Pay Per Click Terminology
PPC (Pay Per Click) – advertisers pay for every click. You will be charged a different amount for clicks on different adverts depending on the competitive nature of the search term. PPC is the term used to define the advertising platform which is charged on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis.
ROI (Return on Investment) – basic equation used to work out the difference between sales revenues and the investment made on marketing. The equation is (sales-investment) divided by the investment.
CPA (Cost per Acquisition) – The cost associated to bring in each acquisition.
Acquisition – can be defined as an enquiry or a sale through the website.
CPC (Cost Per Click) – Advertisers are charged for every click when they advertise on the Pay Per Click platform.
CPM (Cost Per 1000 Impressions) – When advertising on selected websites within Google’s content network, advertisers are charged a price for every thousand impressions (CPM) instead of every click (CPC).
Impressions – every appearance that you have be it on a search engine or on a website is known as an impression.
Content Network – Google has over 1 million partner sites which are content based, including Channel 4 online, Times Online etc. There is no search engine function on this site however advertisements in the form of text, image or videos can be placed next to the content on the website pages. Yahoo and MSN also have their own networks.
Search Network – Each major search engine has their search partners, so partner websites which also provide search powered by the major search engine. For example, Yahoo search powers the search engine on Orange.co.uk and Channel Five. Google search powers the search on Ask.com and Virgin Media website. These are known as Search Partners and therefore belong on the search network.
Search Partners – please see ‘Search Network’
CTR (Click Through Rate) – Equation is the number of clicks dividing by impressions over the same time period.
Quality Score – This is the ranking method used on the Google Adwords advertising platform. It determines the quality of your advert and keyword and is based on the CPC, CTR, ad text relevance, historical keyword performance and other relevancy factors.
Quality Index – Yahoo’s version of Quality Score and used to rank adverts.
Ad Rank – MSN’s version of Quality Score and used to rank adverts.
Reach – determines the presence and online exposure possible.
Impression Share – This is the percentage of the impressions that ad advertiser currently receives. For example, if ad advertiser is currently receiving 40% impression share then there are a further 60% impressions which the advertiser isn’t currently appearing for.
Rich Media – another term for Banner Ads, including Image and Video ads.
Banner Ads – is the original name for online ads that were placed on content sites. The new name for this form of media is rich media.
Minimum Bid – This is the minimum amount you can pay per click for your advert to appear.
Search Query – is the term used to define a single internet search through a search engine.
Destination URLs – This the URL that your advert goes to when clicked on.
Display URLs – This is the URL that you can have at the bottom of your advert to display to the searcher who the advert is from. This has to be of the same format as the destination URL but not exactly the same.
Google Trademark – This is an extension of a regular trademark. Once registered as a trademark you can then submit keyword terms to Google to be registered as full Google Trademarks. Once complete, no advertiser can use this term to advertise under, unless express permission has been given by the trademark owner.
Invalid Clicks – These are clicks by searchers who aren’t interested in the products or services sold by the advertiser, but are only interested in increasing cost to the advertiser by clicking on the advert.
Click Fraud – same as invalid clicks.
Robots – These are electronic spiders sent out by the search engines to retrieve information on websites on the internet so that the search engine can rank them.
Daily Budget – This is a setting within the Google Adwords program where you can apply a limit to the amount you want to spend on a clicks per day.
Contextual Targeting – is also known as content network advertising. Contextual targeting is where ads are placed based on relevancy against text already within the content of a website.
Content Publishers – websites who are associated with the content network, be it for Google’s content network or Yahoo’s, MSN’s etc.
Smart Pricing – is Google’s algorithm which determines the appearance of contextual targeted ads on the content network.
Negative keywords – keywords used to stop the appearance of none relevant searches.
Regular Keywords – keywords which you do want your advert to appear for.
Actual CPC – The actual CPC that you pay for each click.
Maximum CPC – The maximum amount the advertiser is prepared to pay per click.
Website Optimiser – program allowing optimisation of website content in relation to online marketing.
