/ INDEXLEARN·THE MARKETING GLOSSARY
Every term, in plain English.
A working glossary of the language we use every day — digital marketing, paid search, paid social, SEO and GA4. Each definition is short, straight, and written to be quoted: by you in a meeting, by Google in a snippet, and by AI answer engines when someone asks.
◉ DEFINITIONMOST-ASKED TERM
ROAS — Return On Ad Spend
ROAS is the revenue generated for every £1 spent on advertising. A ROAS of 4x means £4 back for every £1 in — but whether that's profitable depends entirely on your margin.
ROAS = revenue ÷ ad spend · break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ profit margin
GA4's free export of raw, event-level data into BigQuery, unlocking SQL-level analysis far beyond the standard interface.
Groups of users defined by behaviour or attributes. They can be analysed in reports and exported to Google Ads for remarketing.
A Google framework that adjusts how tags behave based on a user's consent choices, modelling conversions where consent is declined.
Automatic tracking of common interactions — scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video, file downloads — without any extra code.
Data-driven attribution
DDA
GA4
GA4's default attribution model. It uses machine learning to distribute conversion credit across touchpoints based on their real influence.
GA4's free-form analysis workspace for building custom funnels, path analyses, segments and cohort tables beyond the standard reports.
GA4's primary user metric, counting users who had an engaged session. When GA4 says Users, it means active users.
The percentage of sessions that were engaged. Bounce rate in GA4 is simply the inverse of this.
A session that lasts 10 or more seconds, records a key event, or includes two or more page views. GA4's replacement for old bounce-rate thinking.
Key event
formerly Conversion
GA4
An event you mark as important to your business, such as a purchase or lead. GA4 renamed conversions to key events in 2024.
The core unit of GA4 data. Every interaction — a page view, click, scroll or purchase — is recorded as an event with parameters.
Google's event-based analytics platform, which replaced Universal Analytics in 2023. It measures users across web and app in one property.
GEO
Generative Engine Optimisation
SEO
Structuring content so AI answer engines — like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews — surface and cite it. Clear definitions, facts and schema are the currency.
Links between pages on your own site. They spread authority, help search engines crawl, and guide users deeper into relevant content.
An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a duplicate or similar page is the primary one to index and rank.
The goal behind a query — informational, navigational, commercial or transactional. Matching intent is the foundation of ranking.
Structured data
Schema markup
SEO
Schema.org code that labels the meaning of a page's content so search engines and AI can understand it and show rich results.
Core Web Vitals
LCP · INP · CLS
SEO
Google's page-experience metrics: LCP (loading speed), INP (responsiveness) and CLS (visual stability). INP replaced FID in 2024.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust
SEO
Google's framework for assessing content quality. It rewards first-hand experience and credible, trustworthy sources — especially for high-stakes topics.
Domain authority
DA · DR
SEO
A third-party score (such as Moz DA or Ahrefs DR) estimating how strongly a site is likely to rank. A tool metric, not a Google one.
A link from another website to yours. Search engines treat quality backlinks as votes of confidence and a core ranking signal.
A highlighted answer box at the top of Google that quotes a page directly. Won by giving a clear, concise answer to a specific question.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page
SEO
The page of results a search engine returns for a query, including organic links, ads, and features like snippets and AI overviews.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation
SEO
The practice of improving a site so it earns unpaid rankings and traffic from search engines. Split into content, technical and off-page work.
The number of unique people who saw your ads at least once. Distinct from impressions, which count every view including repeats.
Creative testing
Paid Social
Systematically trialling different concepts, hooks and formats to find the winners. On social, creative is the biggest lever on performance.
Conversions API
CAPI
Paid Social
A server-side connection that sends conversion data to Meta directly, recovering signal lost to browser and cookie restrictions.
Attribution window
Paid Social
The timeframe in which a click or view can be credited with a conversion — commonly 7-day click and 1-day view on Meta.
Learning phase
Paid Social
The period where Meta optimises a new or edited ad set, typically needing around 50 conversions a week to exit and stabilise.
The percentage of viewers still watching a video ad after three seconds. A fast read on whether your creative stops the scroll.
The average number of times each person saw your ad in a period. Too low and you're forgettable; too high and you fatigue the audience.
Retargeting
Remarketing
Paid Social
Showing ads to people who already engaged with your brand, website or content. Usually the highest-converting audience you can reach.
Lookalike audience
Paid Social
An audience the platform builds to resemble your existing customers or a source list — a way to find new people who behave like your best ones.
Advantage+ Shopping
ASC
Paid Social
Meta's automated shopping campaign type that consolidates audiences and creative, letting the algorithm find buyers across the funnel.
