Digital Marketing Glossary.

Comparing two versions of an ad, webpage, email or other marketing asset to determine which performs better against a defined objective.

The part of a webpage visible before a visitor begins scrolling.

The automated process advertising platforms use to determine which eligible ads appear, where they appear and, in many cases, what the advertiser pays.

A technology marketplace where digital advertising inventory can be bought and sold, often programmatically.

Invalid or deliberately deceptive activity designed to generate false ad impressions, clicks, leads or conversions.

A group of related ads, targeting settings or keywords within a digital advertising campaign.

A single recorded instance of an advertisement being displayed.

The advertising placements a website, app, streaming service or other publisher has available to sell.

A company or platform that aggregates advertising inventory from multiple publishers and makes it available to advertisers.

In paid search, the system used to determine whether an ad is eligible to appear and its relative position against other eligible ads.

Technology used to store, deliver, manage and measure digital advertisements.

A platform diagnostic indicating how relevant and varied the creative assets supplied for an advertisement are.

A measurement of whether an advertisement had a reasonable opportunity to be seen by a person.

A performance marketing model where a publisher or partner earns compensation for generating traffic, leads or sales for another business.

A Google Ads optimization layer for Search campaigns that uses AI to expand relevant matching and optimize creative and landing-page selection. It is an optimization feature rather than a separate campaign type.

AI-generated summaries that can appear in Google Search and synthesize information from multiple web sources while linking users to supporting pages.

A set of rules or calculations a digital platform uses to process information and determine outcomes such as rankings, recommendations or ad delivery.

Text added to an image in HTML to describe that image for accessibility and situations where it cannot be displayed.

The clickable words or phrase within a hyperlink.

An industry term for structuring and improving content so search engines, voice assistants and AI-powered systems can understand it and potentially use it when answering questions.

A system that allows different software platforms to exchange data or functionality.

The process of assigning credit for a conversion or business outcome to the marketing interactions that contributed to it.

The group of people a marketing activity is intended to reach.

Dividing a larger audience into smaller groups based on characteristics, behaviours, needs or other useful attributes.

Information supplied to an advertising platform to help its automated systems identify people who may be valuable to an advertiser.

A bidding approach where an advertising platform automatically adjusts bids according to an advertiser’s objective.

In analytics, a measurement of how long users actively engage with a website or app.

The average amount of revenue generated by each transaction.

Marketing or commerce between one business and another.

Marketing or commerce between a business and individual consumers.

A link to your website from another website.

A visual advertisement displayed within a website, app or other digital property.

The tendency for people to unconsciously ignore areas of a webpage that look like advertising.

Dividing audiences according to what people do, need, respond to or are motivated by rather than relying only on demographic characteristics.

The amount or value an advertiser is prepared to offer within an advertising auction.

The method used by an advertising platform to determine bids, often based on objectives such as clicks, conversions, revenue or return on ad spend.

Search optimization practices that deliberately violate search-engine guidelines in an attempt to manipulate rankings.

A regularly updated section of a website containing articles, commentary or other informational content.

The stage of the customer journey where a potential buyer is close to making a decision or taking action.

A measurement associated with sessions in which little or no meaningful engagement occurred. In GA4, bounce rate is the inverse of engagement rate.

The extent to which people recognize or remember a brand.

A measured change in consumer awareness, perception, consideration or intent associated with marketing activity.

Expanding a brand into new categories, products or experiences while retaining enough of its core identity to remain credible and recognizable.

A paid-search keyword matching option that allows an advertising system to reach searches related to the meaning or intent of a keyword.

Managing campaign spending so an advertising budget is distributed appropriately across its intended period.

The average cost required to acquire a new customer.

Temporarily stored data that helps webpages and other digital resources load faster on future requests.

An instruction encouraging someone to take a specific next step, such as “Buy Now,” “Learn More” or “Request a Quote.”

Technology used to identify which marketing sources, campaigns or advertisements generated telephone calls.

The preferred version of a webpage that search engines should treat as the primary URL when similar or duplicate versions exist.

Situations, needs, motives or occasions that cause someone to think about a product category and potentially retrieve particular brands from memory.

