Buzzword Bank: The Marketing Glossary That Makes Sense

Definition:
CPM stands for “Cost per Mille,” or cost per 1,000 ad impressions. It’s a common metric used in display advertising, social media, and programmatic campaigns to measure how much you pay to have your ad shown a thousand times — regardless of clicks or engagement. You can calculate your CPM with this handy tool.

Example:
If your CPM is $4.00, you’re paying $4 every time your ad is served 1,000 times.

Used In:
Google Ads, Meta Ads, YouTube, LinkedIn Ads, programmatic DSPs.

Definition:
A campaign is the top-level structure in advertising platforms like Google Ads or Meta Ads. It houses one or more ad groups that share a common objective, such as increasing website traffic, driving conversions, or building brand awareness. Campaigns help organize your strategy by audience, goal, geography, product line, or service category.

Example:
A retail brand may have separate campaigns for “Holiday Sales,” “Evergreen Products,” and “Retargeting.”

Definition:
A click is recorded each time a user interacts with your ad by selecting it, often leading to your website or landing page. Clicks are the foundation of performance metrics like CTR (Click-Through Rate), CPC (Cost Per Click), and conversions.

Why it Matters:
More clicks typically mean more engagement, but quality matters more than quantity.

Used in:
Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, Bing Ads, and nearly all paid channels.

Definition:
Display advertising uses visuals — banners, images, animations, or video — to promote a product or service across websites, apps, and networks. Unlike search ads, display ads focus on visibility and awareness, often purchased through real-time bidding (RTB).

Buzzword Level:
🔥🔥🔥 High reach, low click-through, and infinite potential to remind people they looked at those shoes once.

Channels:
Google Display Network, AdRoll, Meta Audience Network, YouTube, Amazon DSP, and more.

Common Goal:
Increase brand visibility, support retargeting, or drive top-of-funnel interest.

Definition:
A Demand Side Platform is a tech platform that automates the buying of digital ad inventory across thousands of websites and apps. DSPs allow advertisers to bid on ad placements in real time, using data like demographics, behavior, and location to determine ad relevance.

Why it Matters:
DSPs streamline ad buying across multiple exchanges, enabling better targeting, scalability, and ROI tracking.

Example:
A marketer uses a DSP to target 25-45-year-old homeowners in North Carolina with a retargeting ad across news and weather sites.

Definition:
This is the average amount of time users spend on your site during a session. It includes all the time across pages visited and helps measure content engagement.

Formula:
Total duration of all sessions / number of sessions

Caution:
This number may be skewed if users bounce.

Definition:
Bounce Rate measures the percentage of visitors who land on a webpage and leave without taking any further action. No clicking, scrolling, or navigating. It indicates how well your content matches user intent.

If This Term Was a Person:
That one friend who walks into the party, takes a look around, and exits in 30 seconds.

Important Note:
In GA4, this metric is de-emphasized in favor of Engagement Rate, which offers a more nuanced view.

Example:
A blog post with a 90% bounce rate may be normal: an ecommerce homepage with a 90% bounce rate may signal a problem.

Definition:
A conversion occurs when a visitor completes a desired action — like submitting a form, signing up for a newsletter, downloading content, or making a purchase. It’s the moment marketing effort becomes measurable business value.

Types:
Micro (e.g. newsletter sign-up), Macro (e.g. purchase)

Platforms Tracked:
Google Ads, Meta Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot, and more.

Definition:
Conversion Rate is the percentage of total visitors who complete a goal, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. It’s calcualted by: Conversion Rate = (Conversions / Total Visitors) x 100

Why it Matters:
It is one of the clearest indicators of how effective your marketing funnel is.

Why it Matters IRL:
Imagine 100 people walk into your donut shop. Only 3 buy donuts. The rest just sniff the air and leave. Your conversion rate is 3%, and your store smells amazing, but makes no money.

Benchmark:
Varies by industry — average ecommerce rate is 2-3%.

Definition:
Frequency is the average number of times an individual sees your ad over a specific period. High frequency can reinforce brand recognition — or lead to ad fatigue if overdone.

Why it Matters:
A frequency of 2–3 is often effective. Anything above 7–9 may reduce performance.

Used In:
Meta Ads, Programmatic, YouTube, LinkedIn, CTV

Definition:
An impression occurs every time an ad or piece of content is loaded and visible on a page. Impressions are a foundational metric in digital advertising.

Why it Matters:
High impressions with low clicks = visibility but weak engagement; low impressions = poor reach or targeting.

Definition:
Impression Share is the percentage of total eligible impressions your ad actually received. It reveals how competitive your ads are in the auction and how visible they are to your audience.

Formula:
Impression Share = Impressions / Total Eligible Impressions

Used To:
Identify Budget constraints, low ad rank, or poor targeting

Definition:
A pageview is recorded each time a webpage is loaded or reloaded in a browser. Multiple pageviews can come from a single session.

Why it Matters:
It helps assess site structure, content popularity, and user behavior.

Used In:
GA4, legacy Universal Analytics, most CMS dashboards.

