Paid Media Terms

Ad account structure is how campaigns, ad sets and ads are organised inside a platform like Google Ads or Meta Ads. It decides how budget gets grouped, how the algorithm learns, an...

An ad auction is the automated process that runs every time someone searches on Google (or loads a page that shows display ads). Advertisers don't simply buy a slot by paying the m...

Ad copy is the written text in a paid advertisement. It includes headlines, descriptions and calls to action across search, social, display and other paid channels. Good ad copy ea...

An ad exchange is a digital marketplace where advertisers bid to buy ad space and publishers sell it, usually in real time. It sits at the centre of programmatic advertising, conne...

Additional pieces of information added to a Google Ad — like extra links, a phone number or your address — that expand the ad without increasing cost per click.

Ad fatigue happens when an audience has seen the same ad creative too many times and stops responding. Click-through rates fall, costs per result rise and the audience mentally tun...

Ad fraud is any deliberate attempt to fake genuine ad interactions, impressions, clicks or conversions, so someone gets paid for activity that was never generated by a real interes...

Ad Rank is the score Google calculates to decide whether your ad shows in a given auction and which position it occupies. It combines your bid, your Quality Score, and contextual s...

Ad Rank thresholds are the minimum Ad Rank score an advertiser must clear to have their ad shown in a Google Ads auction, or to hold a specific position on the page. Ad Rank itself...

Ad relevance is how closely the wording of your ad matches what someone actually typed into search, and what they expect to find when they click. Google Ads and Microsoft Advertisi...

Ad spend is the total amount paid to advertising platforms to run paid campaigns. It is distinct from total marketing budget, which includes production, tools and people costs. Ad...

Ad Strength is a rating Google Ads gives to responsive search ads, ranging from Poor to Excellent. It scores how many unique headlines and descriptions you've written and how varie...

Advantage+ is Meta's suite of automated campaign tools that use machine learning to handle targeting, placement, budget allocation and creative selection with minimal manual input....

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) are Meta's automated campaign type for ecommerce advertisers. Instead of building manual audiences and ad sets, you supply a product catalogue,...

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based channel where third parties (affiliates) promote a business's products in exchange for a commission on each sale, lead or click they gene...

Always-on and burst are two ways of scheduling paid media spend. Always-on keeps campaigns running continuously at a steady budget. Burst concentrates spend into short, intense win...

Auction Insights is a Google Ads report that shows how your ads perform against other advertisers bidding on the same keywords. It compares metrics like impression share, overlap r...

An audience is the specific group of people a piece of marketing is trying to reach. It can be defined by demographics like age and location, by behaviour like past purchases or si...

Audience targeting is the process of defining who sees your paid advertising based on characteristics like demographics, interests, behaviour, past interactions or similarity to ex...

AOV stands for average order value. It measures the average amount a customer spends per transaction, calculated as total revenue divided by total number of orders in a given perio...

Bid adjustments are percentage changes you apply to your base bid in a paid search or paid social platform to spend more or less in specific conditions. Common adjustment types inc...

A bid strategy is the method you use to set how much you're willing to pay for a click, impression or conversion in a paid advertising campaign. Strategies range from fully manual...

Blended CAC is the average cost to acquire one customer when you divide your total acquisition spend by every new customer you got, including the ones who arrived through organic s...

Blended ROAS (return on ad spend) is total revenue divided by total ad spend across every channel combined, rather than one platform's self-reported number. It answers whether your...

A boosted post is an existing post on your Facebook or Instagram Page that you pay to show to a wider audience, and it stays visible on your Page's timeline. A dark post is an ad b...

Brand safety refers to the practice of ensuring your ads do not appear next to content that could damage your brand's reputation. It covers everything from explicit content and mis...

Brand suitability is the practice of matching your ads to content and placements that fit your brand's specific tolerance, rather than just avoiding universally unsafe content. It...

Budget pacing is the practice of tracking how quickly ad spend is being used against a campaign's total budget and timeframe. It answers a simple question: at the current rate, wil...

CAC stands for customer acquisition cost. It's the total amount you spend to acquire one new customer, including ad spend, sales salaries, tools, content production and any other d...

Campaign Budget Optimisation (CBO) is a Meta Ads setting where you set one budget for a whole campaign and the platform automatically shifts spend between ad sets toward whichever...

A campaign objective is the specific, measurable outcome a marketing campaign is designed to achieve — awareness, consideration, conversion, retention or another defined goal that...