A geographically distributed network of servers used to deliver website content more efficiently.

Software used to combine customer data from multiple sources into unified customer profiles that can be analyzed or activated.

Software that communicates with users conversationally, often to answer questions, provide assistance or complete tasks.

The way choices are structured or presented in order to influence how people make decisions.

The percentage of customers or subscribers who stop using a product or service during a given period.

A user interaction in which someone selects an advertisement, link, button or other clickable element.

The percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks. Usually calculated as clicks ÷ impressions × 100.

An estimate of the total economic value a customer is expected to generate during their relationship with a business.

Software that allows users to create, edit, organize and publish website content.

Analyzing groups of users who share a characteristic or starting point to understand how their behaviour changes over time.

Television content delivered to an internet-connected television or device, including smart TVs and connected streaming devices.

A Google measurement framework that adjusts the behaviour of Google tags according to a user’s consent choices and can support conversion modelling where appropriate.

Creating and distributing useful or entertaining content to attract, engage and influence an audience.

Advertising targeted according to the subject matter or context of the content being consumed rather than solely using information about the individual user.

A valuable action completed by a user, such as a purchase, registration, application, download, call or lead submission.

The percentage of users or interactions that produce a defined conversion.

The process of improving digital experiences to increase the proportion of users completing desired actions.

The period after an ad interaction during which a later conversion may still be credited to that interaction.

A small piece of information stored by a website in a user’s browser to remember information or support functions such as authentication, preferences, analytics or advertising.

Google’s set of user-experience measurements relating to loading performance, responsiveness and visual stability.

The average advertising cost associated with generating a defined action or acquisition.

The average amount paid for each advertising click.

The average amount spent to generate one qualifying lead.

The advertising cost per 1,000 impressions.

The advertising cost associated with a qualifying video view.

Technology and processes used to organize and manage interactions with customers and prospects.

Encouraging a customer to purchase an additional complementary product or service.

The sequence of interactions someone has with a brand before, during and after becoming a customer.

Website traffic or content sharing that originates from private or difficult-to-measure channels such as messaging apps, private groups and copied links.

A structured collection of information on a webpage used to pass data to analytics, advertising and tag-management systems.

Attribution that uses data and statistical or machine-learning models to estimate how different marketing interactions contributed to conversions.

Marketing aimed at converting demand that already exists—for example, reaching someone actively searching for a product.

A Google Ads campaign type designed to generate engagement and action across visual Google environments. This is a platform product and should not be confused with the broader strategy term “demand generation.”

Marketing designed to create or increase future interest in a category, solution or brand.

The strategic distinction between creating future demand and converting demand that already exists.

Technology that enables advertisers to buy digital advertising inventory programmatically across multiple publishers and exchanges.

Digital advertising displayed in physical public environments such as roadside screens, malls, airports and digital billboards.

Using online media, publishers, creators and digital content to generate coverage, links, conversation and brand visibility.

Traffic for which analytics platforms cannot identify a referring source. It does not necessarily mean every user manually typed the website address.

Visual digital advertising that appears across websites, apps, video environments and other digital properties.

Non-name elements that help people recognize a brand, such as colours, shapes, characters, sounds, typography, packaging or other consistent sensory cues.

A third-party SEO metric intended to estimate how likely a website is to rank in search results. It is not a Google ranking metric.

The human-readable address used to locate a website, such as example.com.

A subscription method requiring someone to confirm their email address or consent after initially signing up.

A pre-planned sequence of automated marketing messages sent over time or triggered by user behaviour.

Identical or substantially similar content available through more than one URL.

Technology that automatically combines or adjusts advertising assets to create versions that may be more relevant to different audiences or contexts.

Retargeting that automatically features products or services related to those a person previously viewed or interacted with.

Google Search advertising that uses website content to help determine relevant searches, landing pages and advertising elements.

Brand exposure gained through other people or organizations rather than purchased directly, such as editorial coverage, shares, reviews or organic mentions.

Buying and selling products or services electronically, most commonly through websites and apps.

A way of expressing revenue or cost as an equivalent value per 1,000 impressions.

Using email to communicate with customers or prospects for marketing purposes.

