Paid Search Terminology 101
If you want your business to be competitive in ecommerce, it is imperative that you include paid search in your overall marketing strategy.. This advertising paradigm is a key aspect to online advertising and a crucial part of your marketing operation as a whole. Integral in your success and performance in ecommerce, paid search offers your company greater visibility and exposure in the marketplace by allowing you to bid for more prominent ad positions.
Keeping track of all the terminology you need to know to master paid search can be complicated and overwhelming. So, we compiled a breakdown of all the paid search terms you need to know. Think of this glossary as your complete guide to everything in the world of paid search. You should bookmark this page so you can go back to it anytime to reference throughout your PPC endeavors.
Read to dive in? Let’s go!
What is Ad Position?
Also known as ad rank, your ad position is the position of your ad on a SERP page, as compared to where other ads appear on the page.
What is Google Ads (Adwords)?
Google Adwords is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform that allows companies to conduct keyword-targeted digital ad campaigns. Companies bid for more competitive ad positions to get their ad to rank higher on the search results page, based on keywords they want to rank for that their users are actively searching for.
What is AMS?
Amazon Marketing Services is Amazon’s pay-per-click platform that enables sellers to run keyword-targeted campaigns on Amazon’s ecommerce marketplace to connect their product to a relevant audience of potential customers based on their customers’ shopping interests, and search words they are actively searching for.
What is Ad Copy?
Ad copy is a form of sales copy that refers to the copywriting that is used in advertisements. It is designed to incite potential customers to take action with the goal of increasing traffic and conversions, as well as elevating the value of a brand.
What is Automated Bidding?
Automated bidding is a bidding strategy that leverages machine intelligence to determine how advertisers should bid on ad positions in real time based on the target goals of the campaign. It can potentially take the trial and error out of bidding on ad positions and help maximize performance of their ads in the SERPs.
What is Bounce Rate?
A term used to analyze a company’s web traffic, it refers to the percentage of visitors who navigated to a site and then left (or bounced) instead of continuing to explore other pages on the same site.
What is Click Through Rate?
A term also used to measure performance of a company’s web analytics, Click through rate refers to the number of visitors who viewed a site and then clicked on a specific link as compared to the total amount of impressions or views the page had.
What is Conversion Rate?
Another crucial term to analyze web performance , conversion rate refers to the ratio of visitors to your site who performed a specific action on a web page such as purchased a product, subscribed or signed up for a service as compared to the total number of visitors.
What does CPM Mean?
CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions and is a metric used to gage how many thousands of people have made an impression on a piece of marketing or advertising content.
What is an Impression?
An impression also known as a view through is a metric used to analyse a company’s engagement that refers to when a web page or piece of content is viewed by a user.
What is a Click?
A click is used to measure a company’s engagement and refers to an action that a user takes on a web page or piece of content.
What Does PPA Mean?
PPA which stands for pay per action is similar to PPC, but instead of a business paying per click on a piece of content as in PPC, they are paying when a user performs a specific action such as subscribing to their mailing list, purchasing their product or visiting their website.
What is a Bid?
Used by online businesses in online ad campaigns, a business will place bids on targeted keywords in pay-per-click auctions to compete for higher ranking, ad positions in the search results.
What Does CPA mean?
CPA which stands for cost per action refers to the cost an advertiser pays for a specific action a user takes on on a piece of marketing or web content.
What is a Display Ad?
Typically charged on a cost per click (CPC) basis, a display ad is used by an online business to attract their target audience to their products or offerings and incite them to take a specific action. The content in a display ad is usually either text-based or composed of images or video.
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