The glossary
233 terms, each answered in one sentence, then explained properly with an analogy and a worked example.
AllBasicsSearch feedsDomains & parkingBuying trafficMoney & metricsTracking & optimisationPolicy & complianceFraud & invalid trafficSearch adsBusiness & financeAI & the future
A
- Ad arbitrage
- Ad arbitrage is buying visitors with cheap ads and earning more from the ads those visitors see or click on your own pages.
- Advertiser
- An advertiser is the business that pays for an ad in the hope of winning a customer, a lead or a sale.
- Arbitrage
- Arbitrage is buying something in one market and selling it at a higher price in another, keeping the price difference as profit.
C
- Campaign
- A campaign is one organised advertising effort on a platform, with its own budget, targeting, bids and set of ads.
- Click
- A click is one person tapping or clicking on an ad or link and being taken to another page.
- Commercial intent
- Commercial intent is how likely a search or click is to come from someone ready to spend money.
- Conversion
- A conversion is a visitor completing the action a campaign was built to achieve, such as a purchase, a sign-up or a click on a paying ad.
- Creative
- A creative is the actual advertisement a person sees: its image or video, headline, text and button.
F
- Feed provider
- A feed provider is a company that holds a search ad contract with Google, Microsoft or Yahoo and lets smaller publishers use it in return for a share of revenue.
- Funnel
- A funnel is the sequence of steps a visitor passes through from first seeing an ad to the final action that earns money.
I
- Impression
- An impression is one instance of an ad being displayed to someone, whether or not they click it.
K
- Keyword
- A keyword is the word or phrase that triggers search ads, either typed by a person or passed to the search feed by a web page.
L
- Landing page (lander)
- A landing page is the first page a visitor sees after clicking an ad.
M
- Media buyer
- A media buyer is the person who purchases advertising to bring visitors to a page, deciding what to bid, whom to target and which ads to run.
O
- Organic traffic
- Organic traffic is visitors who arrive at a website without the owner paying for an ad, for example from unpaid search results or a typed address.
P
- Paid traffic
- Paid traffic is visitors who reach a website because the site owner paid for an advertisement that brought them there.
- Publisher
- A publisher is whoever owns the web page, app or site where an ad is shown and who earns money when that ad is seen or clicked.
S
- Search arbitrage
- Search arbitrage is buying visitors cheaply from one ad platform and sending them to a page of search ads that pays more per visitor than they cost.
- Search feed
- A search feed is a supply of search ads from Google, Microsoft or Yahoo that a third-party website is allowed to show and earn money from.
- Search intent
- Search intent is the goal a person has in mind when they search, such as learning something, finding a website or buying a product.
- Search partner network
- The search partner network is the collection of non-Google or non-Microsoft sites where an advertiser's search ads can appear through syndication.
- Search syndication
- Search syndication is when a search engine lets other websites and apps show its search results and search ads, and shares the ad revenue with them.
- SERP (search engine results page)
- A SERP is the page of results a search engine shows after someone types a query, mixing paid ads with unpaid listings.
- Sponsored listing
- A sponsored listing is a paid search ad that looks like a search result and charges the advertiser when someone clicks it.
- Syndication partner
- A syndication partner is a company approved by a search engine to display that engine's search ads on its own sites, apps or tools.
T
- The spread (margin)
- The spread is the gap between what an arbitrageur earns from a visitor and what that visitor cost to buy.
- Traffic arbitrage
- Traffic arbitrage is paying to bring visitors to a web page and earning more from those visitors, through ads or sales, than it cost to bring them.
- Traffic source
- A traffic source is the platform or channel that visitors come from, such as Facebook ads, a native ad network or a search engine.
V
- Vertical
- A vertical is a subject area or industry, such as insurance, travel or home improvement, that a set of ads and keywords belongs to.