Software used to manage subscribers and send email campaigns.

The degree to which something attracts attention or remains memorable because it evokes an emotional response.

In GA4, a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, contains a key event, or includes at least two page or screen views.

A measurement of the proportion of users, sessions or impressions that resulted in meaningful interaction. The exact calculation varies by platform.

Google Ads measurement functionality that uses hashed first-party customer data to improve the ability to associate conversions with advertising interactions.

A measurable user interaction recorded by analytics software, such as a page view, button click, purchase or video interaction.

Content designed to remain useful and relevant for an extended period instead of depending primarily on current events.

A paid-search keyword matching option designed to target searches with the same or closely related meaning or intent as the selected keyword.

The final page or screen interaction recorded during a user session.

An attribution model that gives conversion credit to the first recorded marketing interaction in the journey.

A cookie created by the domain the user is directly visiting.

Information a business collects directly through its own customer interactions and properties.

Completion and submission of an online form, often measured as a lead or micro-conversion.

The behavioural tendency for decisions to change depending on how equivalent information or options are presented.

The average number of times an individual within an audience was exposed to an advertisement during a given period.

A limit placed on how many times the same person or device should be served an advertisement within a defined timeframe.

A marketing approach that considers activity across awareness, consideration, conversion and customer growth rather than concentrating on only one stage.

A simplified model showing how people progress from initial awareness toward conversion and, potentially, loyalty or advocacy.

Google’s current analytics platform for measuring activity across websites and apps.

Artificial intelligence capable of creating new outputs such as text, images, audio, video or code in response to instructions and other inputs.

An emerging industry term for improving the likelihood that a brand, website or information source is understood, surfaced or cited by generative AI systems. It overlaps heavily with established SEO, content quality, authority and information-architecture practices.

Serving advertising or content according to a user’s geographic location.

Google’s advertising platform for running campaigns across Search, YouTube and other Google advertising inventory.

Google’s tool for managing how a business appears across local Search and Maps experiences.

Google advertising inventory spanning websites and apps.

Google’s platform for managing product and store information used across shopping-related Google experiences.

A Google service that helps website owners monitor and understand their visibility and performance within Google Search.

A tag-management platform used to deploy and manage analytics and marketing tags without repeatedly changing core website code.

A marketing approach focused on systematic experimentation and measurable growth throughout the customer lifecycle.

Creating an article for publication on another organization’s website or blog.

An email delivery failure caused by a permanent problem, such as an invalid or nonexistent address.

Information transformed using a one-way cryptographic process so the original value is not transmitted in plain text.

A content-management system where the content repository is separated from the frontend that presents it.

A visual representation showing where users click, tap, move or otherwise interact with a webpage or interface.

An email built using HTML so it can include formatting, images, buttons and more sophisticated layouts.

The standard markup language used to structure content on webpages.

Connecting customer or user identifiers from different systems or devices to create a more unified view of the person or household.

One recorded instance of content or advertising being displayed.

The percentage of eligible impressions an advertiser actually received compared with the estimated total for which it could have appeared.

An audience identified as showing signals associated with active research or consideration of a particular category.

Attracting potential customers through useful content and experiences so that they initiate or deepen the relationship with a business.

The additional business outcome caused by marketing that would not have occurred without that marketing activity.

The process through which a search engine analyzes eligible content and adds information about it to its searchable index.

Working with creators or influential individuals to communicate with and influence their audiences.

A hyperlink from one page of a website to another page on the same website.

Advertising or promotional content displayed between a user and the content they are attempting to access.

A programming language widely used to add functionality and interactivity to websites and web applications.

Visually documenting the stages, needs, actions and touchpoints a customer experiences while interacting with a business.

In GA4, an event identified as particularly important to the success of a business, such as a purchase, lead or registration.

A word or phrase marketers target, analyze or associate with the searches people perform.

An SEO metric from third-party tools estimating how competitive it may be to rank organically for a particular search term.

The likely reason or objective behind a search phrase.

A paid-search setting that influences how closely a user’s query must relate to an advertiser’s keyword.

Identifying and evaluating the words, phrases and questions people use when searching for relevant information, products or services.

