We get it. The marketing world is full of acronyms, abbreviations, and terms that can feel like a different language. But here’s the thing: you don’t need to be fluent in marketing-speak to understand what’s happening with your campaigns. We’re breaking down the essentials in a way that actually makes sense.

The Metrics

Benchmark

An ad benchmark is determined based on data to have a reference point to see if an ad is performing well This is done by comparing the performance against the benchmark, i.e. a higher, CTR than in the past or against industry or platform standards.

Clicks

Clicks are counted when a person actually clicks on an ad. Ads can be clicked in a number of ways: SMS, display/banner ads, social media ads (Reddit, Meta, X, TikTok), QR codes, emails – the clicks lead users to a landing page or action; those actions provide many insights on consumer behavior and show intent as well as performance indicator.

CPC (Cost Per Click)

How much you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. If your Google Search ad costs $2 per click and you spend $500 a month, that’s roughly 250 clicks. It’s straightforward: lower CPC means you’re paying less to bring people to your site.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The percentage of people who see your ad and actually click on it. If 1,000 people see your ad and 50 click it, your CTR is 5%. A healthy CTR depends on where your ad is showing, but higher is almost always better. It tells you people find your message compelling enough to act on it. Each media tactic will have a different industry benchmark to strive for. 

CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)

What you pay for every 1,000 times your ad is shown, whether people click or not. This matters most for brand awareness campaigns on YouTube or display networks where you’re paying for visibility, not just clicks. A $5 CPM means $5 for every 1,000 impressions.

CPA (Cost Per Action)

What you pay for each actual conversion. A conversion could be a sale, a form submission, a phone call, or any result you care about. If you spend $1,000 and get 10 conversions, your CPA is $100. This is the metric that matters most to business owners because it directly shows what a customer acquisition costs you.

Impressions

Impressions are how many times your ad was shown, whether anyone clicked it or not. A big number here doesn’t always mean success. You want clicks and conversions, not just eyeballs. But impressions matter if you’re trying to build awareness or reach a specific audience. It’s key to define the right media tactic and targeting to ensure you’re reaching the right people as impressions are an important part of the marketing mix.

Impression Share

The percentage of available impressions you actually captured. If impression share is 60%, you’re missing 40% of potential visibility. Low impression share usually means you’ve hit budget caps or your bids aren’t competitive enough. It’s a signal that you could be reaching more people.

ROI (Return on Investment)

The profit you made compared to what you spent. If you invest $1,000 in ads and make $5,000 in sales, your ROI is 400%. It’s the question every business owner wants answered: did this advertising actually make us money?

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Similar to ROI, but specifically for revenue. If you spend $1,000 and generate $4,000 in revenue, your ROAS is 4:1 (or 4x). This is the metric we look at most in performance reports because it’s clean and tells you exactly how much revenue each dollar of ad spend is generating.

The Platforms & Placements

AI Max 

The newest version of Performance Max on Google. It uses AI to optimize campaigns across all of Google’s placements, including the new AI Mode search results. It uses AI to optimize keywords, placements, and landing pages.

Banner Ad

A visual ad that appears on websites and apps. These come in standard sizes (like 320×50, 300×250, 728×90, or 970×250) and usually include images, text, and a button. Banner ads are a staple of display advertising and work well for reaching people who’ve shown interest in your products or services.

Behavioral & Demographic

Target different audiences based on a variety of demonstrated behaviors, such as interest or intent, utilizing 40+ different data providers in Basis.

Brand Campaigns

Ads that show up when people search for your business by name. These are usually cheaper to run than non-brand searches because there’s less competition. They work best when paired with non-brand campaigns to capture people at every stage of their journey.

Contextual

Ads shown based on the content someone is reading or watching right now. If you’re reading an article about hiking, you might see ads for outdoor gear. It’s not about following someone across the internet. It’s just showing relevant ads next to relevant content.

Cross Device Targeting

It is a targeting technique to allow additional reach to unique segments across multiple touchpoints, such as someone who saw an ad on a mobile device and then also was shown the ad on a TV. This tactic, like remarketing, allows for increasing ad frequency and can be used to help attribute conversions to the appropriate device, and drill into performance data better.

Demand Gen (Demand Generation)

Google’s newest campaign type that combines ads across YouTube Shorts, Gmail, and the Display Network. It’s designed to reach people early in the buying journey and build awareness. It tends to work better for longer consideration cycles and brand building.

DSP (Demand-Side Platform)

Think of it as the remote control for buying ads across hundreds of websites and apps at once. Instead of negotiating with individual publishers, you set your budget and target audience, and the DSP automatically buys the best ad placements available. Hagan runs a DSP in house, so we have control and our clients’ best interest at heart when working to achieve goals, this also means more of the ad dollars goes towards the objective and ads are directly controlled by those who understand the brand. DSP allows us to access 1000s of different options including digital Out Of Home (OOH), Connected TV (CTV), Over The Top (OTT), Display Networks, Custom Site List (CSL), Blocked List, Behavioral, Contextual, and even more targeting option.

Hyper-Local

It is a targeting technique to allow ads to be shown in a very specific geographic location that has been defined by a geo-fence. This can be granular points on a map, street addresses, or target places by category.

Negative Keywords

The keywords you tell the media tactic NOT to show your ads for. If you sell high-end espresso machines, you’d add “cheap” or “budget” as negative keywords so you don’t waste money on people looking for something completely different. It’s a way to stay focused on your ideal customer.

Performance Max

Google’s fully automated campaign type that runs across Google’s entire network (Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail). You give it a budget, conversion goals, and creative assets, and Google’s AI decides where to show your ads to get the best results. It handles a lot of the optimization work for you.

Programmatic

Automated ad buying. Your DSP uses real-time data and algorithms to buy ad space on the fly. It sounds complicated, but the benefit is simple: better targeting, faster decisions, and often better prices than buying ads the old-fashioned way. The key is setting up targeting to reach goals, testing, optimizing, and amplifying learnings to drive campaigns. 

Retargeting (also called Remarketing)

Showing ads to people who’ve already visited your site or engaged with your business. Someone browses your product pages but doesn’t buy, and your ads follow them across the web. It’s one of the highest-converting ad tactics because you’re reaching warm leads who already know you exist.

Tracking & Understanding

Conversion Tracking

The setup that tells your advertising platform (DSP, Google, Meta, etc.) when something valuable happens. A purchase, a form submission, a phone call. Without proper conversion tracking, you’re flying blind on whether your ads are actually working.

Attribution / Attribution Modeling

Who gets credit for a conversion? Did the search ad get the sale, or was it the display ad that ran first? Attribution models try to answer this, but it’s complicated because customer journeys are messy. Understanding attribution helps you know which channels are really driving your business, but in reality it normally boils down to a few touch points. Linear attribution helps account for these multi-touch and assigns equal credit to every interaction a customer has with a brand before making a purchase. 

UTM Parameters

Tags you add to URLs to track where traffic came from. When you run a campaign, UTM codes let you see which specific ads, keywords, or sources drove people to your site. Critical for attribution and understanding what actually works. They look like this: ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=summer_sale.

 

Strategy & Testing

A/B Testing

Running two versions of something (two ad headlines, two landing pages, two audience segments) to see which performs better. It’s the only real way to know what works. We do this constantly because small improvements add up fast.

Smart Bidding

Google’s automated bidding strategy that uses machine learning to adjust your bids in real-time based on the likelihood of conversion. Instead of you manually setting bids, Google’s AI does it for you. It powers a lot of the results you see from Performance Max and other automated campaigns. Other media tactics are also using smart bidding, but it could be set-up to be focused on a CPC or CPM goal, with AI, performance is advancing and we’re able to gain more efficiencies with tactics. 

Lookalike Audiences

Audiences that match the characteristics of your best customers. You give a platform anonymized customer data, and it finds similar people likely to be interested. Works well for expansion campaigns when you want to reach new people who think and act like your existing customers. 

 

The Fundamentals

Landing Page

Where your ad sends people. It should match what the ad promised. If your ad says “Learn about spring styles” and the landing page shows winter coats, people bounce. Landing page quality directly impacts whether people convert and affects your overall campaign performance.

Organic Search / Organic Reach

The traffic and visibility you get without paying for ads. Search engine optimization (SEO) is how you improve it. Organic is free but slower to build. Paid media is faster but costs money. Most businesses need both working together.

 

AI Terms In Marketing Campaigns

AI Mode

Google’s conversational search experience where you ask a question and get an AI-generated answer rather than a list of links. Ads can appear within these AI answers, but they’re positioned differently than traditional search results. This is the future of search, and it’s rolling out now.

AI Brief

Creative guidelines that you set up to tell Google’s AI what your brand voice should sound like, what messaging matters to you, and what you don’t want the AI to do. Think of it as a creative direction document for machines. It helps AI-generated ad copy stay on brand.

Agentic Commerce

Where AI agents do the shopping for you. You set a goal (“I need a compact espresso machine”), and an AI agent researches options, compares prices, and handles the purchase. This is coming fast, and it’s changing how ads appear in the buying process. If someone’s AI agent is researching your category, you need to show up in those AI recommendations.

In Practice

These terms pop up in reports, strategy conversations, and platform dashboards. The key is understanding what each one tells you about your campaigns. Are you paying too much per click? Is your audience actually clicking your ads? Are you reaching enough people? Is your budget running out too early?

When we talk about your campaigns, we’re looking at all of these metrics together to answer one question: Is this working? And if it’s not, which lever should we pull to fix it?

Not all metrics matter equally for every campaign. A brand awareness play on YouTube cares way more about impressions and CPM than a search campaign does. A lead generation campaign obsesses over CPA. An e-commerce business lives and dies by ROAS. We build strategy around the metrics that actually matter to your business.

If you see a term we didn’t cover here, ask. That’s what we’re here for.