Where every click is a journey and every impression counts.
Traffic that comes from private channels like texts and DMs where marketers can't track it, making it the speakeasy of social sharing. It sounds sinister, but it's really just your aunt forwarding articles in the family group chat.
A series of automated emails that slowly wears down a prospect's resistance over time, like water torture but with subject lines. The idea is that if you email someone enough times, they'll eventually buy something just to make it stop.
Visual banner ads served across websites and apps, ranging from tasteful rectangles to screen-dominating monstrosities that make you question humanity. The descendants of magazine ads, but with the added benefit of following you everywhere online.
Technology that automatically assembles personalized ads from various creative components based on user data, serving different headlines, images, and calls-to-action to different people. Mass customization meets surveillance capitalism in a beautiful, algorithmically-optimized dance.
The practice of scheduling ads or content to run during specific times of day when target audiences are most active. Because showing cereal ads at 3 AM is generally suboptimal.
Marketing jargon for making your product stand out in a crowded market, or in math, the process of finding derivatives (equally painful either way). Companies differentiate by highlighting unique features, benefits, or brand personality that competitors supposedly lack. It's the reason every startup claims to be "different" while doing essentially the same thing as everyone else with slightly different colored buttons.
Marketing activities designed to create interest in a product or service where none previously existed, rather than just capturing existing demand. Building the haystack before finding the needle.
An elaborate marketing presentation or product demo designed more to impress than inform, typically involving excessive showmanship. Substance optional, theatrics mandatory.
A junior marketer whose primary job is creating endless PowerPoint presentations for meetings that may never happen. The modern equivalent of a Victorian-era scribe.
An unpublished social media ad that appears in users' feeds without being posted to the brand's timeline. The marketing equivalent of a stealth bomber—you see it once, then it vanishes into the algorithm void.
A cooperative advertising arrangement where manufacturers support local dealer advertising efforts with funding and creative assets. The automotive industry's way of saying 'please don't make terrible ads with our logo.'
The duration someone actually pays attention to an ad, especially in out-of-home or digital contexts. The uncomfortable metric that reveals most people ignore your billboard in 0.3 seconds.
A collection of websites, apps, and videos where your banner ads can appear, giving you access to millions of placements ranging from premium publishers to extremely questionable mobile games. It's the democratization of ad placement, for better or worse.
Software that allows advertisers to automatically purchase ad inventory across multiple exchanges and networks through a single interface, because manually buying ads on ten thousand websites would require immortality. Abbreviated as DSP by people who enjoy acronyms.
A sudden decrease in quantity, participation, or performance, or the place where you abandon your kids/packages/passengers for someone else to deal with. In business metrics, it's that terrifying moment when your chart takes a nosedive and you need to explain to your boss why engagement fell off a cliff. Also conveniently describes what happens to New Year's gym memberships by February.
Directing marketing messages based on statistical characteristics like age, gender, income, and education—the paint-by-numbers approach to audience segmentation. Simple, measurable, and often wildly reductive.
Physical marketing materials delivered via postal service, the analog dinosaur that refuses to go extinct because it still converts. What millennials call 'junk mail' and what marketers call 'tangible touchpoints.'