Internet Marketing Glossary

What's the point of reading all the great information published at the Internet Marketing Monitor if you don't know what it means? We couldn't agree more. That's why we've provided an ever-expanding glossary of terminology related to internet marketing, online advertising, and search engine optimization. Are you unsure of what something means and don't see it defined here? Pass the term along and we'll get it added to the glossary.


Above the Fold

The part of a website that can be viewed without having to scroll is said to be “above the fold”. Normally, the featured or most important part of a website should be above the fold.
AdSense

AdSense is a tool from Google that allows website owners the opportunity to display targeted Google ads on their sites and earn money. The ads displayed are related to the things that users are looking for on the website or are narrowed by interests that the website owner chooses.
AdWords

Part of the Google portfolio of advertising services, AdWords is a CPC model of keyword-based advertising. The advertiser chooses the keywords and creates the ad. Google then displays the ad alongside their natural search results when visitors are looking for the keywords the advertiser has chosen.
Click-Through

When a visitor to a website clicks an advertisement and is directed to the advertiser’s website, it is considered a click-through.
Conversion

Conversion refers to the act of converting a visitor to a buyer. When advertisers and marketers refer to “conversion rates”, they’re referring to the percentage of website visitors who make a purchase or use a service.
CPA

(Cost Per Action) - CPA involves assigning a fee to different “actions” that users might perform on a website. For example, advertisers might agree to pay .50 for every newsletter signup sent their way by another site. Another advertiser might agree to pay a percentage of their sales to another website that agrees to display their products. Actions can include subscriptions, online purchases, advertising clicks, or any other terms that the advertiser might agree to.
CPC

(Cost Per Click) - A measurement of the cost associated with each click of an advertiser’s ad. If an advertiser is using a PPC style of advertising, the CPC would be whatever amount they bid for that keyword. If an advertiser is using a CPM model of advertising, the CPC would be the amount they pay for each one thousand impressions divided by the number of clicks their ad receives. CPC is sometimes used interchangeably with PPC, although the two terms are not necessarily the same thing.
CPM

(Cost Per Thousand Impressions) - CPM is a different approach to paid online advertising. Advertisers create ads that are displayed when internet users visit related websites. The advertiser agrees to pay a certain amount of money for every one thousand times their ad is displayed. Each time an ad is displayed it is referred to as an “impression”.
Crawler

A computer-based program that scans, or “crawls”, through websites and compiles keywords from the content found at the site. Crawlers also follow outbound links to other sites, scan meta tags, and “read” html. The major search engines utilize crawlers to fan out across the internet in search of new sites to add to their databases with little or no human intervention required. Sometimes called a ’spider’ or ‘bot’.
CTR

(Click-Through Rate) - Click-through rate refers to the percentage of people who view a website and click on a given ad. For example, if ten people visit your webpage and five of them click on an ad and go to the advertiser’s website, the CTR for that ad would be 50%.