Web Marketing/Advertising Terminology
and Definitions

As a follow up to last weeks article where I discussed the use of jargon in web marketing and online promotion, I contemplated further just how confusing Internet advertising terminology can be to the uninitiated. Each day, new buzz words and terms in connection with online advertising are created. Some of these terms are for the sake of accurately defining a process, others are just plain pretentious and invented by companies that feel the term gives inflated importance to simple concepts.

Jargon is unavoidable within any industry between industry counterparts, so I hope that you find the following web marketing/advertising terminology definitions of some value. It's especially important when dealing with people whose language gives the impression that they actually know what they are talking about that you aren't left feeling totally bamboozled!

Above the fold

The part of a web page that is visible without any scrolling. This is prime advertising space.

Branding
The process by which a business employs marketing strategies to get people to easily remember their products and services over a competitors.

COA - Cost Of Acquisition
What it costs you to gain a sale or subscriber. If you spend $100 on advertising and gain 10 sales, then your cost of acquisition is $10 per sale.

Conversion rate
The percentage of people who take a desired action, usually involving a sale

CPM - Cost Per Thousand
This is the way that banners, pop ups and pop under ads are often sold. Why the "M"? M is the Roman numbers equivalent of "one thousand".

CTR - Click Through Rate or Ratio
A calculation based on impressions vs. clicks. If one thousand banners are displayed and from these displays, 10 people click on the banner, the CTR would be 1%

CPA - Cost Per Action
Advertiser payment based on site visitors executing a desired response e.g. subscription, survey completed, download or sale.

CPC - Cost Per Click
What it costs to have individual visitors sent to your site. In a CPM model example, if you pay $5 for 1000 impressions and an average of 10 people click through for each 1000 impression, then your CPC would be $5 per visitor under that campaign.

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