Performance Marketing Glossary

Google Ads formula that decides which ad shows and at what position.

Meta's quality, engagement, and conversion rankings vs competitors.

Meta's AI-driven campaign setup that automates targeting and placements.

Average revenue per transaction, total revenue ÷ number of orders.

How credit for a conversion is assigned across ad touchpoints.

Meta's off-platform placement inventory (apps and sites).

Algorithmic bid strategies that optimise toward a target CPA/ROAS.

Meta layer where budget, audience, placements and optimisation event live.

Google's rating of how complete and varied your responsive ad assets are.

Standard event that fires when a shopper adds a product to their cart.

Meta's automated ecommerce campaign type with minimal manual controls.

AI-selected audience that widens targeting beyond your original inputs.

Meta setting that lets the algorithm pick placements dynamically.

Meta's privacy-safe event system after iOS 14.5; caps you at 8 ranked events.

Controlled test isolating one variable to prove which version wins.

Budget set at ad-set level, you control exactly what each audience gets.

Mobile device ID used for cross-app tracking, restricted since iOS 14.5.

How long after a click or view Meta can still credit a conversion.

Google's hashed logged-in user match for stronger cross-device tracking.

% of users shared between two Meta audiences; high overlap wastes spend on internal bidding wars.

Meta Ads Manager 'if X then Y' triggers that pause, scale, or notify without a human in the loop.

Splitting traffic between two variants to measure which drives more conversions with statistical significance.

Drop in CTR and rise in CPM caused by the same audience seeing the same creative too many times.

Meta brand-awareness metric estimating the number of people who would remember your ad within 2 days.

Meta's AI-picked audience that expands beyond your suggestions when it finds cheaper conversions.

Google Ads audience segment built from long-term browsing interests, best for upper-funnel reach.

Google's stripped-down HTML spec for faster mobile landing pages; largely deprecated for ads in 2024.

Mobile app conversion events sent via Meta SDK, Firebase, or AppsFlyer for install and in-app tracking.

Total revenue divided by active users in a period; core SaaS and app monetization metric.

Serving different creative variants per placement (feed, story, reel) inside a single ad set.

Google Ads report showing impression share, overlap rate, and outranking share vs competitors.

Controlled test measuring incremental awareness or recall from ads.

Google keyword match type that also triggers on related queries.

Rate at which a campaign spends its budget across the day/month.

Non-skippable 6-second YouTube ad optimised for reach and recall.

Total marketing spend ÷ new customers, ignoring channel attribution.

Total revenue ÷ total ad spend across all channels; same as MER.

Minimal audience constraints, letting Meta's algorithm find buyers.

Buying-intent stage; retargeting, comparison, high-intent search.

Non-skippable 6-second video ad optimised for reach and recall.

The ROAS at which ad spend equals contribution margin; below this you lose money on every sale.

Max CPA before the customer becomes unprofitable, contribution margin ÷ 1.

Sales qualification model (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) used to score inbound B2B leads.

Comparing your CPA, CTR, or ROAS against category peers to judge whether performance is real or lucky.

Total marketing spend across all channels divided by all new customers; the CFO's true acquisition number.

Controls that prevent your ads from appearing next to harmful, inappropriate, or off-brand content.

Total marketing + sales spend divided by new customers acquired.

Budget set at campaign level; Meta distributes across ad sets.

Server-side event stream from your site/CRM to Meta or Google.

% of clicks or sessions that complete the target action.

Meta bid strategy that keeps average CPA at or below a cap.

Ad spend divided by conversions, the price of one action.

Ad spend divided by clicks, what one click into your site costs.

Spend divided by leads captured, a top-of-funnel efficiency metric.

Cost to serve 1,000 impressions, the auction's price signal.

YouTube/TikTok metric, cost per qualified video view.

When an audience has seen the same ad enough that CTR/CVR drops.

Repeatable process for launching, judging, and killing ad variants.

Clicks ÷ impressions, measures how often your ad earns a click.

Meta audience built from your customer, pixel, or engagement data.

LinkedIn message ads with clickable branching CTAs.

The auction goal (reach, leads, sales) the platform optimises toward.

Top layer of Meta's Campaign > Ad Set > Ad structure; sets the objective.

Event fired when a shopper starts payment or shipping input.