Repeating keywords excessively or unnaturally in an attempt to manipulate search rankings.

A metric selected because it directly indicates progress toward an important objective.

The webpage someone reaches after clicking a marketing link or advertisement, usually designed around a particular objective.

An AI model trained to understand and generate language by learning patterns from very large collections of data.

An attribution model that assigns conversion credit to the final recorded marketing touchpoint before conversion.

A person or organization that has expressed potential interest in a product or service.

Marketing activity designed to identify and capture potential customers.

Useful content, access or another incentive offered in exchange for contact details or another desired action.

Ongoing communication designed to develop a relationship with a lead and help move them toward a purchase decision.

The process of earning or acquiring relevant links from other websites as part of SEO and digital PR.

The SEO value or authority that may be passed between webpages through links.

Optimizing a business’s online presence to improve visibility in searches with local or geographic intent.

A relatively specific search query that typically has lower individual search volume but can reveal more precise intent.

An advertising audience created by finding users who share characteristics or behavioural patterns with an existing source audience.

Google’s reporting and data-visualization product formerly known as Google Data Studio.

Another commonly used abbreviation for customer lifetime value.

A branch of artificial intelligence in which systems learn patterns from data and use those patterns to generate predictions or decisions.

Using software to automate marketing processes such as lead nurturing, segmentation, messaging and campaign workflows.

A high-level ecommerce measure comparing total revenue with total marketing spend.

A model describing stages through which consumers may move from awareness toward consideration, purchase and loyalty.

Statistical analysis used to estimate how different marketing activities and external factors contribute to business outcomes over time.

A strategic concept describing how much cultural, emotional or brand meaning is communicated by each element of an execution.

Purchasing advertising inventory or access to audiences across media channels.

The combination of channels and platforms used within a marketing plan.

Determining which media, audiences, placements, timing and budgets should be used to achieve a communications objective.

Repeated small exposures or cues intended to strengthen or refresh associations between a brand and relevant buying situations.

The network of associations, experiences, cues and meanings stored in memory that influence whether and how a brand is recalled.

The likelihood that a brand comes to mind in relevant buying situations.

Meta’s advertising ecosystem for delivering paid advertising across properties such as Facebook and Instagram.

HTML metadata that describes a webpage and may be used by search engines when generating a search-result snippet.

Meta technology placed on a website to measure actions and support advertising measurement, optimization and audience creation.

A smaller action indicating progress toward a larger business conversion, such as viewing pricing, adding a product to cart or beginning a form.

Google’s approach of using the mobile version of website content for indexing.

The stage in which prospective customers are actively considering or evaluating possible solutions.

Attribution that distributes conversion credit among multiple marketing touchpoints.

Testing several variables and combinations simultaneously to determine how they affect performance.

Paid advertising designed to visually and contextually fit the surrounding content environment.

A paid-search keyword used to prevent an advertisement from being triggered by unwanted searches.

Attempts to damage another website’s organic search performance using manipulative tactics.

A customer-experience metric based on how likely customers say they are to recommend a brand, product or service.

A recurring email publication sent to subscribers.

A hyperlink marked with a nofollow attribute that signals to search engines that the publisher does not wish to endorse the destination in the normal way.

A primary measurement chosen to represent the core value a product or business delivers to customers.

SEO activity occurring beyond the website itself, including link earning, digital PR and other external authority signals.

Connecting outcomes that happen away from a website—such as closed sales or in-store transactions—back to online marketing interactions.

Coordinating customer experiences and marketing activity across multiple connected online and offline channels.

Improving individual webpages and their content, structure and metadata to make them more useful to people and understandable to search engines.

The percentage of delivered emails recorded as opened. Privacy features and image blocking mean it should not be treated as a perfect measure of readership.

A user actively giving permission to receive communications or participate in a data-processing activity.

A user choosing to withdraw or decline participation in communications or data processing.

The number of people exposed to unpaid content.

Unpaid traffic or visibility originating from search-engine results.

Unpaid social-media content and activity.

Video or television content delivered over the internet rather than through traditional broadcast, cable or satellite distribution.

Marketing properties a brand directly controls, such as its website, app, email database or brand-owned content channels.

