A
Ad Servers
Isn’t it nice to have someone who does the job for you? Yes, it is, and that’s why ad servers exist! Ad servers are automated servers that help you request, bid on, and place your ads on websites, as well as monitor the progress of each campaign. For advertisers handling billions of data per day, ad servers make it easy to select the ads with the most potential and place them on appropriate websites.
API (Application Program Interface)
An API is a way of getting specific information from other applications or websites, which you can use for a variety of different needs. It is similar to a set of tools used for building a software application. The better the tools, the easier it is to make a good product. In the case of an API, the better the API, the easier it is to develop a program.
B
Bounce Rate
It often happens that you click on a random link and you end up on a website that you are not interested in anyway. Even though you immediately leave that website, your visit still counts in website analytics. Congratulations, you have just contributed to the bounce rate of that website! In other words, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that have landed on your website but have not stayed long enough or clicked on other pages.
C
Cloud Computing
If you do not have space or resources to build your computing infrastructure, then cloud computing is for you! It allows its users to store, manage, and transfer data using host servers. There are several types of clouds with different purposes and benefits.
CMP (Cloud Management Platform)
CMP is a group of products that can be used to manage and monitor cloud computing resources either in private, public, or multi-cloud models.
Cookie
As much as we wish this was a real sweet treat in the internet terminology, a cookie is a unique value stored on your browser (in the form of a small file cookie.txt) assigned by websites you visit. The purpose of a cookie is to keep track of where the user is and help create customized web pages or save login info.
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
In advertising, CPA (short for ‘Cost Per Acquisition’ or ‘Cost Per Action’) measures the cost that you are willing to pay to get a goal conversion. It is similar to CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Mile).
CPM (Cost Per Mille) / CPT (Cost Per Thousand)
When your ad loads and displays for a user, it counts as one impression. Cost Per Mille (CPM), also called Cost Per Thousand (CPT), is used for a thousand impressions on one website. It is similar to CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPA (Cost Per Action).
CR (Conversion Rate)
The percentage rate gathering the online audiences that followed and completed the campaign action that you wanted. (e.g: signing up to your service or mailing list or buying your product). A good CR means that your marketing game is strong! Find out how to optimize CR from Moz.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
CRO is short for Conversion Rate Optimization. If your conversion rate is not impressive, then it is time to take action and employ conversion rate optimization methods. Because good CR is synonymous with a high number of conversions that in turn, reflect a good website and SoMe performance. CRO consists of numerous techniques, and testing methods – check out this illustrative CRO guide to dive into some of them.
CTA (Call To Action)
When it comes to online advertising, a good choice of words and a persuasive CTA are essential. A CTA is a message that appeals to potential customers, and it is often the last push to drive a specific action such as buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.
CTR (Click-Through-Rate)
Have you ever wondered about how many people see your ads and how many click them? A CTR shows you that. CTR is simply the percentage of people that saw your ad and felt compelled enough to click it. You can count your CTR score as follows by dividing the total number of Clicks to the total number of Impressions.
D
DoubleClick
DoubleClick is a subsidiary of Google that develops and provides Internet ad serving services. Its clients include agencies, marketers, and publishers who serve businesses such as Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Apple, Visa, Nike, Carlsberg, and many others. At the beginning of 2018, Google announced the merge of DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360 Suite into a new Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager.
F
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
FTP or File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol standardized to make transferring of computer files between a client and a server easier.
G
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is an online advertising service made by Google where customers can create and manage ads within the Google universe (on Google Search, Display, YouTube, etc.). If you want to advertise your service or product through AdWords, check out this handy guide from Neil Patel.
Google Analytics
Even if you are entirely new to the digital marketing world, you have most likely heard about Google Analytics already. This analytics service is provided by Google, and it helps you track, analyze, and measure all types of revenues and costs of your website, advertising campaigns, videos, social channels, etc.
P
Page Views
Page Views represent all the visitors to your website. Each reloads of the webpage by the same visitor counts as a new page view.
Q
QR Code
A QR Code or Quick Response Code is a scannable barcode used to encode data such as text or an URL.
