Dictionary
Learn more about the different online marketing and advertising terms
Online marketing and advertising terms
Conversion
Conversion happens when a prospective customer takes the marketer's intended action (like create an account of buy something)
CPA (Cost Per Action)
Cost Per Action or CPA is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement. The CPA itself is the maximum price the advertiser is ready to pay for a specified action.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
Cost per click or CPC is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.
CPM (Cost Per Thousand)
CPM is frequently used in advertising to represent cost per thousand (where M is the roman numeral of 1000 and also the word 'mille' that means thousand in french). When used in online advertising it relates to the cost per thousand page impressions.
CTR (Clickthrough Rate)
Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.
Google AdSense
AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and more recently, video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis.
Google AdWords
AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
Hit
A hit means a page view. When someone visits your website and visit different pages he does a hit for every page.
Internet marketing
Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products, or, services over the Internet.
Landing page
In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link.
Link building
Link building is the process of creating external links on different websites, all of them pointing to a single website. For search engines, the more links you have to your website, the more important is your website.
Microsoft AdCenter
Microsoft AdCenter (formerly MSN adCenter), is the division of the Microsoft Network (MSN) responsible for MSN's advertising services. Microsoft adCenter provides pay per click advertisements.
One-Way linking
One-way link is a term used among webmasters for link building methods. It is a hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes "one-way" in direction. It is suspected by many industry consultants that this type of link would be considered more natural in the eyes of search engines.
Organic search
Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being adverts. In contrast, non-organic search results may include pay per click advertising.
PPC (Pay-Per Click)
Pay per click or PPC is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.
PPA (Pay-Per Action)
Pay per click or PPC is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.
Reciprocal link
A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob's website links to Alice's website, and Alice's website links to Bob's website, the websites are reciprocally linked.
ROI (Return On Investment)
Return on investment or ROI is the ratio of money gained or lost (whether realized or unrealized) on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. The amount of money gained or lost may be referred to as interest, profit/loss, gain/loss, or net income/loss. The money invested may be referred to as the asset, capital, principal, or the cost basis of the investment. ROI is usually expressed as a percentage rather than a fraction.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Search engine marketing or SEM is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.
SERP (Search Engine Result Page)
A search engine results page or SERP, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.
Sitemap
A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.
Unique visitor
A unique visitor is a statistic describing a unit of traffic to a Web site, counting each visitor only once in the time frame of the report. This statistic is relevant to site publishers and advertisers as a measure of a site's true audience size, equivalent to the term "Reach" used in other media.
Yahoo! Search marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.