absolute; left: 40%; width: 350px; height: 50px;

Common Z-Index Uses

background = 1
background ads = 2
site content = 3
ads in content = 4
push notification box = 999,999,999.

Practical Usage

Overlays and floaters appear “above” page content by using higher z-index values. This avoids redesigning the whole page when adding transient UI (e.g., pop-ups, cookie banners, anchored video overlays).

Z-Index Example

For more details about using z-index in CSS, try the W3 Schools page

Zapier

A company offering tools that link different platforms to automate workflows (e.g., connecting Facebook Ads with an email platform to auto-send emails to leads).

Zero Click Searches

Searches on Google where the user does not leave Google-owned properties (e.g., a music video search that opens on YouTube). Tracking zero-click share over time shows Google’s shift from gateway to destination.

Zero Click Searches now account for more than half of Google searches.

Zombie Cookie

A zombie cookie is a cookie that “won’t die.” Most cookies are automatically deleted by browsers or can be deleted by users. A zombie cookie stores its data outside the user’s machine and restores itself when the user reconnects. While not universally illegal, zombie cookies are considered dodgy and a black-hat practice.

Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.

About the Author

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land is a daily publication and information site covering search engine industry news, plus SEO, PPC and search engine marketing tips, tactics and strategies. Special content features, site announcements, notices about our SMX events, and occasional sponsor messages are posted by Search Engine Land.

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Abandoned Cart Email

Above The Fold

What does Above The Fold mean?

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Other names for Above The Fold (synonyms)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Not to be confused with

Above The Line

What does Above The Line mean?

Other names for Above The Line (synonyms)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

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ACCA

Accelerated Delivery

Acceptable Ads

Should I Join Acceptable Ads?

Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing Example

Why is ABM Important?

Customized Marketing Approach

Alignment of Sales and Marketing

Shorter Sales Cycle

Higher ROI

Efficient Use of Resources

5 Key Steps to Implement ABM

Acquisition

Active Moderation

Active View

Ad Agency

What is an Ad Agency?

Other names for Ad Agency (synonyms)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

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Ad Blocker

Ad Blocking

Ad Bundle

Ad Buy

Ad Buyer

Ad Call

What does Ad Call / Ad Request mean?

What is an Ad Call?

Other names for Ad Call (synonyms)

It’s the opposite of (antonyms)

Not to be confused with

Ad Campaign

Ad Exchange

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