Sometimes it's hard to remember that we work in an industry full of jargon. Remember back to the days when you first in this industry and how you had no idea what the hell everyone was talking about.
The Digital Marketing Glossary
For you, dear reader, I am going to list a whole bunch of acronyms and terms into a list. Hopefully this is useful for your new team members or clients. My ambition is to let you avoid the pain I went through during my early years in trying to decipher meaning from the jargon.
A
- Account - in media, refers to a client currently on your books.
- Account - in software, refers to login details to allow features to be used. For example, to purchase on Amazon, you must create an account so the website can identify you and allow purchases.
- Agency - a company that is outsourced to do a business function on your behalf. For example, recruitment agency, public relations agency or media agency, etc.
- Agency-Side - refers to people who work for an agency that services many clients. An agency can be for recruitment, advertising, marketing, creative, development, search, public relations, and more.
- Analytics - someone might refer to this as Clickstream reporting. For example, Google Analytics, CoreMetrics, SiteCatalyst, Webstrend, etc.
- Analytics - some may refer to this as a media analytics team that investigates the efficiency and performance of your media buys such as detecting recall, response curves and diminising return.
- ASAP - As Soon As Possible. In agency life, everything is ASAP so clarify with the person who requested to find whether it's more ASAP than the other ten ASAPs you've got.
- Anchor Text -the text contained within a link to another website. This traditionally was a large focus in SEO, however changes to the ranking algorithym such as Panda and Penguin have rendered this technique less effective.
B
- BARB - provides broadcast viewership statistics for the UK market to advertising agencies. http://www.barb.co.uk
- BAU - Business As Usual. Example "the PA shagged the boss but it's BAU".
- Below the fold - when you load a webpage, anything shown below the screen that forces you to scroll down to view is called below the fold.
- Bar tab - something you want to find at the pub. Keep a keen ear to overhear the drunk account director shouting their bar tab number at the bar.
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| Bar tabs can get out of hand. |
- Backlinks - the number of times websites link to your website.
C
- CFO - Chief Financial Officer. The person ultimately accountable for the profit/loss of your company. Make sure they are in a good mood before submitting any expenses for approval.
- COD - Cash on Delivery. Order something remotely and then pay for it upon arrival. Kind of like a pizza delivery.
- COB - Close of Business. Example: "I need this report before CoB today". CoB completely depends on when your office hours close but typically 5:30pm. Keep in mind that CoB on Friday is unofficially 12pm.
- Content Gap - a search marketing issue when a website is not achieving the full search traffic potential due to a lack of content quantity either in terms of word count or missing content topics. If a website does not cover certain content topics, then search engines are unlikely to show your website in result pages unless you want to pay high CPCs for paid search.
- Content Marketing - a term that gained popularity during 2012. It refers to the practice of creating online content for the purpose of gaining online engagements from your target audience. These engagement may be soft in the form of pageviews, social interactions or hard such as quotes, leads and sales. The benefit of soft engagements is that they can in some instances provide feedback signals to search engines for organic search rankings (SEO).
- CRO - Conversion Rate Optimisation. The method of improving the usability of a website to increase the probability of making users take a preferred action such as purchasing.
- CPA - Cost Per Aquisition. A digital buying method where an advertiser pays based on how many aquisitions are made. An acquisition could be a sale or a users creating an account or requesting a quote.
- CPL - Cost Per Lead. A digital method of buying where an advertiser pays based on the number of leads generated from the advertisement. A lead may be users submitting a contact form or requesting a quote.
- CPL - Cost Per Like. A method of buying on social media where an advertiser pays for the number of "likes" generated on Facebook.
- CPE - Cost Per Engagement. A popular buying and reporting method for social media campaigns or rich media ads such as pop-in videos. An engagement can be any click such as like, play, pause, share, comment or rating.
- CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions. A popular buying method when purchasing banner display ads.
- CPC - Cost Per Click. The most popular buying method for pais search when an advertiser pays for the number of times users click on a paid search result.
- CPV - Cost Per View. A digital buying method where the advertiser pays for the number of times a video is viewed.
- Content Marketing - the latest SEO buzzword that comines Public Relations, Social Media, User Needs and Trend analysis to produce content that generates social buzz and resulting SEO benefits for your website.
- CLM - Career Limiting Move. For example, dressing in a stripper outfit and spraying whipped cream on your head of department.
- Client-Side - refers to the clients of agencies. People who work for a company that is the end provider of products and services to consumers.