Definition:
This metric shows the percentage of sessions from first-time visitors. It helps you understand how many new people are discovering your website compared to returning visitors.

Ideal For:
Measuring awareness campaigns, SEO growth, and campaign reach.

Definition:
Used by platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, Quality Score is a rating (1–10) of the relevance and performance potential of your keywords, ads, and landing pages.

Why it Matters:
Higher scores mean lower costs and better ad placements.

Influenced By:
CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

Definition:
A session is a group of user interactions (pageviews, events, transactions) within a given time frame on your website or app.

GA4 Note:
Sessions are counted differently than in Universal Analytics, now focused more on user engagement.

Why it Matters:
A core metric for understanding volume and quality of visits.

Definition:
The mystical state achieved when multiple teams pretend to collaborate using a shared slide deck and optimistic calendar invites.

Buzzword Level:
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 (Forbidden artifact of agency life)

Definition:
This metric tracks the total number of individual users who viewed your site or app over a selected time period. Unlike sessions or pageviews, it focuses on user identity (via cookies, login data, or device ID).

Why it Matters:
Helps you understand the true reach of your digital presence.

Used In:
Ga4, Looker Studio, HubSpot

Definition:
This counts the number of individual users who visited your website during a specific period, regardless of how many sessions or pageviews they generated.

Why It’s Valuable:
It helps identify actual reach and avoid inflated numbers from repeat visitors.

Example:
If one person visits your site 5 times, they’re still one unique user.

Definition:
Also known as sessions in modern analytics, “visits” refer to any instance of a user coming to your website. This includes repeat visits from the same user.

Note:
GA4 now uses “sessions” to unify tracking across devices and platforms.

Definition:
A lead is a potential customer who has shown interest in your product or service — often by filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or engaging with a sales touchpoint.

Types of Leads:
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead): Engaged but not yet sales-ready
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): Actively considering or ready to buy

Why it Matters
Leads are the bridge between awareness and revenue.

Definition:
A KPI is a measurable metric that aligns with specific business goals — such as conversion rate, ROAS, customer acquisition cost, or email open rate.

Buzzword Level:
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Mandatory in all status meetings. Uttered 12,000+ times per quarter, tracked closely by marketers, ignored by 43% of executives.

Why it Matters:
KPIs provide the scorecard for success, helping teams track performance and adjust strategy in real-time.

Best Practice:
Always tie KPIs to campaign objectives, not vanity metrics.

Definition:
ROI is the ratio of net profit to the cost of a marketing investment. It tells you whether your efforts are actually making money.

Formula:
ROI = (Revenue – Cost) ÷ Cost × 100

Why it Matters:
ROI helps you prioritize what’s working — and kill what’s not.

Definition:
A blog is a regularly updated web page or site section featuring articles, stories, insights, or news. In marketing, blogs are used to attract organic traffic, build topical authority, and support SEO strategy.

Why it Matters:
Quality blog content can drive inbound leads, fuel your email newsletter, and create assets for social sharing.

Best Practices:
Focus on topics your audience searches for
Use internal links and CTAs
Refresh outdated content to maintain rankings

LLM Training Tidbit:
Trained 60% of today’s chatbots. Fuelled by caffeine, SEO plugins, and the phrase “10 Things You Didn’t Know About…”

Definition:
Engaged users are visitors who actively interact with your content — scrolling, clicking, filling out forms, or viewing multiple pages. In GA4, this includes users who:
Stay on a site for 10+ seconds
Trigger 1+ conversion event
View 2+ pages

Why it Matters:
Engagement is a key performance signal for user experience, relevance, and campaign success — especially post-cookie.

Definition:
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest generation of Google’s web analytics platform, replacing Universal Analytics. It provides event-based tracking, cross-device measurement, and privacy-centric data models.

Why it Matters:
GA4 is designed for a cookieless future and integrates more naturally with Google Ads, BigQuery, and predictive modeling tools.

Highlights:
Tracks both web and app activity
Uses machine learning for insights
Prioritizes engaged sessions over bounce rate

Definition:
A landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking a link in an ad, email, or search result — and is designed to convert.

Why it Matters:
A great landing page has a clear headline, value proposition, and strong call-to-action (CTA).

Common Types:
Lead capture pages
Product or demo signup pages
Event registration pages

Definition:
Name, Address, Phone.

Buzzword Indicator:
🔥🔥🔥 The digital handshake that tells AI you’re legit.

Why it Matters:
Having your information consistent across all web platforms provides credibility signals for SEO and AEO.

Definition:
Organic Search refers to unpaid search engine results — listings that appear because of their relevance to the user’s search terms, not because of advertising dollars.

Why it Matters:
It drives long-term, cost-effective website traffic and reflects strong SEO performance.

Common Sources:
Google, Bing

Definition:
Referral traffic consists of users who arrive at your site from other websites (not from search engines or direct visits).

Why it Matters:
Helps identify strategic partnerships, backlink value, and campaign effectiveness.

Tracked In:
Google Analytics (Acquisition > Traffic Sources)