Pay Per Click(PPC) Glossary 2013

PPC Glossary 2013

Accelerated Ad Delivery: An ad serving method that displays your ads as often as possible until the daily budget is reached - See Ad Delivery

Ad Scheduling: Also known as day parting, ad scheduling allows an advertiser using a pay per click search engine to control the day and time their ads appear. Some pay per click search engines also allow you to control your bids during a certain time of day.

Ad Auction: Occurs every time a search is performed to determine which ads will show for the query and in what order.

Ad Delivery: How quickly your ads will show in a single day. AdWords offers two choices for ad delivery - Standard and Accelerated

Ad Group: Contains one or more ads with a target set of keywords and/or placements.

Ad Placement: Locations on the Google Content Network where your ad can appear based upon target keywords and relevancy to your ad. This could be across an entire Website or on a single page of a site. Placements can be custom-tailored in the AdWords account manager or you can let Google choose relevant placements for your ads.

Ad Ranking/Positioning: The order in which your ad appears based upon the keyword maximum bid and ad Quality Score.

Ad Rationing: Is a feature of Google AdWords that spreads the delivery of your ads throughout the day so as to not exhaust the daily budget early in the day.

Ad Rotation Settings: The order in which your ads are delivered as it is only possible to show one ad at a time. Google offers two ad rotation settings. Optimize (default) delivers those ads that are the best performing more often. This will likely receive more impressions and clicks overall, since they are more attractive and usually have better positioning. Rotate delivers ad more evenly.

Ad Scheduling: Also known as day parting, ad scheduling allows an advertiser using a pay per click search engine to control the day and time their ads appear. Some PPC search engines also let you control your bids during a certain time of day.

Ad Variations: Multiple versions of an ad for a single product or service in the same ad group targeting the same keywords. Ad variations let you test different ad copy to see what is attracting your target audience.

AdWords Discounter: An automated tool that monitors and adjusts the actual cost-per-click (CPC) so that the lowest possible bid is paid for an ad's position. This means that you pay the minimum possible CPC needed to exceed the next ranking ad.

AdWords Editor: A free desktop application used for managing an AdWords account, including making bid adjustments, creating new ads, changing ad delivery and much more.

Automatic Placements: Placements that Google finds automatically based upon keywords in your ad group.

Average Cost-Per-Click (Avg. CPC): The average amount paid each time an ad is clicked. Cost of all clicks / # of clicks = Avg. CPC.

Average Position (Avg. Pos.): Tells the average position an ad appears in search results when that keyword is searched. For example, an average position of 2.4 means that an ad usually appears between the 2nd and 3rd positions.

B

Broad Keyword Match: Allows your ad to appear for searches on similar phrases and variations. For example, if the broad match keyword was "yellow shoes" your ad would show for searches like "yellow running shoes" or "shoes with yellow laces" or "yellow and blue shoes". See Exact Keyword Match

C

Campaign: Is the first level of the AdWords structure. A campaign consists of one or more ad groups and each ad group has a set of ads and keywords. A campaign can represent a broad spectrum of products or services, where an ad group is focused on a single product or service. For example you could have a 'Headphone' campaign and within the campaign you could have a 'wireless headphone' ad group, a 'in-ear headphone' ad group and a 'clip on headphone' ad group, each of which have keywords specific to that product category.

Click: Occurs whenever a user sees your ad and clicks on it. Also known as a Click Through.

Click Through Rate (CTR): Is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times that ad has appeared in a given time. This gives a good indicator of ad performance. A high CTR means an ad is performing well, a low CTR means poor performance. CTR = # of Clicks / # of Impressions

Content Network: Also known as contextual targeting, these networks serve paid advertising via text, image and video ads on Websites that offer similar content to what you are advertising.

Contextual Targeting: An ad targeting system that matches ads that use keyword targeting to relevant and related sites on the Content Network.

Conversion: When a visitor, after clicking on an ad and arriving at your site, completes a specified action. This could be completing a purchase, signing up for an e-mail, subscribing to an RSS feed and so on.

Conversion Page: The page at which the visitors completes the action to be counted as a conversion. E.g. shopping cart, interest form, subscription page, etc.

Conversion Rate: The rate of which visitors or prospects take a desired action on your site. Desired action steps can involve purchases, leads, contact form completions, newsletters or email sign ups, registration for White Papers, etc. Example: If 100 visitors come to your site and 3 signup for your monthly newsletter than your conversion rate would be 3%.

Conversion Tracking: Allows you to track various actions or goals on your Website like leads, purchases, signups, contacts, etc. Conversion tracking is usually coupled with an analytics system like Google Analytics.

Conversion Types: The action completed to count as a conversion. E-mail signup, purchase, subscriptions, etc.

Conversions (1-per-click): Since multiple conversions can be completed after a single ad click, this number records only one conversion per click.

Conversions (many-per-click): A count of all of the conversions completed after a single click on an ad.

Cost /Conversion: Shows how much a single conversion (purchase, e-mail signup, subscription, page view, etc) cost. Total Cost / # of Conversions

Cost-Per-Action (CPA): A pricing model that charges every time a visitor completes a specific action (purchase, e-mail sign up, subscription and so on).

Cost-Per-Click (CPC): The amount you will pay for a single click on your ad.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bid: A maximum amount one is willing to spend for clicks on an ad. This can be set at the ad group level for all keywords, or it can be set individually for each keyword.

Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM): A pricing model that charges for every 1,000 impressions an ad has rather than by click as in CPC bidding.

