CPC, ROI, PPC..? If you’re confused by some of the jargon you see, here’s a quick guide to help you understand the industry a little better:

Above the fold

The top part of a page, which can be viewed without scrolling down. The term comes from newspaper advertising where it literally meant the top half of the page, above where it was folded.

Affiliate

A marketer who promotes a merchant’s (product owner’s) product in exchange for a commision.

Autoresponder

A program or service which automatically sends email in response to a trigger such as receiving email or an opt-in subscription. Autoresponder services such as AWeber take this a stage further and are full marketing systems for managing multiple lists and scheduling many email sequences.

COA

Cost Of Aquisition – The marketing cost of aquiring a new customer. For example, if you spend $100 on a campaign that generates 20 new sales your COA is $5.

Conversion rate

Percentage of visitors who perform a valuable action (sale or opt-in).

CPA

Cost Per Action – a model of advertising based on user’s specific actions, such as sales or subscriptions.

CPC

Cost Per Click – The cost of getting an individual visitor to your site. In CPM, if the CPM is $5 and an average of 5% of impressions result in a click then the CPC is $0.25 for that campaign.

CPM

Cost Per Thousand – Advertising model based on the cost of 1000 impressions of an advert (banner, ezine advert etc.)

CTR

Click Through Ratio – The number of users who click on an advert, compared to the number of impressions. For example if 5 users click an advert out of every 100 who see it your CTR would be 5%

Hit

A poor method of measuring traffic to a site or page. A hit constitutes a browser request to a page but generally gives a much higher an inaccurate fugure than the number of visitors to a page.

Impression

A single showing of an advert. If an advert on a web page is viewed 100 times than there have been 100 impressions of the advert.

JV

Joint Venture – 2 or more marketers working together for mutual benefit. Could be one marketer promoting the other’s product to their list, or a more involved relationship.

Link popularity

The number of inbound links to a site. A higher number of links tends to lead to more traffic, and is a major factor in SEO.

Opt-in

A specific request from a visitor to receive emails from a list (newsletter/ezine) by giving their name and email. Double opt-in means that the subscriber has to verify their email by confirming their subscription request.

Organic traffic

Traffic from search engine results which have not been paid for. High levels of organic traffic tend to be the result of good quality content and SEO.

PPC

Pay Per Click – a model of Internet advertising where an advertiser is charged a small fee very time a user clicks on their link. Google’s Adwords system is the most popular PPC engine.

PPL

Pay Per Lead – a model of advertising where a company pays for each lead that has been generated.

ROI

Return On Investment – The margin gained from a marketing effort. A PPC campaign for example that costs $0.10 per click, earns $15 per sale and generates on average 1 sale every 100 clicks has an ROI of $5 for every $10 spent, or 50%.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing – a range of techniques to promote a site via search engines. includes SEO and PPC.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation – The process of refining a page or site with the purpose of boosting rankings in search engines.

Squeeze page

A web page with the sole objective of obtaining a user’s name and email, normally in exchange for some information of value (ebook, newsletter, access to restricted site etc.)

Unique Visitor

As the name suggests, the number of individuals who visit a site within a set period of time. The most useful metric of traffic.

Viral Marketing

Any marketing where the user becomes part of the marketing system by promoting a site or product. Normally involves a system where usage actively promotes itself, a good example would be a free email service where each email sent includes a self serving advert.