Every click on a Meta ad, including likes, comments and profile taps.

Google's consent signalling API; required in EEA for ad measurement.

Revenue minus variable cost per unit; the money left to cover fixed costs.

Meta's randomised holdout test that measures true incremental conversions.

Meta's headline efficiency metric for the ad set's chosen optimisation event.

The core structural idea of an ad (testimonial, before/after, founder rant).

A small iteration inside a concept: different hook, colour or opening cut.

Google audience built from your hashed first-party email/phone list.

Google's LCP/INP/CLS metrics scoring page speed and stability.

Meta ads that open WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram DM instead of a website; dominant in BD F-commerce.

Same as LTV; gross profit a customer generates across the full relationship.

Users with no prior brand contact; used for prospecting and top-of-funnel testing.

Google's LCP, INP, CLS page-experience metrics; affects Quality Score and organic rank.

GA4/GTM setup that preserves session identity across payment gateway and subdomain hops.

Streaming/OTT ad placements bought programmatically; YouTube, Roku, FireTV inventory.

Attributing phone leads back to the ad or keyword that produced them via dynamic phone-number swap.

Naming convention that encodes objective, funnel stage, audience, and geo into every campaign name.

Invalid clicks generated by bots, competitors, or click farms; Google auto-refunds detected fraud.

Grouping users by shared acquisition window and tracking their behavior forward month over month.

Google's framework for adjusting tag behavior based on user consent state; required in EU/UK.

Structured process for isolating hook, offer, and format variables in ad creative iteration.

Uploading hashed customer emails to Google Ads for targeting, exclusion, or lookalike modelling.

Unpublished page post used only as a paid ad, not on the timeline.

Google campaign type across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail placements.

Meta ads that auto-generate creative from your product catalog.

Google's ML model that distributes credit based on observed conversion paths.

Meta ad-set indicator: Active, Paused, Limited, Learning, Off.

Google format that generates headlines from your site's landing pages.

LinkedIn feed ads that let users read/download a PDF without leaving the site.

Software that buys programmatic display, video, and CTV inventory across ad exchanges.

Google's enterprise DSP for cross-channel programmatic buying; sits above Google Ads.

Privacy-safe environment where advertisers and platforms match audiences without sharing raw PII.

Restricting ad delivery to specific hours or days when conversion rates historically peak.

Bidding on downstream events (purchase, LTV, SQL) instead of top-of-funnel clicks or leads.

Google Ads feature that swaps the matched search term into ad copy at auction time.

Meta ads that auto-populate creative from a product catalog based on user browse/cart signals.

Interactions ÷ reach, how much of the audience actually reacted.

Meta's 0 to 10 score of how well events match to a Meta user.

Google keyword match that fires only on very close queries.

Google's hashed first-party data sent server-side to recover lost matches.

Ranked list of 8 events Meta can measure under iOS AEM constraints.

YouTube conversion credited when a user watches ≥10s of a skippable ad then converts within 3 days.

Sum of reactions, comments, shares, and saves divided by reach; core organic and LinkedIn KPI.

Average number of times a person saw your ad in a window.

Customer data you collected yourself with consent; the strongest signal.

Average revenue on a customer's first purchase; the AOV new-acquisition uses.

Spend across awareness, consideration and conversion in one coherent plan.

Assigns 100% of conversion credit to the first touchpoint in the customer journey.

Attribution model that gives 100% of conversion credit to the first ad or channel a user encountered.

Google's banner and native inventory across 2M+ partner sites.

Event-based, cross-platform analytics that replaced Universal Analytics.

Incrementality test that turns spend on/off by region to isolate impact.

Tag deployment container for firing pixels without code edits.

Restricting ad delivery to specific countries, cities, or radii; supports include and exclude lists.

Google Ads tool for keyword ideas, search volume ranges, and CPC forecasts; free with an active account.

3M+ site inventory reachable via Google Ads; cheap CPM but requires strict placement exclusions.

Split-traffic test comparing a draft campaign vs the original to measure changes with confidence.

Turning ads on/off by region to isolate true incremental lift vs organic baseline.

Unattributed direct traffic driven by social shares, messaging apps, and word-of-mouth.

Unified base tag that fires GA4, Google Ads conversions, and Floodlight without separate snippets.