Connected TV (CTV) refers to advertising served on internet-connected television screens through devices and apps like smart TVs, Chromecast, Apple TV or gaming consoles. CTV lets...

Contextual targeting places ads based on the content of the page a person is viewing rather than data about the person. An ad for hiking boots on an article about bushwalking is co...

Conversion lag is the time between someone clicking an ad and actually converting. A cheap impulse buy might convert in minutes. A considered purchase like a mortgage or an enterpr...

A conversion lift study is a controlled test that measures how many extra conversions an ad campaign actually caused, compared to what would have happened without it. It works by h...

Conversion value rules let advertisers adjust the value of a recorded conversion based on who the customer is, where they're located or what device they used. Instead of every conv...

A conversion window is the length of time after someone clicks or views an ad during which a sale or lead can still be credited back to that ad. Set it too short and you undercount...

Cost per click, commonly abbreviated to CPC, is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Calculated as total ad spend divided by total clicks over the same period. CPC...

Cost per lead (CPL) is the average amount spent on advertising to generate one lead. Calculated as total ad spend divided by the number of leads produced in the same period. A lead...

Cost Per Mille (CPM) is the price of one thousand ad impressions. Its variations, standard CPM, viewable CPM (vCPM) and target CPM (tCPM), change what counts as a billable impressi...

CPA stands for cost per acquisition. It's the average amount you spend on advertising to generate one defined acquisition: a sale, a lead, a signup. Calculated as total ad spend di...

CPC stands for cost per click. It is the average amount you pay each time someone clicks on a paid ad. Calculated as total ad spend divided by total clicks in the same period. CPC...

CPM stands for cost per mille, where mille is Latin for thousand. It is the price you pay for every one thousand times your ad is shown. CPM is the standard pricing model for aware...

The visual and written content of an advertisement — images, video, headlines and copy — that a user actually sees. The single biggest variable in paid media performance that most...

Creative testing is the process of running controlled experiments on your ad visuals, copy, formats and calls to action to find out which combinations generate better results. It p...

A creative testing framework is a structured, repeatable process for testing ad creative such as images, videos, copy and hooks to find out what performs best before scaling spend....

Ad targeting audiences built from your own first-party data — email lists, website visitors, app users or CRM records. Custom audiences let you show ads to people you already have...

Dayparting is the practice of scheduling ads to run only during certain hours or days, rather than around the clock. Marketers use it to concentrate spend when customers are most l...

A Demand-Side Platform (DSP) is software that lets advertisers buy digital ad inventory automatically across many websites and apps at once. Instead of negotiating with each publis...

Digital Out of Home (DOOH) is advertising shown on digital screens in public places such as billboards, transit stations, shopping centres and street furniture. Unlike static billb...

Display ads are visual advertisements (images, animated GIFs, HTML5, video) that appear on websites, apps and other digital properties that have partnered with an ad network. The G...

Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), also called catalogue ads, are automatically generated adverts that show the exact products a person viewed, added to cart or bought on your site. Instea...

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) is a Google Ads campaign type that skips keyword targeting entirely. Instead, Google crawls your website, matches user searches to the most relevant page,...

Effective CPM (eCPM) is the cost per thousand impressions you actually achieved, worked backwards from total spend and total impressions. Unlike CPM, which is a rate you're quoted...

An engaged-view conversion (EVC) is a conversion credited to a video ad after someone watched at least 10 seconds of it without clicking, then converted within a set window. It is...

Enhanced Conversions for Leads (ECL) is a Google Ads feature that lets advertisers send hashed customer details, such as email or phone number, back to Google once a lead becomes a...

Enhanced CPC (ECPC) is a Google Ads bidding setting that raises or lowers your manual cost per click (CPC) bids based on how likely a click is to convert. It sits between fully man...

Expected CTR is Google's prediction of how likely your ad is to be clicked when it shows for a given search term, compared to other advertisers bidding on the same keyword. It's on...

The average number of times a unique user sees your ad over a given period. Too low and the message does not land. Too high and it annoys people and wastes budget.

A frequency cap is a limit you set on how many times a single person sees your ad within a period. It exists to stop the same people being shown an ad so often that it wastes budge...

Frequency capping is a setting in paid advertising platforms that limits how many times a single person can see your ad within a defined time window. It prevents the same audience...

Geo-lift testing measures whether advertising actually causes sales by comparing regions where the ads run to similar regions where they don't. Instead of trusting a click-based at...