How quickly a webpage and its important content load and become usable.

A recorded viewing or loading of a webpage.

Marketing exposure purchased by a brand, including paid search, social advertising, display, online video and other forms of advertising.

Advertising that appears within search-engine results and is generally purchased through an auction-based platform.

Visual, verbal, sonic or sensory cues people use to quickly interpret and categorize a brand or communication.

A goal-based Google Ads campaign type that uses automation to access multiple Google advertising channels from a single campaign.

Marketing built around receiving a customer’s permission before communicating with them.

Adjusting content, offers or experiences according to information about a customer, audience or context.

A paid-search matching option used to reach searches containing the meaning or intent associated with a chosen keyword phrase.

A small piece of tracking technology used to record digital interactions for measurement, advertising or audience creation.

Episodic audio or video content distributed digitally for streaming or download.

An advertising pricing model in which an advertiser pays when a user clicks an advertisement.

Structured product data supplied to advertising, shopping or ecommerce platforms, usually including details such as product name, price, availability and image.

Using automated technology and data systems to buy, sell and deliver advertising inventory.

Advertising aimed primarily at finding new potential customers rather than re-engaging known users.

A message delivered by an app or website directly to a user’s device or browser.

A scannable two-dimensional code commonly used to connect physical experiences with digital destinations.

A lead judged to meet defined criteria indicating that they have meaningful potential to become a customer.

A Google Ads diagnostic that compares the expected quality and relevance of a keyword, advertisement and landing-page experience with other advertisers.

The actual words or phrase entered by a person into a search engine.

Monitoring how webpages rank in organic search results for selected searches over time.

The number of unique people, accounts or devices exposed to content or advertising.

Programmatic buying in which individual advertising impressions are auctioned in real time.

Website traffic that arrives through links on other websites.

Reaching users through advertising after they have previously interacted with a brand, website, app or other digital property.

A Google Ads format in which supplied creative assets can be automatically combined and resized for different display placements.

A Google Search ad format where advertisers provide multiple headlines and descriptions and Google selects combinations during delivery.

Advertising offered by retailers using their digital properties, customer relationships, commerce data or media inventory.

A retailer-operated advertising ecosystem that enables brands to reach audiences using the retailer’s media and data capabilities.

Advertising aimed at users based on previous interactions with a brand or digital property. It is often used interchangeably with remarketing.

Revenue generated relative to advertising spend. For example, $5 in attributable revenue for every $1 spent represents a 5:1 ROAS.

A search result enhanced with additional visual or interactive information made possible by eligible content and, in many cases, structured data.

A file that provides instructions about which URLs search-engine crawlers may request from a website.

A measurement comparing the financial return from an activity with the investment required to generate it.

Average revenue generated for each website visitor.

Structured data vocabulary that can be added to webpages to help machines understand the meaning and relationships within the content.

A measurement of how far down a webpage a user scrolls.

Software that discovers, organizes and retrieves information in response to user searches.

Marketing through search engines. In everyday industry usage the term is most commonly associated with paid search advertising, although historically it has sometimes been used more broadly.

Improving website content, technical accessibility, relevance and authority to increase visibility within unpaid search results.

The underlying objective behind a person’s search—for example learning something, finding a website, comparing options or completing a transaction.

The actual words entered into a search engine.

The page or interface a search engine provides in response to a search query.

A measurement approach where data is processed through a server-controlled environment rather than relying entirely on browser-side tracking.

A group of user interactions with a website or app occurring within a defined period.

Technology that reconstructs how users navigated and interacted with a website or application.

A brand’s share of search interest or search volume relative to a defined group of competitors.

A brand’s proportion of visibility, advertising presence or conversation within a defined market or channel.

A file that communicates important website URLs to search engines to help them discover content.

Automated Google Ads bidding strategies that use machine learning to optimize bids toward conversion or conversion-value objectives.

Monitoring and analyzing online conversation to understand what people are saying about a brand, category, topic or competitor.

Using social platforms and communities to build audiences, distribute content, communicate and generate business outcomes.

Evidence that other people trust, use or approve of a product or business, such as reviews, ratings, testimonials or customer numbers.