% of impressions that watched the first 3 seconds of a video ad.

Through-plays ÷ 3-second plays; how well the ad keeps attention after the hook.

Randomised users kept ad-free so you can measure true lift.

Opening of a video ad that decides whether the viewer stops scrolling; the single most tested element.

Number of times your ad was rendered on a screen.

Measures the lift ads caused vs what would have happened anyway.

Apple's device ID; restricted by ATT since iOS 14.5.

Apple's App Tracking Transparency; broke cross-app deterministic tracking.

Apple's opt-in prompt that broke deterministic Meta attribution and forced CAPI + modelled conversions.

% of eligible auctions your ad actually appeared in; the true ceiling for scaling Google Ads.

Google Ads audience of users actively researching a purchase in your category right now.

Holdout study proving whether ad spend actually caused conversions vs stealing organic credit.

Framework: customers 'hire' a product to make progress on a specific job.

Broad, phrase, and exact, how Google matches keywords to queries.

Google's judgement of how useful your LP is post-click.

Native, in-platform form (LinkedIn/Meta) that pre-fills user data.

Account-based marketing using LinkedIn's company + job-title targeting.

New audience Meta/LinkedIn builds from a high-value seed list.

Total gross profit a customer generates across their relationship.

Lifetime value ÷ acquisition cost, the unit-economics gate for scaling.

Meta's ~50-event training period after ad-set launch or major edit.

Ad-set warning: not enough conversions to exit learning; scale, broaden or consolidate.

A click on a Meta ad's URL element, whether or not it opens your site.

First-party targeting from company lists, contact lists or site visits.

Sponsored video in-feed on LinkedIn, sold on impressions or views.

Assigns 100% of credit to the final ad click before conversion; GA4's legacy default.

Assigning point values to lead attributes and actions to prioritise sales follow-up.

Base tag for LinkedIn Ads conversion tracking, retargeting, and website demographics.

LinkedIn Ads audiences built from CRM upload, website retargeting, or company lists.

Total revenue ÷ total ad spend, the blended, attribution-free ROAS.

Statistical model measuring channel contribution using historical data.

Browser tag that reports events (view, add-to-cart, purchase) to Meta.

Meta tool for setting up, testing and prioritising Pixel and CAPI events.

The cost to acquire the NEXT customer, not the average across all.

Meta's ad UI for building campaigns and reading performance across FB/IG.

Consideration stage; comparison content, retargeting, lead magnets.

Google Ads strategy where you set the max click bid per keyword instead of letting ML decide.

Google auto-bid strategy that spends the daily budget for the highest possible conversion count.

Google auto-bid strategy that optimises for revenue rather than conversion count.

Sub-goal (add-to-cart, PDP view) tracked as a signal for the main conversion event.

Consideration stage; comparison content, retargeting, lead-nurture sequences.

Third-party SDK (AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch) that attributes app installs across ad networks.

Lead scored as ready for marketing follow-up but not yet handed to sales.

Model that distributes conversion credit across every touchpoint in the customer path.

Regression model that attributes revenue across channels using aggregated, cookieless data.

The allocation of budget across paid channels (Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok) tuned to funnel stage.

Total revenue ÷ total marketing spend across all channels; blended cousin of ROAS.

The point where an ad's promise, audience pain, and offer clearly click; precedes profitable scale.

Estimated conversions Google or Meta report when direct measurement is blocked by consent or ITP.

Server-side event stream that sends conversions to Meta directly, bypassing browser-side cookie loss.

Term you block so Google doesn't waste spend on irrelevant queries.

Ad spend ÷ NEW customers; strips out repeat buyers that inflate CPA.

YouTube ad up to 15s viewers cannot skip, sold on impressions.

First-time buyers excluding repeat purchases; the acquisition metric Meta ASC+ optimises for.

Single number that best captures the value your product delivers; the growth team optimises for it.

Feeding CRM/sales data back to ad platforms to optimise on real outcomes.

The single action Meta's algorithm is asked to maximise inside an ad set.

Uploading closed-won or in-store sales back to Google/Meta to train bidding on true revenue.

Google's cross-inventory campaign driven by asset feeds and audience signals.

Google match that fires on queries containing the keyword's meaning.