Geotargeting is delivering ads only to people in a defined location, whether that's a country, a state, a city or a radius around a specific address. It lets advertisers match ad s...

Google Ads is Google's online advertising platform. It lets businesses show ads across Google Search, Google Display Network, YouTube, Gmail and Google Shopping. Advertisers bid in...

Header bidding is a way for publishers to let multiple ad exchanges bid on the same ad space at the same time, before the page finishes loading. It replaced the older waterfall met...

Hold Rate measures how many people keep watching a video ad past a given point, shown as a percentage of everyone who started it. It shows whether a video holds attention after the...

Hook rate is the percentage of people who keep watching a video ad past the first few seconds, usually three, instead of scrolling past. It measures whether the opening of your ad...

An impression is a single instance of an ad or piece of content being shown. Every time your ad loads on a screen, that is one impression, whether or not the person notices it or c...

Impression Share is the percentage of eligible ad auctions in which your ad actually appeared. If your ads could have shown 1,000 times but only showed 600 times, your Impression S...

Incrementality is the measure of how many conversions a marketing channel actually caused, rather than simply claimed credit for. It's tested by comparing results with the channel...

Invalid Traffic (IVT) is clicks, impressions or engagement on ads that don't come from genuine human interest. It includes bots, crawlers, click farms and accidental clicks. Ad pla...

Landing page experience is Google Ads' rating of how relevant, easy to navigate and trustworthy the page is that your ad sends people to. It's one of three inputs into Quality Scor...

LinkedIn's advertising platform enabling B2B marketers to reach professionals by job title, company, industry, seniority, skills and other professional attributes — typically at hi...

A lookalike audience is a targeting tool used in paid advertising that finds new people who share characteristics with an existing group you define. You supply a seed audience of r...

Lookalike percentage tiers are the size settings platforms like Meta offer when building a lookalike audience, usually ranging from 1 percent to 10 percent of a country's populatio...

Lost impression share (Lost IS) due to budget is the percentage of times your Google Ads or Microsoft Ads campaign was eligible to show but didn't, because your daily budget ran ou...

Manual CPC is a Google Ads bidding setting where you set the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a click on each keyword or ad group, rather than letting an automated bidding...

Marginal customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost of acquiring one more customer at your current level of spend, rather than the average cost across all customers acquired so fa...

Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) is a statistical method that estimates how much each marketing channel contributes to sales by analysing historical spend and revenue data. It works a...

Match types control how closely a person's search has to match your keyword before your ad can show. Google Ads offers three: broad match (widest reach, loosest matching), phrase m...

Maximise Conversion Value is a Google Ads automated bidding strategy that spends your full daily budget trying to generate the highest total conversion value it can, rather than th...

Maximise Conversions is an automated bidding strategy in Google Ads that sets bids to get as many conversions as possible within your daily budget. It does not target a specific co...

Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) is total revenue divided by total media spend across every paid channel combined. Unlike return on ad spend (ROAS), which is measured per platform, MER...

Paid advertising across Meta's platforms, primarily Facebook and Instagram. Uses interest, behaviour and audience-based targeting rather than keyword intent. Best for top-of-funnel...

A negative keyword is a word or phrase that tells Google Ads (or Microsoft Ads) not to show your ad when that term appears in a search query. Adding 'free' as a negative keyword me...

Negative keywords are words or phrases you add to a Google Ads campaign to stop your ads showing on irrelevant searches. If someone searches a term that matches your negative keywo...

Negative match types are the rules that tell Google Ads or Microsoft Ads which searches should never trigger your ad, even if a keyword you're bidding on technically matches. They...

New-Customer CAC is the cost of acquiring a customer who has never bought from you before. It is calculated by dividing acquisition spend by the number of genuinely first-time cust...

Offline conversion import is the process of uploading real-world sales or qualified-lead outcomes back into an ad platform like Google Ads or Meta, so the platform can learn from w...

Pacing is how evenly your ad spend is tracking against your budget and timeframe. If you've spent 80 percent of a monthly budget by day ten, you're overpacing. If you've spent 10 p...

Paid social refers to advertising run on social media platforms, where you pay to reach users based on demographic, interest and behavioural data rather than search intent. Unlike...

Website visitors who arrive through a paid advertising channel: Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, programmatic display or any other paid placement. Paid traffic is immediately sc...

Performance Max (PMax) is a Google Ads campaign type that uses machine learning to automatically optimise and serve ads across all of Google's channels, including Search, Shopping,...

