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
C
- Concentration risk
- Concentration risk is the danger of depending too heavily on one feed, one traffic source, one keyword group or one account, so a single failure hurts the whole business.
- Credit line (ad spend financing)
- A credit line is borrowed money, from a bank, card, lender or the ad platform itself, used to pay for traffic before the feed revenue arrives.
E
- EBITDA
- EBITDA is a company's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, used as a rough measure of operating profit.
P
- Platform risk
- Platform risk is the chance that a company you depend on, such as Google, Microsoft or Meta, changes its rules, prices or products in a way that damages your business.
R
- Revenue ex-TAC
- Revenue ex-TAC is revenue after subtracting traffic acquisition cost: what the business keeps once the traffic that produced the revenue has been paid for.
U
- Unit economics
- Unit economics is the profit or loss on a single unit of the business, which in search arbitrage means one visitor or one click bought.
W
- Working capital
- Working capital is the cash a business needs to cover day-to-day costs between paying its suppliers and being paid by its customers.