Glossary / Less acronym fog
The advertising glossary.
Plain-language definitions for the terms that appear in a creative brief, an adtech discussion, or a campaign report.
- Ad server
- A system that manages advertising decisions or creative delivery. Its exact responsibilities depend on the campaign and publisher setup.
- Affiliate commission
- Compensation tied to a qualifying action under an affiliate program’s terms. Pending activity, approved commissions, and paid amounts can differ.
- Aspect ratio
- The relationship between a canvas’s width and height. Preserving the ratio avoids stretching the design when a preview scales.
- Attribution
- The rules or model used to assign credit for an outcome to marketing interactions. Attribution is not automatically proof of causal impact.
- Call to action
- The invitation to take the next step, such as seeing a sample or exploring a product. Its wording should match the actual destination.
- Conversion
- A recorded action defined as meaningful for a campaign. Name the action clearly; an inquiry, purchase, and qualified opportunity are different outcomes.
- Conversion rate
- Counted outcomes divided by a stated opportunity count, expressed as a rate. Identify whether the denominator is clicks, sessions, users, or another measure.
- CPA
- Cost per action or acquisition: the stated spend divided by the defined outcome count. Label the action rather than using an unexplained conversion total.
- CPC
- Cost per click: the stated spend divided by the reported click count. It describes cost, not the business value of each click.
- CPM
- Cost per thousand impressions: spend divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000. Keep the cost definition and source of the impression count visible.
- CTR
- Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions, usually expressed as a percentage. It measures click activity relative to the stated impression count.
- DSP
- Demand-side platform. A system used on the buying side to manage access to advertising opportunities and campaign decisions.
- HTML5 creative
- An advertisement delivered as structured web content rather than only a flat image. Accepted files, click handling, assets, and packaging depend on the recipient.
- Impression
- A counted advertising delivery or display event under the reporting system’s definition. Do not assume every impression was noticed by a person.
- Landing page
- The destination reached after following an ad. It should make the advertised offer and the next step recognizable.
- Programmatic advertising
- Advertising transactions supported by automated systems. It can include different buying arrangements rather than one identical auction path.
- Qualified lead
- An inquiry that meets a business’s agreed relevance criteria. The definition should be shared by the people generating and handling the inquiry.
- Responsive creative
- Creative designed to adapt to an allowed environment or assembled from assets. Clarify the requested deliverable rather than treating all responsive approaches as the same.
- ROAS
- Return on ad spend: attributed revenue divided by the stated advertising spend. It is a revenue ratio, not a complete measure of profit.
- SSP
- Supply-side platform. A system supporting the publisher or selling side in making advertising inventory available.
- UTM parameters
- Campaign labels added to a destination URL to describe referral context for a compatible measurement setup. Keep personal information out of these fields.
- Viewability
- A measurement of whether an ad met defined visibility conditions. Check the applicable method and threshold; this is different from attention or business value.
- Creative version
- An identifier tying an approved concept to its actual file, format, language, destination, and delivery record. It makes campaign changes traceable.
Go deeper in the measurement field note and adtech field note. For the official definition of click-through rate, see Google Ads’ CTR documentation.