D

Daily Budget: The amount you are willing to spend in a single day for a single campaign.

Day Parting: See Ad Scheduling

Destination URL: The URL of the page a visitor will be directed to after clicking an ad.

Display Ad: Graphical ad format that includes Image ads, Flash ads, and animated .gif ads.

Display URL: The URL displayed in an ad. This is not necessarily the URL of the page a visitor will arrive at after click.

Distribution Preference: Indicates whether or not your ads will appear on the Google Search site and/or the Google Content Network.

Double Serving: Displaying more than one ad for the same company at the same time.

E

End Date: The date at which you would like your ad campaign to end. An indefinite date can be set too.

Exact Keyword Match: Only shows your ad for that exact phrase. If your exact match keyword was "yellow shoes" your ad would only show when that phrase was searched, and not when phrases like "blue and yellow shoes" or "yellow shoes for running" were searched. See Broad Keyword Match

F

Frequency: The average number of times an ad was seen by a unique user over a given time period.

Frequency Capping: The action of limiting the number of times your ad is seen by a unique user over a given time period on the Google Content Network. This sets the number of impressions allowed for a day, week or month.

G

Geo-Targeting: When an advertisement is displayed only in certain locations. Geo-targeting allows you to specify who will see your ads based on the location of the searcher. If you want to sell your services or products to a localized market, Geo-targeting is the method to use.

Google Content Network: The collection of sites and applications that display Google AdWords ads based on the content on the site.

Google Search Network: A collection of sites displaying Google search results

I

Image Ads: Ads that use an image or graphic. These ads can only appear on sites in the Google Content Network.

Impression: The number of times an ad has been shown.

Impressions per Day: The number of times an ad has been shown for a single day.

Interaction Rate: The percentage of time users spent interacting with a display ad. For example, a video ad could have an interaction rate that is the percentage of times a visitor actually clicks on your ad to watch the video.

K

Keyword: Those phrases that an ad will be targeted at. When a targeted keyword is searched the ad will appear.

Keyword Insertion: Term used within the PPC advertising field allowing for dynamic insertion of a target keyword either into the headline or description of your ad text. This will prominently bold the keyword allowing for greater visibility and higher Click Thru Rates.

Keyword Matching Options: Different ways a keyword might trigger an ad. These include Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match and Negative Match.

Keyword Tool: A free Google tool that helps to identify relevant key phrases to target.

L

Landing Page: This is the Web page that a searcher arrives at after clicking on an advertisement. The more tailored a Landing Page is to a specific query, the better results you will see.

M

Maximum Cost Per Click: Or Max CPC is a term used by Google AdWords to denote the most you are willing to pay for one click on your ad. However, this does not mean you will actually pay this amount. Other factors such as Quality Score and competition will play a factor.

Mouseover Rate: The percentage of time users mouseover an ad for 1 second or longer.

Multivariate Testing: A split testing method that lets AdWords users test multiple ad texts at once. You could test all of your ad headlines, descriptions and display URLs by mixing and matching each of them. For example you have three ads: A, B, and C. With multivariate testing you mix and match the different parts of those three ads. Take the headline from B, description from A and display URL from C and test against other varieties to find the perfect ad.

My Change History: An AdWords tool that gives users a history of changes made to campaigns, ad groups and keywords, such as bid increases, ad text edits and more.

N

Negative Keyword: A word or phrase used in pay per click advertising that allows you to block unwanted searches or impressions. Example: If you sell only red widgets, you want to add blue, green, black, etc. as negative keywords. This way your ad will not be shown for a product you do not sell.

O

Organic Search Positions: Non-paid search engine results. Organic search positions are calculated with complicated algorithms unique to each search engine.

Organic Search Rankings: See Organic Search Positions.

P

Phrase Keyword Match: Only shows your ad when that key phrase is searched with words in the specified order. Ads will appear in searches with the phrase plus words before or after it. For example if your phrase match keyword was "yellow shoes", your ad would appear for searches like "leather yellow shoes" or "blue and yellow shoes", but not for searches like "yellow leather shoes" or "shoes with yellow laces" because the phrase was broken.

Placements: Locations where your ads have appeared in the Google Content Network.

Position Preference: An option that lets you pick where you want your ads to appear among all adds on a given page.

Q

Quality Score: A numerical score assigned by Google AdWords utilized in their Pay Per Click platform. The Quality Score is determined by an ad's Click Thru Rate, keyword relevance, Landing Page relevance and other factors. Combining the ad's Quality Score with your maximum Cost Per Click and advertiser competitiveness determines your ad's position and what you end up paying per click

R

Rationing: See Ad Rationing

Recommended Daily Budget: A budget that is determined by Google AdWords to have your ad show as many times as possible for your keywords.

Relevance: How useful the ad or keyword is to the searcher or audience.

Return on Investment: Measured by how much return you receive from your online marketing investment. An example would be if you spend $1000 on Pay Per Click ads and you make $2000 in profit from sales, then your Return on Investment would be 100%. Calculated: ($2000-$1000) / 1000 = 100%

S

Search Partners: Sites within the Google Search Network that display Google AdWords ads.

Split Testing: Is used to determine the best options for ads. By showing multiple ads over a course of time, split testing helps determine which ad texts, images, message and more are most effective.

Standard Ad Delivery: An ad serving method that shows ads across a day to make sure you don't accrue all of your clicks early on.

T

Text Ad: Ads that use only text to convey the message. This is the primary type of ad for Google AdWords and the only type shown in Google search results.