Digital Marketing Glossary

PPC

Acronym for “Pay Per Click”. Advertisers pay a fee every time someone clicks on their ads. The main forms of advertising are search engine advertising, but Facebook and other online companies such as Amazon also use the PPC  internet model.

AdWords

The program Google uses to allow businesses or individuals to advertise with them, across their different platforms, which includes the Google search engine, GDN (google display network), Youtube, Google shopping ads, and many mobile apps.

AdSense

The program Google uses to allow people who own websites to monetise their sites with advertising. Javascript code is added to the site, which allows Google to put advertising on the site. The site then becomes part of Googles GDN (Google Display Network)

Google Display Network

The websites across the internet that participate in the AdSense program. Google estimates this is 90% of the internet. Once the AdSense code is added to the website, advertisers can show display ads of various sizes and media on the site.

Google Analytics

Is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet.

Fremium

A business model mainly used on the internet or mobile apps, where the basic service is free, but more advanced services are charged for (at a premium).

Adspend

How much has been spent on advertising for the specified time period. (normally per month).

PPC Campaign

The PPC  (pay per click) advertising used for a specific purpose. For example, you might have a ppc search advertising campaign, a ppc display advertising campaign, and a ppc remarketing campaign for a specific website.

SEO

Search engine optimization. The process of optimizing a site so that it will rank highly in search engine results (normally optimized for Google’s search engine results, as Google is the largest search engine).

SERPs

Search Engine Results Pages

Organic search rankings

The search engine rankings your website naturally gets, excluding any rankings gained from advertising. Using search engine advertising (such as AdWords or Bing’s advertising program) would place your ad above the organic search rankings (that people have been using SEO to get).

Organic traffic

Traffic gained from organic search rankings.

ROI

Return On Investment. Advertisers will have a budget they want to spend on advertising. The return on that advertising investment is the ROI.

Webmaster

The person responsible for web development and for making changes on a website.

Webmaster Tools / Google Search Console

Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. As of May 20, 2015, Google rebranded Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.

Javascript

A computer programming language often used to create interactive effects within web browsers. For example Google analytics code, used to track user data is a snippet of Javascript code.

Remarketing / Retargeting

By adding remarketing code to a website (this is normally a snippet of Javascript provided by the advertising platform), advertisers can follow users around the internet and keep showing them their ads.  The code does this by writing a browser or flash cookie into the website browser. The cookie then tells the advertising platform when to serve the ads.

Retargeting is the same, however instead of calling the process remarketing, facebook called it retargeting.

Browser Cookie

This is a text file that is stored on your computer, by your web browser. It contains information set by web sites such as your session token and user preferences. Different types of code on a website, will read the cookies and send the advertising platform the information needed to advertise appropriate ads.

Flash Cookie

Is a text file that is sent by a Web server to a client when the browser requests content supported by Adobe Flash, a popular browser plug-in.