PPC stands for pay-per-click. It is a model of online advertising where you pay a fee each time someone clicks your ad. PPC ads appear in search results, social feeds, display netw...

A Private Marketplace (PMP) is an invitation-only programmatic ad auction where a publisher offers inventory to a select group of buyers rather than the entire open exchange. Buyer...

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital ad space through software and real-time auctions. Instead of negotiating directly with a publisher, advertis...

Quality Score is Google Ads' 1-10 rating of how relevant and useful your keyword, ad and landing page are to someone searching. A higher score means Google shows your ad more often...

Quality Score components are the three factors Google Ads uses to build your Quality Score: expected click-through rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. Each is ra...

Radius targeting is a paid media setting that shows ads only to people within a set distance from a location, usually a store, clinic or service area. Instead of targeting a whole...

Reach and frequency buying is an advertising purchase method where you pay for a set number of people to see your ad a set number of times, rather than bidding in real time for cli...

Real-time bidding (RTB) is a system where ad impressions are bought and sold through instant automated auctions, one at a time, as a webpage loads. Advertisers bid for the chance t...

Remarketing is the practice of showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business: visited your website, watched your video, opened your app or appeared in your c...

Responsive Search Ads (RSA) are the standard Google Ads search ad format. You supply up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and Google's algorithm assembles and tests different com...

Retail media is advertising bought inside a retailer's own digital properties, like sponsored product listings on Amazon or banner ads on the Woolworths app. Retailers sell this sp...

Retargeting is a paid advertising technique where ads are shown specifically to people who have already interacted with your business, by visiting your website, watching a video, o...

ROAS stands for return on ad spend. It measures how much revenue you generate for every dollar spent on advertising. A ROAS of four means you got four dollars back for every one yo...

Return on Investment (ROI) measures how much financial return you get relative to what you spent. In marketing, it's calculated as revenue minus investment, divided by investment,...

Search ads are text-based advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) when a user's query matches your target keywords. On Google, they appear at the top and...

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is paid advertising that puts your business in front of people at the moment they search. In practice it usually means paid search, the text ads at...

A search terms report is a list inside your ad platform showing the exact words and phrases people typed before your ad appeared and was clicked. It differs from your keyword list,...

Seller ratings are the star rating and review count that appear automatically beneath a Google Ads text ad or Shopping listing. They're pulled from aggregated review sources, not c...

Sitelinks, callouts and snippets are extra pieces of information Google Ads adds beneath your search ad. Sitelinks are clickable links to other pages, callouts are short phrases hi...

Smart Bidding is Google Ads' set of automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to set bids for every auction in real time. Instead of a human adjusting bids manually, t...

Spark Ads is TikTok's native format for boosting an existing organic post, either your own or a creator's, as a paid ad while keeping its original likes, comments and shares. Creat...

Sponsored Products is a pay-per-click ad format used on marketplaces like Amazon, where a seller's individual product listing appears in search results or on other product pages, m...

A Supply-Side Platform (SSP) is software that lets publishers sell their ad space automatically to the highest bidder. It connects a website's available ad slots to multiple ad exc...

Target CPA is a Google Ads automated bidding strategy where you set a goal for what you want to pay per acquisition, and the algorithm adjusts your bids in real time trying to hit...

Target Impression Share is a Google Ads automated bidding strategy that sets bids to try to show your ad for a chosen percentage of eligible searches, either anywhere on the page,...

Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is an automated bidding strategy in platforms like Google Ads. You set a target ratio of revenue to ad spend and the algorithm adjusts bids in real...

Thumbstop rate measures how often a video ad stops someone from scrolling past it on a social feed. It's calculated as the percentage of people who watched at least three seconds o...

TikTok Ads are paid placements bought through TikTok Ads Manager, appearing in the main feed, between organic videos, or as branded effects. Formats include in-feed ads, TopView, b...

Value-based lookalikes are an audience-targeting method where an ad platform builds a new audience by matching the traits of your highest-value existing customers, not just any cus...

A view-through conversion is counted when someone sees an ad, does not click it and later converts within a set window. It credits the impression rather than a click. View-through...

A click-through conversion (CTC) happens when someone clicks an ad and converts afterwards. A view-through conversion (VTC) happens when someone simply sees an ad, doesn't click it...

Viewability is the measure of whether an ad actually had a chance to be seen, not just whether it was technically served on a page. It's defined by the Interactive Advertising Bure...