PPC Glossary

Refer to this overview of commonly used words and acronyms in paid search marketing otherwise known as PPC (Pay Per Click)

AdWords – Google's search advertising platform. Ads can be shown on the search engine results pages (SERPs) or on Google Content Network, or both.

Click – Click is the term used in paid search to refer to a user interacting with an ad by clicking on it and being delivered to a web page. So, a click on an ad generates a hit or a visitor to a web site.

Ad Creative – The 'Ad Creative' refers to the words used in a PPC campaign and is actually shown to search engine viewers. This is the stage where the copy writing skills are needed most. Creative that is optimised and well targeted will usually result in improved CTR.

Conversion Rate – The percentage rate of clicks to events where visitors convert into goal events such as; filling in a form, booking a flight, ordering a product and so on.

CPA – Cost Per Action is the cost for a specific action taken by a user who has responded to an ad. An 'action' is also referred to as a conversion and can include the downloading of a brochure and successful ordering of a product. CPA is a helpful KPI for measuring the effectiveness of a paid search campaign.

CPC – Cost Per Click refers to the cost paid for a single click. CPC is usually looked at on an average basis.

CTR – Click Through Rate is expressed as a percentage. CTR represents the percentage of traffic that clicks through to the destination URL from the ad in the search engines. CTR is also a way to measure how relevant a keyword is within a campaign.

Dayparting – Also referred to as Ad Scheduling. Search engines like Google allow SEM campign managers to control the time of day when ads are to be shown. This is a powerful way of honing in on targeted users.

Keyword(s) – A word or phrase that people search for on search engines. Keyword can be short one word phrases to long multiple word phrases and may or may not contain numbers.

KPI – Short for 'Key Performance Indicator'. Also referred to as a metric.

Landing page – The landing page is the page that the visitor will land on once they have clicked on the ad. Landing pages are vital to the success of any SEM campaign. The landing page must be relevant to the ad being shown and highly optimised in order to convert visitors into customers at an acceptable rate.

PPC – Short for 'Pay Per Click'. Also referred to as 'Search' or 'Paid Search' because traffic from the search engines is generated from paid advertisements which appear at the top and right hand side of the SERPs. The beauty of the pay per click pricing model is that the advertiser only pays for clicks from potential customers, not how many times that ad is shown (impressions).

Quality Score – Refers to an important component of Google's Adwords algorithm used for determining what position the ad will be shown at and the cost-per-click (CPC) required.

ROAS – Return On Advertising Spend. ROAS is a measure of how effective a PPC campaign has been and is expressed as a percentage. ROAS is calculated by dividing revenue resulting from a PPC campaign by the cost of your advertising investment.

ROI – Return On Investment for every dollar spent in the campaign. The ROI formula can be used to measure return at the sales level, gross profit or net profit level.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing. Also, referred to as 'search marketing'. SEM encompasses paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion in search engines.

Split Testing – Split testing refers to the performance testing of ad creatives and webpages. In the instance of ad creatives, split testing runs one ad against a varition of that ad, in order to increase the profitability of an overall campaign.

URL - The acronym for Uniform Resource Locator.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search – The search marketing platform operated by Yahoo!.