Where every click is a journey and every impression counts.
Visual representation of user behavior showing where people click, scroll, and hover, typically revealing that nobody reads your carefully crafted copy. The marketing equivalent of finding out which parts of your outfit actually get noticed.
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 physical advertising placard used to display products or promotions in retail environments, back when 'going viral' meant your display was visible from multiple aisles. The analog ancestor of today's digital signage, typically featuring aggressive fonts and starburst shapes screaming about sales. Still surprisingly effective at catching the attention of customers who've developed immunity to banner ads.
The time period during which a conversion can be credited to a specific ad interaction. It's the arbitrary timeframe marketers use to claim credit for sales that may have happened anyway.
The art of slicing your audience into neat little boxes so you can target them with laser precision. Marketers love this term because it makes dividing people into demographics sound scientific rather than slightly creepy. Think of it as organizing humans like a well-arranged charcuterie board.
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.
A metric measuring customer loyalty by asking how likely someone is to recommend your company on a 0-10 scale. Promoters (9-10) minus detractors (0-6) equals your score, which somehow ignores the passives (7-8) entirely.
In data analysis and research, systematic errors or prejudices that skew results in a particular direction, usually the one that confirms what you wanted to believe anyway. Every analyst claims they're aware of biases and working to eliminate them, while simultaneously cherry-picking data that supports their hypothesis. It's the statistical equivalent of having a favorite child but insisting you treat them all equally.
In marketing analytics, the act of giving credit to specific touchpoints in a customer's journey for making them finally open their wallet. It's like trying to determine which of your 47 advertisements actually convinced someone to buy, except everyone on your team has a different answer. Attribution modeling is where data science meets office politics.
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.
Paid advertising on search engines, primarily Google, where you bid on keywords to appear when people search for things. It's the practice of paying to skip the line in search results, assuming you can outbid your competitors.
What you pay for each interaction with your ad—likes, shares, comments, or clicks—turning social media validation into a line item on your budget. It's the metric that reveals exactly how much you're spending to get strangers to double-tap your content.
The actual cost to acquire one customer after all is said and done—the metric that separates marketing theater from marketing accountability.
Small promotional signs attached to retail shelves at product level, literally talking to shoppers at the point of decision. The impulse-buy whisperer of retail marketing.
Buying all available ad placements across a platform or time period to dominate visibility and prevent competitor messaging. Subtle as a highway billboard collision.
An invitation-only programmatic auction where premium publishers offer inventory to selected buyers at negotiated floors. The velvet rope section of the ad exchange nightclub.
A fake bid in programmatic auctions designed to artificially inflate prices without intent to win. The ad tech equivalent of sending your friend to bid up prices at an estate sale.
A temporary, disposable email address users create to access gated content without sharing their real contact information. The digital equivalent of giving a fake phone number at a bar.
The holy grail of digital marketing: that magical moment when a casual browser transforms into a paying customer, newsletter subscriber, or whatever action you've been desperately optimizing for. It's the difference between window shopping and actually buying, measured obsessively through analytics dashboards and celebrated with metaphorical champagne in Slack channels. Every marketer's job basically boils down to increasing this single metric, which explains why you get retargeted ads for shoes you looked at once, three years ago.
The ratio of people who actually click on your ad versus those who pretend it doesn't exist, much like how people treat street performers. A 2% click-through rate is considered good, which tells you everything you need to know about how much people love ads.
Basic, always-on content that answers common questions and maintains consistent brand presence. The vegetables of content marketing—not exciting, but necessary.
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 art of getting people to pay attention to something through media coverage, press releases, and strategic information drops, ideally without having to pay for advertising. It's what happens when your brand does something newsworthy enough that journalists actually care to write about it. Unlike advertising, publicity is theoretically "earned," though publicists would argue they work pretty hard to make it look effortless.
The art of selling stuff online instead of in physical stores, revolutionizing retail by eliminating the need to wear pants while shopping. It encompasses everything from Amazon's global empire to your neighbor's Etsy shop selling handmade soap. Born in the '90s, it's now the default way humans acquire everything from groceries to furniture, much to the despair of malls everywhere.