- Christmas Party - for the love of god, do not take pictures or video. Appearing late to work next day gets bonus points. Extra points for arrests or complete absenteeism.
- Community Management - the arm of social media that deals with User Generated Content and makes sure nothing naughty is being written by users that cause controversy or break brand guidelines. They can be found anywhere, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs and Comment sections on articles.
D
- Deadline - a date when a task or deliverable needs to be finished by.
- Deck - a powerpoint presentation. This terminology comes from referring to a presentation like a deck of cards. Note that its not called a "presentation" because it's quite common to send a client a deck over email without presenting it in person.
- Display - the industry name for what you and I call banner ads.
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| Example of a banner advert from Ford |
- DSP - Demand Side Platform. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_platform
E
- EOP - End of Play. Also see COB.
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| There's always a special feeling when the job is done. |
- Executive - confusingly refers to both the most junior position (i.e Exec) on the team or the Senior Executives that sit at the top. Depends on the company.
- Expenses - any debt that is applied to an account or campaign. Also uses to refer to personal expenses that need to be reimbursed by an employer. Typically includes travel, food, taxis and client entertainment.
F
- Friday - traditionally the home of hangovers in media agencies and also the infamous friday lunches that can range from 1 to 36 hours in length.
G
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H
- Hitwise - a tool that uses purchases internet usage statistics from a small number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give advertisers insights into wider internet use within a particular market or industry.
- Hierarchy - One of the many practices of Information Architecture where information for a website is assigned to a page and the relationship between those pages are created to result in an intuitive system for the user. For example, the homepage typically hyperlinks to the main category sections of the website and each of those sections contain more specific information representing that category. Homepage > Footwear > Boots > Leather > R.M Williams, etc
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| Example of a site hierarchy designed as part of a larger I.A. project. |
I
- Impressions - the number of times an element such as an advertising banner was displayed on a webpage. Depending on the reporting tool, it will also count impressions of things not actually shown on the visible page. For example if a banner ad was displayed below the fold.
- I.A. - Information Architecture. The practice of designing a website (or other system) to make information the most accessable as possible for intended users either by browsing, searching or asking. I.A. overlaps with many other disciplines such as interface design, website hierarchy, usability, interaction design and many others.
- ISP - Internet Service Provider. The people who give you your internet, E.g. AOL, BT, Bigpond, etc.
J
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K
- Kenshoo - a bid management tool that assists in the automated bidding and optimisation of paid search campaigns via Google, Bing and others.
- KWM - Keyword Mapping. The method of assigning a small set of keywords and phrases to each URL on a website to help emphasise a topic to search engines for each page. This also minimised SEO issues such as page cannibalisation and keyword dilution.
- KWP - Keyword Position. An SEO term referring to the position a website was found in the SERP for organic results.
L
- Linkbait - pieces of highly engaging or controversial content to gain links from other websites and social media.
M
- Marin - a bid management tool that assists in the automated bidding and optimisation of paid search campaigns via Google, Bing and others. Official website.
- MBA - Media Buying Agreement
- MBA - Masters of Business Administration
- MoM - Month on Month. When a statistic is compared for a particular month against the prior month.
- Mid-Roll - a type of InStream video advertisement that interrupts your video content in a similar way to traditional TV advertisements. These will typically only be shown in longer online videos over 10min in length. YouTube Description.
N
- Newswires - refers to the news supplied by a news agency to publishers. Example of newswires are the Press Association, Thomas Reuters and United Press International. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency
O
- OBA - Online Behavioural Advertising. The technical ability for an online advertising software to target users with ads based on their online behaviours. a user's online actions can be monitored and then assigned a profile when a certain set of criteria are met. Once a user has been "profiled" they then become eligible to be served ads looking for a certain target audience.
P
- PageViews - the number of times a page was viewed on a website. Some website tracking software such as Google Analytics will only count a maximum of one page view per Visit or Session. This stops people from continuously refreshing the page to inflate your figures.
- PA - Personal Assistant. Generally the best people in the agency, but don't get on their bad side.
- PCR - Post-Campaign Report (A.K.A Post-Campaign Review). A report or review of all activity-to-date on a campaign or project from an agency to a client. This is where you sum up in one report whether the investment was ultimately justified and should set the mood on whether you'll be chosen again to work with the client again.
- PO - Purchase Order. A financially binding document from a purchaser that informs a service provider that they are committed to buy a product/service over a period of time.
