Paid media glossary: advertising terms, defined

In short

A working glossary of paid media: the efficiency metrics (ROAS, CPA, CPM, ACoS), the measurement concepts that decide whether those metrics can be trusted (attribution windows, incrementality, blended ROAS), and the campaign and creative terms that come up in every account review.

Metrics

ROAS — Return on ad spendROAS (return on ad spend) is the revenue generated by advertising divided by the amount spent on it. A campaign that spe...Break-even ROASBreak-even ROAS is the return on ad spend at which a campaign covers its costs exactly, calculated as 1 divided by gross...CPA — Cost per acquisitionCPA (cost per acquisition) is ad spend divided by the number of conversions. Spending $2,000 to generate 50 conversions ...CPC — Cost per clickCPC (cost per click) is ad spend divided by clicks. It measures what you pay for attention, not for results. CPC is set ...CPM — Cost per milleCPM (cost per mille) is the cost of one thousand impressions, calculated as ad spend divided by impressions, multiplied ...CTR — Click-through rateCTR (click-through rate) is clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. An ad shown 10,000 times and click...Conversion rate — CVRConversion rate (CVR) is conversions divided by clicks or sessions, expressed as a percentage. If 1,600 clicks produce 5...AOV — Average order valueAOV (average order value) is total revenue divided by number of orders. $48,000 across 600 orders is an AOV of $80. AOV ...ACoS — Advertising cost of saleACoS (advertising cost of sale) is ad spend divided by attributed sales, expressed as a percentage. It is the standard e...TACoS — Total advertising cost of saleTACoS (total advertising cost of sale) is ad spend divided by total revenue including organic sales, expressed as a perc...FrequencyFrequency is the average number of times each person saw your ad, calculated as impressions divided by reach. A frequenc...ImpressionsAn impression is one instance of your ad being served. Impressions count deliveries, not people: the same person seeing ...ReachReach is the number of unique people who saw your ad at least once, as distinct from impressions, which count every deli...LTV — Customer lifetime valueLTV (customer lifetime value) is the total gross profit a customer generates across their whole relationship with your b...CAC — Customer acquisition costCAC (customer acquisition cost) is the full cost of winning a new customer, including ad spend, agency or staff time and...Payback period — CAC paybackPayback period is how long the gross profit from a customer takes to repay what you spent acquiring them. Spending $60 t...Contribution marginContribution margin is what is left from revenue after every cost that varies with the sale: product cost, shipping, pac...Impression share — ISImpression share is the percentage of impressions you received out of the impressions you were eligible for. A 40% impre...

Targeting

Retargeting — RemarketingRetargeting is advertising to people who have already interacted with your business, such as site visitors, video viewer...Lookalike audienceA lookalike audience is an audience the platform builds by finding users who resemble a source list you provide, such as...Negative keywordsNegative keywords are terms you exclude so your ads do not show for them. They are the main tool for stopping wasted spe...Match typeMatch type controls how closely a search query must resemble your keyword before your ad is allowed to show. Google offe...Dayparting — Ad schedulingDayparting is restricting or adjusting your ads by time of day and day of week, so budget goes to the hours that perform...Geo-targeting — Location targetingGeo-targeting restricts where your ads can serve, by country, region, city, postcode or a radius around a point. It also...Audience exclusionAudience exclusion stops your ads showing to a defined group, such as existing customers, recent purchasers, current sub...Custom audienceA custom audience is an audience built from your own data rather than from platform interest categories: a customer emai...

Campaign types

Advantage+ — Advantage PlusAdvantage+ is Meta's automated campaign framework, where the platform handles audience selection, placement and creative...Performance Max — PMaxPerformance Max (PMax) is Google's automated campaign type that serves across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discov...Programmatic advertisingProgrammatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of ad inventory through real-time auctions, rather than by ...Bid strategyA bid strategy is the rule that decides what you pay for each auction. Manual strategies set a cost you control directly...Target CPA — tCPATarget CPA is an automated bid strategy where you state the average cost per conversion you want and the platform sets i...Target ROAS — tROASTarget ROAS is an automated bid strategy where you specify the return on ad spend you want and the platform bids more fo...

Measurement

Blended ROAS — MERBlended ROAS is total revenue from all sources divided by total advertising spend across all platforms. It is sometimes ...Quality ScoreQuality Score is Google's 1 to 10 diagnostic of how relevant your keyword, ad and landing page are to a user's search. I...Attribution windowAn attribution window is the period after seeing or clicking an ad during which a conversion is still credited to that a...IncrementalityIncrementality is the share of conversions that genuinely happened because of advertising, rather than conversions that ...MCP — Model Context ProtocolMCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data. An MCP server ...Search terms reportThe search terms report shows the actual queries people typed that triggered your ads, as opposed to the keywords you bi...Conversion windowA conversion window is the length of time after an ad interaction during which a conversion is still counted for that ad...View-through conversion — VTCA view-through conversion is credited when someone is shown your ad, does not click it, and converts later within the vi...Server-side trackingServer-side tracking sends conversion data to ad platforms from your own server rather than from the visitor's browser. ...Conversions API — CAPIThe Conversions API (CAPI) is Meta's server-side channel for sending conversion events directly from your server or ecom...Pixel — Tracking pixelA pixel is a snippet of JavaScript on your site that reports visitor actions back to an ad platform: page views, add to ...UTM parameters — UTM tagsUTM parameters are tags appended to a destination URL that tell your own analytics where a visit came from. The five are...Landing page experienceLanding page experience is Google's assessment of how useful and relevant your landing page is to the people who click y...

Creative

Ad fatigue — Creative fatigueAd fatigue is the decline in performance that happens when an audience has seen the same creative too many times. The cl...Creative testingCreative testing is the practice of running multiple ad concepts against the same audience to find which message, format...Safe zoneA safe zone is the area of an ad creative that stays clear of interface elements such as profile names, captions, button...Rich media adsRich media ads are display ads that go beyond a static image, using video, audio, animation or interactive elements the ...Creative hook — HookA creative hook is the opening of an ad, the first frame or line that decides whether anyone consumes the rest of it. In...

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