Frequently Used PPC Terms & What They Mean

Don’t freak out with some of the Pay-Per-Click language, it may seem complicated at first, but if you can learn a few of the terms listed below the rest will start to come naturally as you go through your PPC Management cycle.

This list is by no means finished, so if you’ve found it helpful, bookmark it, and the next time you visit there might be some new terms to learn.

Common PPC Terms

A/B Testing: Comparing two versions of a web page or app to see which one performs better. Typically we would be looking for the best conversion rates.

Ad extension/asset: Additional information, such as a phone number or address, that can be added to an ad to provide more context and encourage users to click.

Ad group: A collection of ads within a PPC campaign that are grouped together based on their target keywords and ad targeting options.

Ad Rank: The position of an ad on a search engine results page, determined by the ad's bid and Quality Score.

Attribution Models: This is how we identify which marketing channel or ad campaign has contributed to a conversion based on when it was accessed by a customer during their conversion journey. We can assign a different value to each touchpoint based on where it was in the journey and how important it was to the resulting conversion. This helps us allocate budget efficiently.

Bids: How much the advertiser is willing to pay for a single click on their ad. Bids can be set manually or automatically.

Campaign: A collection of Ad Groups that control the targeting settings and budget.

Click: When a searcher sees your advert and clicks on the link to your website.

Conversion: A desired action taken by a user, such as making a purchase or filling out a form, after clicking on an ad.

Conversion Path: The journey a user goes through from initial engagement to final conversion. It can be looked at from a marketing channel perspective, advert perspective, or site action perspective.

CPC: Cost-per-click, the amount an advertiser pays for each click on their ad.

CPM: Cost-per-thousand impressions, the cost an advertiser pays for every thousand times their ad is shown.

CTR: Click-through rate, the ratio of users who click on an ad to the number of times the ad is shown.

CVR: Conversion Rate, the ratio of users who complete a specific conversion action to the number of times the advert was clicked.

Impression: This is when your ad is shown on the Search Engine Results Page.

Impression share: The percentage of times an ad is shown divided by the estimated number of times it could have been shown.

Keywords: The words or phrases that trigger an ad to be shown to a user in response to their search query.

Marketing Funnel: This is the progression of steps a user goes through before becoming a customer. A funnel has multiple stages such as awareness, interest, consideration, and purchase.

Top Funnel: At the top of the funnel the goal is usually to attract potential customers and build brand awareness.

Bottom Funnel: At the bottom of the funnel the goal is to convert the potential customer into a paying customer.

PPC: Pay-per-click, a type of online advertising where the advertiser pays each time a user clicks on one of their ads.

Quality Score: A metric used by Google Ads to evaluate the relevance and quality of an ad, ad group, and landing page.

Remarketing: A technique used to target ads to users who have previously interacted with a website or app.

ROAS: Return-on-advertising-spend, is used to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign in terms of revenue. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue generated by a campaign by the total ad spend and is represented as a ratio or percentage. The higher the number the better.

ROI: Return-on-investment, is used to measure the efficiency of an investment by comparing the gain of the investment against the cost. It is calculated by dividing the gain by the cost and is represented by a ratio or percentage. The higher the number the better.

SERP: Search-engine-results-page, this is the page that a search engine returns when a user submits a search. It is made up of paid (ads) and unpaid (organic) links.

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