- PoY - Period on Year - a specified date range compared to the same date range from the prior year. For example comparing the dates of a Christmas promotion that occurs on the same week every year. Note that PoY may use dates or the day to determine the period. For example, Easter Sunday can vary year to year depending on what days fall on certain dates.
- PPC - Pay Per Click. A buying method where the advertiser pays for each click on an advertisement. This is most common on paid search and is sometimes what some people refer to as paid search.
- Publisher - what an agency refers to as someone who displays your advertising content. Traditionally this referred to print such as newspapers and magazines, but currently also includes online such as Yahoo!
- Pre-Roll - a type of InStream video advertisement that appears before a online video. This was traditionally on publisher websites but has also recently been added to YouTube. YouTube Description.
Q
- QS - Quality Score. A number our of 10 describing how well a Paid Search advert is performing on Google AdWords. 10 is the best, 1 is the worst. AdWords Help.
- QBR - Quarterly Business Review. A informal or formal meeting with a client to dicuss the activities and results of the previous quarter and to dicuss plans for the upcomming quarter.
R
- RFP - Request for Proposal. When a client sends a service provider a request to propose a response according to a brief.
- RFI - Request for Information. Typically used when a company needs information to create a contract. Includes their company details such as business numbers, insurance details and professional references.
- RFT - Request for Tender. Similar to an RFP, but a tender is for a product already defined. For example, a developer wishing to build an airport will already have the plans specified and just needs to know who can build to plan at the lowest cost.
- ROI - Return on Investment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment
- ROAS - Return on Advertising Spend. The amount of profit gained from either your overall investment spend or advertiding spend on a particular channel/medium.
- RPC - Revenue Per Click.
S
- SERP - Search Engine Results Page. Go and do a search on Google, Bing, etc and the results you see are what those in the industry refer to as the SERP. Normal people just call them the search results.
- Schedule - Shows a list of activities or tasks on a timeline. Will typically include costs for the client to review, however the word "Schedule" technically means that resource (i.e. you or some material resource such as a laptop, etc) has been assigned. Things are never this thoroughly planned in the real world.
T
- Time on site - the average amount of time users stay on your site within one "visit" or "session".
- Taxi - the source of much anguish and occasional entertainment to and from client meetings.
- TruView - What Google calls pre-roll ads on YouTube.
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| TruView on YouTube. |
U
- UB - Unique Browsers. The number of unique browers that have viewed a website. Typically requested from publishers to see show popular their web properties are and there what type of advertising rates they can charge to advertisers.
- UV - Unique Views. The number of unique people who have viewed an online asset, typically used in video reports.
- Users - the name given to people using your website.
- UAT - User Acceptance Testing. A set of tests performed on a product or service with sample users before it is released into the market. For example, a UAT test for an eCommerce site may be for a user to register their credit card within 4 minutes with zero errors.
- Ux - User Experience. A general term used to describe whether users are having a good or bad experience when using a designed product or service.
- UxD - User Experience Design. The method of adhering to design principles that ensure humans can interact with inanimate objects to achieve an intended goal. For example, hazardous material sign give the impression of danger without using language? Can a mobile app be navigated intuitively?
V
- Views - typically used when explaining the amount of views a video has recieved. Services such as YouTube are secretive about defining the criteria of when a video is actually counted as being viewed or not.
- Visits - the number of times a user can come to your site. This is different to PageViews as the user is only counted once within that period of time or Session. For example, if I visited the website at 10am and viewed 20 pages over an hour period, i would still only count as one visit. After 30mins of inactivity, the software would declare my visit finished. If I came back at 12pm, that would count as my second visit.
- Visitor - this refers to the unique number of users (i.e. browsers) that have viewed my website. If someone visited my website 10 times in one day, each with at least 30 minutes of space between, it would still be counted as one Visitor. Software such as Google Analytics will remember your computer for up to 2 years.
- Visual Vocabulary - A personal favorite model of mine from internet veteran, Jesse James Garrett. If you're responsible for I.A. design then you must read this.
W
- WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get. The text input boxes you see in many CMS such as wordpress that let you enter text and format with fonts and paragraphs. Press the publish buttons and it looks the same on the website, hence the acronym.
- Website Heirarchy - see Heirarchy.
X
- Xerox - some old skool colleagues may use this word when referring to photocopying.
Y
- YTD - Year To Date.
- YoY - Year on Year. When a statistic for a particular year is compared to
- Yandex - a search engine popular in Russia. http://www.yandex.ru
Z
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