Marketing terms, defined honestly.

ROAS

Revenue divided by ad spend for a given period or campaign.

CPC

Average paid amount per click in a campaign or ad set.

CPM

Cost per 1,000 ad impressions delivered.

CTR

Clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage.

LSA

Google's pay-per-lead format for local service businesses, showing above standard search results.

CAPI

Server-side conversion event sending that bypasses browser-side tracking limits.

ATT

Apple's 2021 iOS requirement that apps request explicit permission to track users across other apps and websites.

Remarketing

Paid ads served to users who have previously visited your site or interacted with your brand.

Lookalike Audience

Algorithm-built audience modeled on the characteristics of an existing customer list or pixel-converted audience.

Advantage+

Meta's algorithm-led ad campaign type that minimizes manual targeting controls.

Performance Max

Google's cross-channel campaign type that delivers ads across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, and Maps from one campaign.

Creative Fatigue

Decline in ad performance over time as the same audience repeatedly sees the same creative.

Meta Pixel

Browser-side tracking code that sends conversion events to Meta for ad optimization and remarketing.

RSA

Google Ads format where the platform algorithmically combines headlines and descriptions into optimized ad variants.

Quality Score

Google's 1-10 scoring of keyword + ad + landing-page relevance that affects CPC and ad rank.

Negative Keywords

Keywords explicitly excluded from a Google or Microsoft Ads campaign to prevent wasted spend.

Match Types

Google Ads keyword targeting modes — broad, phrase, and exact — that control how loosely queries trigger ads.

Frequency Cap

Limit on how many times the same user sees a specific ad creative within a defined period.

Audience Segment

A defined subset of an audience grouped by shared characteristics for targeting or messaging.

CAC

Total marketing + sales spend divided by new customers acquired.

LTV

Total value a customer delivers over the duration of their relationship.

AOV

Total revenue divided by total orders for a period.

MRR

Total predictable monthly subscription revenue across all active customers.

ARR

MRR multiplied by 12 — the annualized run rate of subscription revenue.

Churn Rate

Percentage of customers who cancel or fail to renew in a given period.

Conversion Rate

Visitors who complete a defined goal divided by total visitors.

Intake

The process of qualifying, contacting, and converting an inbound marketing lead into a paid customer.

Show Rate

Percentage of booked appointments where the customer actually shows up.

Marketing Funnel

The stages a prospect passes through from first awareness to converted customer.

Landing Page

A standalone web page designed for a single conversion goal, typically the destination of a paid ad.

A/B Test

Comparing two versions of a page, ad, or email by randomly splitting traffic to measure performance.

CRM

Software that stores customer + prospect data and tracks interactions across the lifecycle.

Google Business Profile

Google's free local business listing that powers Maps + the local pack.

Schema Markup

Standardized JSON-LD data that helps search engines understand page content.

Core Web Vitals

Google's three user-experience metrics: LCP, INP, CLS.

LCP

Time until the largest visible element finishes rendering. Target: under 2.5s.

INP

Latency between a user input and the next visual response. Target: under 200ms.

CLS

Aggregate measure of unexpected layout movement during page load. Target: under 0.1.

GEO

Optimization for citations in generative-AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Topical Authority

Search-engine perception of a site's depth and breadth on a given topic, built through content + links + structure.

E-E-A-T

Google's content-quality framework prioritizing first-hand experience, demonstrated expertise, authoritativeness, and trust signals.

Helpful Content Update

Google algorithm system that demotes content created primarily for search rankings rather than for users.

Internal Linking

Links between pages on the same domain — used to distribute authority + signal topical relationships.

Anchor Text

The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink — used by search engines to interpret the target page's topic.

Service-Area Page

Geo-targeted landing page optimized to rank for [service] in [city] or ZIP-code search queries.

Review Velocity

The rate at which a business accumulates new reviews per location per month.

Backlink

A hyperlink from another website to yours — a primary ranking signal in traditional SEO.

Crawl Budget

The number of pages Googlebot will crawl on your site within a given time window.

Canonical Tag

An HTML link element that tells search engines which URL is the primary version of duplicate or similar content.

301 Redirect

HTTP status code for permanent URL redirect — passes link equity to the destination URL.

Local Pack

The 3-business map result shown above standard search results for local-intent queries.

Featured Snippet

A short answer extracted from a ranking page and displayed at the top of Google search results.

AI Overviews

Google's AI-generated search result summaries that appear at the top of many query results in 2026.

TCPA

US federal law restricting marketing calls and SMS without explicit prior written consent.

HIPAA

US healthcare data privacy law that governs how marketing handles patient information.

GDPR

EU data protection law governing how personal data of EU residents is collected, stored, and processed.

CCPA / CPRA

California's consumer privacy law governing data collection and the right to opt out of data sale.

Attribution

The process of assigning credit for a conversion across the marketing touchpoints that contributed to it.

MMM

Statistical method that estimates the incremental contribution of each marketing channel using aggregated data.

Incrementality

The portion of conversions that would not have occurred without the marketing intervention.

Bounce Rate

Share of sessions that view only one page before leaving the site.

GA4

Google's current analytics platform — event-based, cross-platform, with privacy-first defaults.

UTM Parameters

URL query parameters that pass campaign source, medium, and campaign name to analytics platforms.

Pillar Page

Long-form authoritative page covering a broad topic, linked from and to by supporting articles on subtopics.

UGC

Content created by customers, fans, or paid creators that mimics organic user content.

Lead Magnet

A valuable downloadable or tool offered in exchange for contact information.

Customer Persona

A semi-fictional profile of an ideal customer used to guide marketing and product decisions.

Engagement Rate

Interactions (likes, comments, shares, saves) divided by reach or followers, expressed as a percentage.

Reels

Instagram and Facebook's short-form vertical video format, 15-90 seconds, optimized for discovery.

Social Algorithm

The ranking system platforms use to decide which content to show each user.