Months a new customer takes to earn back their CAC in contribution margin.

Standard event: a shopper viewed a product detail page.

Where the ad appears: Feed, Reels, Stories, Search, Audience Network, etc.

The transaction event; the primary optimisation target for ecommerce.

Individual product page on an ecommerce site; the primary landing target for shopping ads.

'How did you hear about us?' checkout question; the cheapest zero-party attribution signal.

GA4 audience built from ML predictions (likely 7-day purchasers, likely churners).

Revenue reported with the Meta/Google purchase event; drives ROAS and value-based bidding.

Browser pixel is client-side and blocked by ITP; CAPI is server-side and survives cookie loss.

Google's 1 to 10 rating of expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page.

Meta diagnostic: your ad's perceived quality vs ads competing for the same audience.

Number of unique users who saw your ad at least once.

Serving ads to users who already visited your site or engaged.

% of customers still active after a given time window.

Revenue attributed to ads ÷ ad spend, the fastest efficiency read.

Net profit from an investment as a % of the amount invested.

Google format where 15 headlines + 4 descriptions are mixed by ML.

Google Ads forecasting tool for YouTube reach, frequency, and CPM by geo and budget.

Group of customers acquired in the same window, tracked forward month by month.

LinkedIn's premium tool for prospecting, lists, and outreach.

Source list (customers, leads) used to build lookalikes.

Running Tag Manager on your own server to improve match + control.

% of impressions your brand owns vs total category impressions.

LinkedIn ads delivered as personal messages from a sender.

LinkedIn's feed-based native ad, single image, video, carousel, document.

Google's non-Google search inventory; cheaper clicks, weaker intent.

Google's ML bid strategies (tCPA, tROAS, Max Conv, Max Value).

One of Meta's pre-defined events (Purchase, Lead, ViewContent, etc.).

Enough data to say a result is real, not random noise; usually 95% confidence or higher.

TikTok ad format that promotes an existing organic post from any creator.

MQL that sales has accepted after qualification; the handoff moment in B2B pipeline.

Days from first touch to closed-won; the B2B metric that sets how long LinkedIn attribution windows must be.

Google Ads Smart Bidding setting that flags a temporary CVR spike so bids don't over-correct.

Your branded search volume ÷ total category branded search; a leading indicator of market share.

Drop in trackable conversions caused by ATT, ITP, cookie blocking, and consent refusals.

Apple's privacy-safe attribution framework for iOS app install ads; replaces IDFA-based tracking.

Lower-intent event (newsletter signup, PDP view) used as an optimisation signal upstream of purchase.

Format choice; static wins on cost and iteration speed, video wins on retention and story.

Lead that sales has accepted as ready to work; the primary B2B optimisation goal beyond MQL.

Google auto-bid strategy that targets a specific cost per conversion.

% of impressions that stopped scrolling long enough to register the ad.

Google auto-bid strategy that targets a specific return on ad spend.

LinkedIn ads promoting a person's post from your company page.

Browser tag that reports events from your site back to TikTok Ads.

TikTok's suite of AI creative tools for scripts, avatars and voice.

TikTok bid strategy that optimises for revenue value, not just conversions.

Awareness stage; broad reach, educational content, cold prospecting.

Conversions that would NOT have happened without the ad exposure.

Total revenue opportunity if you captured 100% of demand for your category.

Cookie set by a domain other than the one being visited; being deprecated in Chrome and Safari.

URL tags that pass source/medium/campaign into your analytics.

Lo-fi, creator-style ad that looks like a real person, not a brand spot.

Creative shot by real customers or creators; typically outperforms studio ads on cold Meta traffic.

% of impressions that resulted in a qualified video view.

Conversion from a user who saw but didn't click an ad.

Google Ads strategy that optimises for conversion value, not conversion count.

% of impressions that met MRC's 'in-view' criteria (50% pixels on-screen for 1s+).

Users who already know your brand, site visitors, email list, engagers.

Running an ad from a creator's handle with their permission for better trust.

Ad platform (Meta, Google, LinkedIn) that owns audience data end-to-end and blocks external measurement.

Skippable in-stream ad, you only pay when someone watches ≥ 30s.

Info a customer intentionally gives you (quiz, preference centre); the cleanest signal.