Where every click is a journey and every impression counts.
When content spreads across the internet faster than a rumor in a high school cafeteria. Every marketer wants their content to go viral, despite the fact that you can't plan virality any more than you can plan to be struck by lightning while winning the lottery.
A fancy way of explaining why someone should give you money instead of your competitor. It's the corporate pickup line -- it sounds rehearsed, slightly desperate, and works about 10 percent of the time.
Numbers that look impressive in reports but mean absolutely nothing, like counting how many people walked past your store without ever coming in and calling it brand exposure. They exist primarily to make quarterly presentations look good while avoiding any meaningful conversation about revenue.
The gift of gab taken to professional extremes—someone who talks smoothly, rapidly, and seemingly without ever needing to breathe. In sales and marketing, it's either your greatest asset or most annoying quality, depending on whether you're the one talking or listening. Think used car salesman meets TED talk speaker.
The Holy Grail metric measuring how quickly content spreads across the internet like a digital contagion. Every marketer dreams of achieving it, most fail miserably, and the few who succeed usually have no idea how it actually happened. It's basically controlled chaos with a fancy epidemiological name.
An ad impression that actually appeared on a user's screen for a measurable duration, as opposed to loading in a tab they never opened. The advertising industry's reluctant admission that billing for invisible ads was perhaps unethical.
A conversion credited to an ad that someone saw but didn't click, measured by whether they later converted through another channel. It's how display advertising takes credit for sales it might not deserve.
The number of new users each existing user generates through referrals, where anything above 1.0 means exponential growth. It's the mathematical expression of every marketer's fantasy: growth that doesn't require advertising.
The percentage of viewers who actually watch your video ad all the way through instead of desperately seeking the skip button. It's the metric that reveals how compelling your content is versus how fast people can click away.
The minimum standard for an ad to count as 'viewed'—typically 50% of pixels visible for at least one second. A bar so low that advertisers celebrate ads nobody actually noticed.
When companies publicly support social causes to appear ethical while doing nothing substantive behind the scenes. It's performative activism designed to boost brand image without affecting the bottom line or requiring actual change.
A metric indicating whether an ad actually appeared on someone's screen or was technically served but never seen, like a tree falling in the forest but the forest is a webpage and the tree costs $50 CPM. Industry standard: 50% of pixels visible for one second.
In medical terms, how aggressively a disease can mess you up. In marketing, how quickly and devastatingly a campaign can spread (for better or worse). The measure of potency, whether it's a virus destroying cells or a brand message destroying your competitor's market share.
Customer feedback and insights captured through surveys, reviews, support tickets, and other channels that reveal their needs and preferences. Abbreviated VOC, it's all the complaints and suggestions companies collect and then ignore.
A marketing strategy that encourages rapid, organic sharing of content so it spreads exponentially. It's the lottery ticket of marketing—everyone dreams of it, few win.
Optimizing content for queries spoken into Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant—preparing for a future where people talk to their devices instead of typing.