A temporary email-delivery failure.

Analytics dimensions that describe where traffic came from and the general method through which it arrived—for example google / organic or newsletter / email.

Unwanted, repetitive, deceptive or low-value digital communication.

Content for which a brand has paid or provided another form of compensation in exchange for exposure.

A focused landing page designed primarily to capture a visitor’s contact information.

Machine-readable information added to webpages to provide explicit information about their content and entities.

An automated bidding objective intended to generate conversions around a desired average cost per acquisition.

An automated bidding objective designed to maximize conversion value while aiming for a specified return on advertising spend.

Improving technical aspects of a website so search engines can efficiently discover, crawl, render and index its content.

Planning brand activity so that short-term attention and commercial response contribute to longer-term memory and brand growth.

A webpage displayed after someone completes an action such as submitting a form, registering or purchasing.

A webpage offering little original, useful or substantive value to its intended audience.

A browser cookie created by a domain other than the one the user is directly visiting, historically used for functions including cross-site advertising and measurement.

TikTok’s paid advertising platform.

The amount of time required for someone exposed to a communication to understand what it is, who it is from and why it matters. Treat this as an emerging strategic concept rather than a standardized industry KPI.

HTML that defines the title of a webpage and can influence how its title is displayed within search results and browser interfaces.

The awareness stage where audiences are beginning to recognize a need, problem, category or potential solution.

An informal SEO concept describing how strongly a website or source demonstrates comprehensive expertise and relevance around a subject.

A small tracking element used to record user activity for analytics, advertising or attribution.

Visits or users arriving at a website, app or digital destination.

An automated email triggered by an individual’s transaction or account activity, such as an order confirmation or password reset.

Content created by customers, fans, community members or other users rather than directly by a brand.

The visual and interactive elements through which a user interacts with a digital product.

A measurement intended to count distinct users rather than total visits or sessions.

The percentage of email recipients who opt out of receiving future marketing communication after a campaign.

Encouraging a customer to buy a higher-value version, package or upgrade.

The web address of a specific digital resource.

Tracking values added to URLs to identify marketing information such as campaign, source, medium or content.

The overall quality of a person’s experience when interacting with a website, app or digital service.

The wider system through which a brand creates value beyond the core product, potentially including service, experience, community, content and partnerships.

A clear expression of the value a product, service or brand provides and why someone should choose it over alternatives.

Advertising optimization that prioritizes the expected business value of conversions rather than treating every conversion as equal.

A number that may look impressive but offers little meaningful insight into progress toward a business objective.

The percentage of video starts or impressions that resulted in viewers reaching the end of a video.

A conversion recorded after someone was exposed to an advertisement but did not click it, provided the conversion occurred within the applicable attribution window.

A measurement of whether an advertising impression had the opportunity to be seen based on defined visibility criteria.

Marketing designed or fortunate enough to spread rapidly from person to person.

A blog or recurring content format built primarily around video.

Searching or requesting information using spoken language rather than typed input.

Collecting, measuring and interpreting digital behaviour to understand and improve website or app performance.

Automated software used by search engines and other systems to discover and retrieve content from the web.

Planning and creating the visual, structural and interactive experience of a website.

Infrastructure and services that store website files and make them available through the internet.

A seminar, presentation, class or event delivered online.

The volume of users, sessions or visits received by a website.

How easily and effectively users can navigate and accomplish tasks on a website.

SEO practices designed to improve search visibility while operating within search-engine guidelines.

Marketing that encourages or benefits from people recommending a brand, product or service to others.

Paid advertising delivered through the social platform X.

An HTTP response header used to communicate indexing instructions to search engines, particularly useful for non-HTML files.

A sitemap written in XML format that lists important URLs and associated information to help search engines discover website content.

Google’s term for topics that can significantly affect people’s health, financial stability, safety or broader wellbeing and therefore warrant particularly strong expectations around information quality.

Advertising delivered through YouTube using Google’s advertising ecosystem.

A search in which the user obtains what they need directly from the search experience without clicking through to another website.

Information a customer intentionally and proactively provides to a business, such as preferences, interests or purchase intentions.