R
ROAS (Return On Advertisement Spending)
After you start using AdWords, you want to see if your advertising is making an impact. This is when you check your ROAS – a calculation of the results (purchases, downloads, page views, etc.) divided by the budget spent on advertising. Contrary to ROI (Return On Investment), ROAS is only operating with the money spent on advertising, cutting down all the other costs in the investment (marketers’ salaries, etc.).
ROI (Return On Investment)
When you put your money and effort into something, you probably want to know what results in it’s driving. ROI measures the performance and the efficiency of your investment compared with other investments. ROI is calculated by dividing total revenue by the total cost of investments. In digital marketing, ROI is often substituted for ROAS.
RPC (Revenue Per Click)
You can calculate your RPC like this: Goal Value x Conversion Rate. Voilà, now you know whether your ad (or keyword) is profitable or not!
S
SaaS (Software as a Service)
Google, Dropbox, Salesforce, MailChimp, Shopify – what do they have in common? They are all providing systems as a service. That means that they provide a third-party software solution that hosts a platform for the application and software and makes them readily available to their clients. It is beneficial for companies in the sense that they don’t have to invest in new hardware and software, they can use a third-party solution by paying a subscription fee.
SAINT (Site Catalyst Attribute Import Naming Tool)
Classifications (SAINT) are one of the enduring features of Site Catalyst (Adobe Analytics). In general, classifications (both utm_id and SAINT) are making marketers’ lives easier. SAINT allows users (advertisers) to upload customized metadata within the Site Catalyst, analyze, and process them. By classifying the data, you are attributing them specific characteristics and creating a relationship between a variable (campaign’s source, medium, keyword, etc.) and all the metadata related to it. In other words, the campaign link that is classified can be used to measure all the variables through one link because the analytical tool (Site Catalyst) recognizes the classification and knows what is going on. Without classification, you have to create specific campaign links to measure all the variables separately and manually, which takes time and energy.
SEA (Search Engine Advertising)
Are you longing for that top result in most search engines? You can improve your SEO by paying for it. SEA means that you are buying the top spots on a search engine’s result page. However, your link will have the little “Ad” button or other indication that it is a paid link.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Have you noticed the little yellow boxes that say “ad” next to the top links in a search query? What’s search engine marketing! Because most users select the first options that are shown in search results, businesses pay to get their website linked at the top hoping that people will click their link. This is done through AdWords for Google search results. Other search engines (Bing, Yahoo, etc.) have similar tools.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Do you want to increase organic growth and visibility on the internet? Then you have to polish your SEO game. Through technical (e.g., a correctly structured website that a search engine understands) and creative (using the right keywords, optimized headlines, etc.) aspects, well-made SEO improves your chances of appearing among the first results in a search query on Google or other search engines.
Site Catalyst
Formerly known as Omniture, Site Catalyst is an analytical tool that has been part of the Adobe platform since 2009. It allows marketers to measure and analyze data from multiple marketing channels.
U
UV (Unique Visitor)
Unique Visitor stands for a visitor that returns to your website repeatedly in a set period. Contrary to Page View, UV is tied to one visitor, so even if they visit a website ten times (which results in ten-page views), the UV still counts as one.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
URLs are what we use in the address bar of our browser to tell our browser where to get the information we want (like a specific website). URLs most commonly appear in the form of HTTP or HTTPS protocols, for example, ‘https://accutics.com/’
UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are simply tags that you add to a URL. When someone clicks on a URL with UTM parameters, those tags are sent back to your Google Analytics for tracking purposes. The most common parameters are medium, source, campaign, term, content. However, parameters are versatile and can be customized according to what you want to track. The biggest disadvantage of UTM parameters is the sensitivity towards an ununified system of definition (aka marketers using their terms, lower- and upper-case letters, special symbols, etc.) that might cause data fragmentation.
utm_id
A utm_id is a classification campaign code used for Google Analytics. Classifications make the lives of marketers easier, as it enables them to track their campaign URLs in their analytics platforms.
