Devote Digital

Devote Definitions: The Must-Know Terms of Digital Marketing

There are about 1001 terms within the digital marketing landscape, and let’s be honest...

The following little guide is your hassle and confusion-free crash course when it comes to digital marketing lingo. Scroll through as you please, or use the contents below to easily navigate.

Clicks Reach Impressions PAge Engagements Conversions CPM Page Likes Organic ROI Remarketing CTR Impression Share Boost This Post

CLICKS

Clicks measures certain types of interactions with the ad, links to other destinations, and links to expand comments or ‘see more’. It includes:

  • Clicks to a Facebook Business Page
  • Post likes/reactions (“Love”, “Sad” etc.)
  • Comments or shares
  • Clicks to expand media (e.g. clicking on a photo/video to enlarge it)
  • Clicks to take action, like a call-to-action button added to an ad

Impressions

Impressions measure the number of times your ads were on screen in front your target audience. An impression is not the number of unique people your ad reaches, as one person can have multiple “impressions” of the ad. In other words, if one person sees your ad twice, this counts as two impressions.

Reach

Reach gives you a measure of how many unique people were exposed to your message, compared to impressions which is how many times your ad was seen in total. Sometimes the total Reach across multiple campaigns will be higher than the audience size because the entire audience has been reached more than once. If one person sees your ad twice, this still only counts as a reach of 1.

Page Engagement

Page engagement is the metric that shows how many people interacted with your page & post because of your ads; these interactions can include a page/post like, a reaction to your post ("love", "sad" etc.), checking into your location, clicking your call to action ("CTA") button and more. The number of page engagements your receive usually give you an indication of how relevant your ads were to your target audience.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through-rate represents the number of clicks with respect to the number of impressions, and is calculated as clicks divided by impressions. For example, if 100 people see your ad and 10 people click on it this represents a CTR of 10%. If 3 people click on your ad this represents a CTR of 3%, and so on. CTR is a good indication of relevancy.

Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM)

CPM tells you how much it costs you to receive 1,000 impressions of your ad. It is great for estimating how much to spend on a campaign as you can work backwards from how many people you want to reach, to work out how much that will cost. E.g. if CPM is $15 it will cost $15 for 1,000 impressions.

Page Likes

The number of Facebook page likes of your Facebook Page attributed to your ads.

Conversions

Conversions is the term used when you “convert” a web user into achieving a set digital goal. Typically, that goal is to sell a product/service online; so if you have 300 revenue conversions during a Facebook advertising campaign, 300 ad viewers have purchased products off your website. Alternatively, conversions can be the achievement of a wide range of objectives, including actions like calling your business, filling out a lead form, reviewing your business, entering a competition, or driving traffic to an event.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Alternatively known as "return on ad spend" ("ROAS"). The return on investment of an ad with an objective to sell products online, is the numerical ratio of revenue created from an ad compared to the cost of the ad. For example, a positive ROI of 2 to 1 provides that the responsible made $2 for every $1 spent on the ad; if $200 was made in revenue from the ad with an ROI of 2, it would have cost $100 to run the ad.

A ROI value is calculated by dividing the revenue earned from an ad by the total cost of all ad interactions (such as clicks for text ads or views for video ads) that can lead to a conversion.

Search Impression Share

Search impression share in Google AdWords & Shopping advertising, is a competitive metric that provides how often your ads were displayed in Google searches in comparison to your competitors. For example, if you had a search impression share of 50% on an ad targeting the keyword “best Brisbane cafe”, this means your ad was displayed one out of two times for every “best Brisbane cafe” Google search. Alternatively, if you had a search impression share of 100%, this means your ad was displayed for every single “best Brisbane cafe” Google Search.

Organic

Organic is the term used within digital marketing to represent online efforts not using paid advertising. With search engines, an “organic ranking” occurs when you appear for a search without Google ads; a “paid ranking” occurs when you pay to be there (using Google AdWords). On social media, an “organic post” is a normal post that is not paid to be on a social feed; a “paid post” is a post that is paid to be on a social feed.

Remarketing

Remarketing is when a business advertises to web users or social media users who have previously interacted with the business. For example, a business can target Facebook, Instagram or web browser (via Google Display Ads) users who have previously visited their business website (i.e. www.carsales.com.au), Instagram page or Facebook page.

Boost This Post

Something we never talk about. Never click the “boost this post” button. This is a visual representation of the "boost this post" button: