Digital marketing has its own vocabulary. Whether you are a business owner reviewing campaign reports, a marketing professional working with an agency, or someone new to the industry, this glossary covers the 100 terms you are most likely to encounter. Definitions are written in plain English.
A
A/B testing: A method of comparing two versions of an ad, landing page, or email to determine which performs better. One variable is changed between the two versions (such as a headline or image), and performance data determines the winner.
Ad auction: The real-time process that determines which ads are shown to a user and in what order. On Google and Meta, ad position is determined by a combination of bid amount and quality score rather than bid alone.
Ad creative: The visual and copy elements of an advertisement, including the image or video, headline, body text, and call to action.
Ad fatigue: A decline in ad performance that occurs when the same audience has seen the same ad too many times. Symptoms include falling click-through rate and rising cost per result.
Algorithm: A set of rules used by a platform to determine how content is ranked, distributed, or shown to users. Google's search algorithm ranks web pages; Meta's feed algorithm determines what appears in a user's social feed.
Attribution: The process of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that contributed to it. Different attribution models (last click, first click, data-driven) distribute credit differently.
Audience: A defined group of people that an advertiser wants to reach. Audiences can be defined by demographics, interests, behaviour, or their previous interactions with your website or app.
B
Backlink: A link from one website to another. Backlinks from authoritative sites are a positive signal for SEO, as they indicate that other websites consider your content credible and worth referencing.
Bid: The maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a click, impression, or conversion in an ad auction. Most platforms use automatic bidding strategies that adjust bids to optimise for a stated goal.
Bounce rate: In Google Analytics, a session where a user visits only one page on your website before leaving. High bounce rates on landing pages can indicate a mismatch between the ad and the page content.
Brand awareness: A campaign objective aimed at increasing how many people recognise and recall a brand, rather than driving immediate conversions.
Budget: The total amount allocated to a campaign or ad set. Can be set as a daily budget (spend per day) or a lifetime budget (total spend over the campaign period).
C
Call to action (CTA): A prompt in an ad or piece of content that tells the user what to do next, such as Buy Now, Learn More, or Get a Quote.
Campaign: The top-level structure in an ad account that contains one or more ad sets or ad groups. The campaign level is typically where the objective is set.
Carousel ad: An ad format that allows multiple images or videos to be displayed in a swipeable sequence, each with its own headline and link.
Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click on an ad after seeing it. Calculated as clicks divided by impressions. A higher CTR generally indicates that the ad creative and targeting are well matched.
Conversion: A desired action taken by a user, such as completing a purchase, submitting a form, or making a phone call. Conversions are the primary metric for performance campaigns.
Conversion rate: The percentage of users who complete a desired action out of the total number who visited the relevant page or saw the relevant ad.
Cookie: A small file stored in a user's browser that records information about their visit to a website. Cookies are used for tracking, personalisation, and ad retargeting, and are subject to privacy regulations.
CPA (cost per acquisition): The average cost of acquiring one conversion, calculated as total ad spend divided by total conversions. Also referred to as cost per result.
CPC (cost per click): The average amount paid each time a user clicks on an ad. Calculated as total spend divided by total clicks.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions): The cost of showing an ad one thousand times. Used primarily in awareness and reach campaigns where impressions rather than clicks are the goal.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management. A system for storing and managing customer data, interaction history, and sales pipeline. Common CRM platforms include HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho.
Custom audience: An audience created on Meta or Google using your own customer data, such as a list of email addresses or website visitors identified through the pixel.
D
Data-driven attribution: An attribution model that uses machine learning to assign credit to touchpoints based on their actual contribution to conversions, rather than following a fixed rule such as last click.
Display advertising: Visual ads (images, animations, or videos) shown on websites and apps that are part of a display network such as Google Display Network. Display ads raise awareness and support retargeting.
Dynamic ad: An ad that automatically personalises its content for each viewer based on data, such as showing a user the specific product they last viewed on your website.
E
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google's framework for evaluating the quality of web content, particularly for YMYL (your money or your life) topics.
Engagement: Interactions with a piece of content or ad, including likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks. Engagement rate is engagement divided by reach or impressions.
Evergreen content: Content that remains relevant over time regardless of when it is read, rather than being tied to a specific news event or date. Evergreen content continues to attract organic traffic long after it is published.
F
First-party data: Data collected directly from your own customers and website visitors, such as email addresses, purchase history, and on-site behaviour. Considered the most reliable and privacy-compliant form of audience data.
Frequency: The average number of times a single person has seen a specific ad within a given period. High frequency can indicate ad fatigue.
Funnel: A model describing the stages a customer moves through before converting, typically from awareness to consideration to decision. Marketing strategies are often designed to address users at different funnel stages.
G
GA4 (Google Analytics 4): The current version of Google's web analytics platform. GA4 uses an event-based data model rather than the session-based model of its predecessor (Universal Analytics), and integrates with Google Ads for conversion tracking.
Google Ads: Google's paid advertising platform, which allows advertisers to run search ads, display ads, shopping ads, video ads (YouTube), and app ads.
Google Search Console: A free Google tool that provides data on how a website appears in organic search results, including search queries, click counts, impressions, and indexing status.
Google Tag Manager (GTM): A tag management system that allows tracking codes and scripts to be added to a website without editing the site's source code directly. Reduces reliance on developers for tracking implementation.
H
Hashing: A process that converts personal data such as an email address into a fixed-length string of characters. Used when uploading customer lists to ad platforms so that personal data is not transmitted in plain text.
Hreflang: An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and regional version of a page to show to users in different locations. Used for websites with content in multiple languages or targeting multiple countries.
I
Impression: A single instance of an ad or piece of content being displayed to a user. One user can account for multiple impressions if they see the same ad more than once.
In-feed ad: An ad that appears within a social media feed and is formatted to resemble organic posts from accounts the user follows.
Indexing: The process by which a search engine adds a web page to its database so it can appear in search results. A page must be indexed to rank organically.
K
Keyword: A word or phrase that a user types into a search engine. In Google Ads, keywords are used to trigger search ads when a user's query matches.
Keyword mapping: The process of assigning specific keywords to specific pages on a website, ensuring that each page is optimised for a distinct set of search queries without multiple pages competing for the same terms.
KPI (key performance indicator): A measurable metric used to evaluate the performance of a campaign or marketing activity against a stated objective, such as cost per lead, ROAS, or organic sessions.
L
Landing page: A standalone web page designed to receive traffic from a specific ad or campaign. Landing pages are optimised for a single action such as completing a form or making a purchase.
Lead: A prospective customer who has expressed interest in a product or service, typically by submitting contact information through a form, Messenger funnel, or phone call.
Lookalike audience: An audience created by Meta or Google that targets users who share similar characteristics to an existing custom audience, such as your current customers. Used to reach new users likely to be interested in your product.
M
Match type: In Google Ads, a setting that controls how closely a search query must match a keyword for the ad to be triggered. The three main match types are Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match.
Meta Ads Manager: The platform used to create, manage, and analyse Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns. Formerly known as Facebook Ads Manager.
Meta Business Suite: Meta's centralised management interface for Facebook and Instagram, combining inbox management, post scheduling, analytics, and ads in one platform.
Meta pixel: A JavaScript code snippet placed on a website that tracks user behaviour and sends event data back to Meta. Used for conversion tracking, retargeting, and campaign optimisation.
N
Native advertising: Paid content that is designed to match the look and feel of the editorial or social environment where it appears. Examples include in-feed social ads and sponsored articles on news sites.
O
Objective: In paid advertising, the goal selected when creating a campaign, such as Awareness, Traffic, Leads, or Sales. The objective determines how the platform optimises ad delivery.
Off-page SEO: SEO activities that take place outside your own website, primarily the acquisition of backlinks from other sites. Backlinks signal authority and trustworthiness to search engines.
On-page SEO: SEO activities applied to the content and HTML elements of individual pages, including title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, body content, and internal linking.
Organic reach: The number of unique people who see a piece of content without paid promotion. For Facebook Pages, organic reach has declined significantly as the platform prioritises personal content in the feed.
P
Paid media: Any form of marketing that involves paying for placement or distribution, including Google Ads, Meta Ads, display advertising, and sponsored content.
Performance Max (PMax): A Google Ads campaign type that uses machine learning to serve ads across all of Google's channels (Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Shopping) from a single campaign.
Pixel: A tracking code placed on a website that collects behavioural data from visitors. Both Meta and Google have pixels that connect website activity to ad performance.
PDPA: Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act, which governs how organisations collect, store, and use personal data about individuals in Thailand. Broadly comparable to GDPR in scope and intent.
Q
Quality score: A Google Ads metric that rates the relevance and quality of a keyword, ad, and landing page on a scale of 1 to 10. Higher quality scores can lower costs and improve ad position.
R
Reach: The total number of unique users who have seen a piece of content or ad at least once. Distinct from impressions, which count every view including repeat views by the same user.
Remarketing: A form of advertising that targets users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content. Also called retargeting. Keeps your brand visible to people already familiar with it.
Responsive search ad (RSA): A Google Search Ad format where you provide multiple headlines and descriptions, and Google's algorithm tests combinations to find the best-performing variations.
ROAS (return on ad spend): Revenue generated from ads divided by the amount spent on ads. A ROAS of 4 means you earned four baht for every one baht spent on advertising.
ROI (return on investment): A broader measure of profitability that accounts for all costs, not just ad spend. ROAS measures ad efficiency; ROI measures overall business returns.
S
Search engine results page (SERP): The page displayed by a search engine in response to a query. A SERP typically contains paid search ads at the top, followed by organic listings and sometimes local map results.
SEO (search engine optimisation): The practice of improving a website to increase its visibility and ranking in organic search results on Google and other search engines.
Server-side tracking: A method of tracking where conversion events are sent from a web server directly to an ad platform's API, rather than relying on browser-based scripts. More reliable than browser-based tracking in a post-iOS 14 environment.
Social proof: Evidence that other people have used and valued a product or service, such as reviews, ratings, testimonials, or user-generated content. Increases trust in paid and organic content.
T
Targeting: The process of defining which users should see an ad, based on criteria such as location, age, gender, interests, behaviour, or custom audiences.
Technical SEO: SEO work focused on the infrastructure of a website rather than its content, including site speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, indexability, and structured data.
Third-party cookie: A tracking cookie set by a domain other than the one the user is visiting, typically used by ad networks to track users across multiple sites for retargeting. Being phased out by major browsers due to privacy concerns.
Topical authority: A measure of how comprehensively and credibly a website covers a particular subject area. Sites with high topical authority on a topic tend to rank more broadly for related queries.
UTM parameters: Tags added to the end of a URL to track the source, medium, and campaign name of traffic arriving at your website. UTM data appears in Google Analytics.
V
Video view: A counted interaction when a user watches a video ad. The definition varies by platform: Meta counts a view at 3 seconds; YouTube counts a view at 30 seconds or the full video if shorter.
W
Website traffic: The volume of users visiting a website over a given period. Traffic is broken down by source in analytics tools: organic, paid, direct, referral, email, and social.
Additional terms
Always-on campaign: A campaign that runs continuously rather than for a defined period, used to maintain a consistent brand presence or generate leads throughout the year.
Audience network: Meta's extended ad placement network that shows ads on third-party apps and websites outside of Facebook and Instagram.
Awareness campaign: A campaign designed to maximise the number of people who see an ad, with reach and impressions as the primary metrics rather than conversions.
Bid strategy: The method an advertiser uses to set bids in an ad auction, such as target CPA, target ROAS, maximise conversions, or manual CPC.
Brand safety: Measures taken to ensure that ads do not appear next to content that could damage brand reputation, such as violent, misleading, or politically sensitive material.
Broad match: A Google Ads keyword match type that allows an ad to appear for searches that are related to the keyword, including synonyms and related topics. The most expansive match type.
Catalogue: A structured feed of product data (name, image, price, URL) used by Meta and Google to power dynamic product ads that show users specific products from your inventory.
Conversions API (CAPI): Meta's server-side tracking system that allows purchase and lead events to be sent directly from a web server to Meta, improving data accuracy and attribution.
Daily budget: The average amount an advertiser is willing to spend per day on a campaign or ad set. Platforms may spend slightly more or less than this on any given day but will not exceed the total over a billing period.
Dynamic search ads (DSA): A Google Ads campaign type that automatically generates ad headlines and landing page URLs based on the content of your website, without requiring keyword lists.
Exact match: A Google Ads keyword match type that restricts an ad to appear only when the user's search query matches the keyword exactly or with very close variants. The most restrictive match type.
Facebook Business Manager: Meta's centralised platform for managing multiple Facebook Pages, ad accounts, and team access permissions. Now part of the broader Meta Business Suite.
Impression share: The percentage of times your ad was shown out of the total number of times it was eligible to be shown. Low impression share may indicate a budget or quality score constraint.
Keyword research: The process of identifying the words and phrases that potential customers use when searching for products or services, used to inform both SEO content strategy and paid search campaigns.
Landing page experience: A Google Ads quality metric that rates how relevant and useful a landing page is to the user who clicked the ad. Affects quality score and ad rank.
Lead form ad: An ad format on Meta and LinkedIn that opens a pre-populated form within the platform when clicked, allowing users to submit their contact information without leaving the app.
Lifetime budget: A fixed total amount set for a campaign to spend over its entire duration, rather than on a daily basis.
Local Services Ads: A Google ad format for service businesses that appears at the very top of search results with a Google-guaranteed badge and allows customers to call or message directly from the ad.
Looker Studio: Google's free data visualisation and reporting tool, formerly known as Google Data Studio. Used to build dashboards that pull data from GA4, Google Ads, and other connected sources.
Meta Advantage+: Meta's suite of AI-driven campaign automation features, including Advantage+ audiences and Advantage+ placements, which allow Meta's algorithm to optimise targeting and delivery automatically.
Negative keyword: A keyword that prevents a Google Search ad from appearing when a specific word or phrase is included in a search query. Used to filter out irrelevant searches and improve campaign efficiency.
Phrase match: A Google Ads keyword match type that shows an ad for searches that include the meaning of the keyword. More restrictive than broad match but more flexible than exact match.
Programmatic advertising: The automated buying and selling of digital advertising inventory through technology platforms, allowing ads to be purchased at scale and targeted at specific audience segments in real time.
Retargeting: Showing ads to users who have previously visited your website or engaged with your content. Keeps your brand visible to warm audiences who did not convert on their first visit.
Shopping ads: Google ads that display product images, prices, and store names in search results. Powered by a product feed uploaded to Google Merchant Center.
Smart Bidding: A subset of Google's automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to optimise for conversions or conversion value, including Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximise Conversions.
Structured data: Code added to a web page that helps search engines understand the content of the page and display rich results in search, such as star ratings, FAQs, or product prices.
View-through conversion: A conversion attributed to an ad that the user saw but did not click, suggesting the ad influenced their decision even without a direct click. Most relevant in display and video campaigns.