ABO
Ad Set Budget Optimisation
Paid Social
Setting budgets manually at the ad set level, giving you tighter control over how much each audience receives.
Advantage+ campaign budget
CBO
Paid Social
A Meta setting that holds the budget at campaign level and automatically distributes it to the best-performing ad sets in real time.
Landing page experience
Paid Search
Google's assessment of how relevant, useful and easy-to-navigate your landing page is. A direct input into Quality Score and CPCs.
Auction insights
Paid Search
A Google Ads report that compares your Search performance — impression share, overlap, position — against the competitors in your auctions.
Assets (ad extensions)
Paid Search
Extra pieces added to an ad — sitelinks, callouts, images, prices — that increase its size, visibility and click-through rate at no extra cost.
Search terms vs keywords
Paid Search
Keywords are the words you bid on; search terms are the actual queries people typed. The gap between them is where budget is won or wasted.
Smart Bidding
tCPA · tROAS
Paid Search
Automated bid strategies — such as Target CPA and Target ROAS — that use machine learning to set a bid for every individual auction.
Performance Max
PMax
Paid Search
A goal-based Google campaign that runs across every channel — Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps — from a single asset set and audience signal.
Negative keywords
Paid Search
Terms you exclude so your ads never show for irrelevant searches. One of the most effective ways to stop wasted spend.
Match types
Broad · Phrase · Exact
Paid Search
The setting that controls how closely a search must match your keyword before your ad can show — from broad (loosest) to exact (tightest).
Impression Share
Paid Search
The share of impressions your ads actually received out of the total they were eligible for. A gap signals budget or rank limits.
IS = impressions received ÷ eligible impressions
The value that decides whether and where your ad shows, based on your bid, Quality Score, the auction context and your ad assets.
A Google Ads diagnostic scored 1 to 10 that estimates the quality of your keywords, ads and landing pages. Higher scores lower your CPCs and lift ad position.
Factors: expected CTR · ad relevance · landing page experience
PPC
Pay-Per-Click
Paid Search
An advertising model where you pay only when someone clicks your ad. The dominant model on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
Blended CAC / ROAS
Digital Marketing
Acquisition cost or return measured across all channels combined, not just paid ads. It shows the true efficiency of the whole marketing engine.
Marketing funnel
TOFU / MOFU / BOFU
Digital Marketing
The stages a customer moves through — awareness, consideration and conversion — often split into top, middle and bottom of funnel.
Incrementality
Digital Marketing
The additional conversions an ad actually caused, versus the ones that would have happened anyway. The truest measure of whether spend is working.
Attribution
Digital Marketing
The rules that decide which marketing touchpoints get credit for a conversion — for example first-click, last-click or data-driven.
AOV
Average Order Value
Digital Marketing
Total revenue divided by number of orders. A key lever on profitability and on how much you can afford to spend acquiring a customer.
Conversion rate
CVR
Digital Marketing
The percentage of visitors or clicks that complete a desired action, such as a purchase or enquiry.
CTR
Click-Through Rate
Digital Marketing
Clicks divided by impressions, shown as a percentage. It measures how compelling an ad is to the people who see it.
CTR = clicks ÷ impressions × 100
CPM
Cost Per Mille
Digital Marketing
The cost of one thousand ad impressions. Used to price awareness and reach-based campaigns.
CPC
Cost Per Click
Digital Marketing
The average amount paid each time someone clicks an ad. A cost input, not a success metric on its own.
CPA
Cost Per Acquisition
Digital Marketing
The average cost to generate one conversion — a sale, lead or sign-up. The core efficiency metric for lead generation.
CPA CalculatorLTV:CAC ratio
Digital Marketing
Lifetime value divided by acquisition cost. A ratio of 3:1 is the common benchmark for healthy unit economics; below 1:1 you lose money on every customer.
LTV
Customer Lifetime Value
Digital Marketing
The total gross profit a customer generates across their whole relationship with you — every repeat purchase, not just the first.
LTV CalculatorCAC
Customer Acquisition Cost
Digital Marketing
The total sales and marketing cost required to win one new customer. The number that decides whether growth is sustainable.
CAC = spend to acquire ÷ new customers
Break-even ROAS
Digital Marketing
The exact return at which an ad-driven sale makes zero profit. Anything above it builds profit; anything below loses money.
Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ profit margin
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend
Digital Marketing
The revenue generated for every £1 spent on advertising. It measures efficiency, not profit — a good ROAS depends entirely on your margin.
ROAS = revenue ÷ ad spend
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