Preferred Cost Bidding – allows advertisers to set a cost for each click and the algorithm will work to achieve this setting regardless of appearance, rank, actual CPC or maximum CPC.
Placement Performance – this determines where on the content network adverts have appeared and how effective they were.
Position Preference – Instead of setting a Maximum CPC you can set a position that you want your advert to appear in, known as position preference.
Ranking – ranking is also known as positioning. Ranking is dependent upon the quality score of your advertising, the better the quality the higher the ranking.
Analytics – there are many types of Analytics packages; however the most used is Google Analytics. It is piece of web software which is able to track website activity in regards to visitors and users.
Account – an account is what needs to be created with each search engine before you can start advertising. Within this account you can then build in your keywords, ad groups, adverts, and campaigns which are then used to advertise on the relevant search network.
Campaign – Holds all of the ad groups, ads, and keywords in for an account.
Ad Group – an ad group is a group of keywords together with specific adverts for that group. You can have multiple ad groups per campaign.
Location Targeting – each search engine you are able to set defined geographical parameters to which your ads will only be shown to. Each search engine is different in the way that it offers this targeting feature.
Adwords Discounter – this reduces CPC so that pay only the minimum that is required to stay in the position above the competitor below you.
Standard Edtion – this is the basic Adwords account that you can create. It only has the basic advertising functions.
Ad Scheduling – Within Google and MSN, but not in Yahoo, you can set timing parameters as to when your adverts will be displayed during the day.
Broad Match – a broad match keyword will be triggered for a search that contains the keyword and also for associated searches. For example the broad match keyword of ‘used book’ would be triggered by searches for ‘used books’, ‘buy used books’, ‘used books online’ and ‘used and rare books’ etc.
Phrase Match – this stops appearance when there is an additional term with the keyword that is placed on phrase, but allows for searches that contain terms before and after the phrase to be triggered. For example, the phrase match keyword of ‘cheap flight’ would be triggered for searches of ‘very cheap flight’ or ‘cheap flight December’. However a search for ‘cheap online flight’ would not trigger the phrase match keyword because it does not match the phrased keyword.
Exact Matching – If a keyword is on exact match then you will only appear for searches that match this exact term. For example your exact match keyword is ‘football boots’ and the search is for ‘football boots’, then your ad will appear. If the search is for ‘football boot’ without the plural, then you will not appear.
Embedded Match – Similar to a negative keyword but is an advanced negative setting. For example, you want to appear for searches such as ‘boy’s gifts’, ‘father’s gifts’ and ‘men’s gifts’, but you don’t want to appear for just ‘gifts’ because this term is too generic, then you would put ‘gifts’ in as an embedded match to negate appearance.
Standard Match – Yahoo’s version of exact match.
Advanced Match – Yahoo’s version of Google’s broad match. However, it takes it broader than Google and can be defined as ‘superbroad’.
Matching Options – are set on keywords to determine the requirements for the search query to trigger the keyword, which in turn triggers the advert to appear. They include broad, phrase, exact, embedded, standard and advanced match types.
Conversion Tracking – Tracking code can be inserted onto the advertisers website to monitor conversions that come from the advertising; be it a sale online or an enquiry form that has been filled out.
Cross Channel Conversion Tracking – This is track the conversions between different forms of online advertising medium, such as email marketing.
Conversion Rate – This is the rate that conversions occur at, and is defined in the equation conversions divided by clicks.
GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code) – the acronym for the Google Analytics program.
GA (Google Analytics) – the more commonly used acronym for Google Analytics.
Landing Page – this is the page to which traffic lands on after clicking on the advert.
Bounce Rates – the percentage of visitors that, once arriving on a landing page, will click directly off the site.
GAP (Google Adwords Professional) – this is the qualification by Google for their Adwords advertising program.
Overture – The original name for the search engine giant Yahoo Inc.
GoTo.com – The original search engine from which Overture was born.
Miva – another search engine.
Yahoo – the search engine.
MSN – The search engine, which stands for Microsoft Network.
AOL – the search engine, which stands for America Online.
Google – named after the number Googel for 1 followed by 100 zeros.
