Advertising Terminology Explained

There are many different types of advertising and it can get a little confusing as a webmaster new to the advertising side of things. Hopefully this A-Z guide to online advertising terms can help point you in the right direction!

Above The Fold - That part of the page visible without any scrolling. Advertising above the fold naturally gets more attention.

Ad Copy - The text used for an advertising campaign. Some advertisers provide their own and insist you only use that for your website placement and newsletter campaigns, most are more flexible.

Adsense - A term which I have been asked to explain before. Basically, Adsense is a text advertising service provided by the search engine giant Google. Adsense can be incorporated into a web page to provide instant text advertising dynamically related to the page contents.

Advertiser - The company an affiliate joins. They provide the advertising for you to show on your website. Amazon is an advertiser, you become a published when you decide to join them and show their ads on your site.

Affiliate - When you partner with an advertiser you become an affiliate, or basically someone who is then able to display that company's advertising on your website or in your newsletters. Affiliates earn commissions for sales, clicks, leads etc. related to those advertising campaigns.

Affiliate Program - A program ran by a company which allows website owners to register their interest and promote the company for a commission of some kind.

Banner - Banner advertising is what web users are most familiar with. Banners are the flashing or static advertising images of varying sizes with the standard is 468x60. Banners are one of the least effective forms of advertising on their own, but can be combined with text descriptions and other inventive ways of drawing attention to them which can increase effectiveness significantly.

Button - A form of banner advertising, usually smaller in the 120x60 pixel range but sizes can vary to include micro-bars which are around half that size again.

Click - Recorded by the affiliate tracking software whenever someone clicks on a banner, text link etc. associated with an advertising campaign. Each click usually deposits a cookie on the system of the clicker.

COA - Cost Of Acquisition. The monetary outlay to achieve a sale, for example, spend $100 and receive 10 sales, then the COA is $10 per sale.

Conversions - Usually a percentage figure which applies to the number of people who click thorugh on an advert compared to the number who actually go through with a transaction leading to a commission being earned. 1000 clicks and 1 sale is a conversion rate of 0.1%...and probably a campaign to drop unless it's a very high paying commission.

Cookies - Cookies, in the context of affiliate marketing, are used to track leads, sales etc. so that the affiliate is credited for promoting the program. Cookies are harmless and can be set to last for a single session or much longer, so it is possible to earn for a sale made many months down the line even if the visitor actually clicked the link weeks ago.

CPA - Cost Per Action. How much the advertiser pays for an action performed which may be a simple click, signing up for a newsletter, taking a poll etc.

CPC - Cost Per Click. Every click an advertisers' ad receives costs them x amount. For example, a $1 CPC would cost the advertiser $1 for every click received.

CPM - Cost Per Thousand. Typically refers to the cost for something like a thousand email ads to be sent out, or a thousand banner impressions to be shown eg $100 CPM means it costs $100 for one thousand whatevers.

CTR - Click Through Rate. A percentile figure based on the number of clicks an ad receives compared to the number of times it has been seen. For example a banner which has been shown 1000 times and been clicked 10 times has a CTR of 1%. used to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign and as an affiliate you should analyse this kind of thing regularly so you can identify the best performing ads.

Demographics - You may see this mentioned. It applies to the break down of your audience in terms of age, race, gender etc. - basically, the type of person you can advertise to - knowing your audience is key to successful affiliate advertising.

Ezine or E-zine - An email newsletter. Think Electronic Magazine.

Fly In - These are similar to pop-ups but slide in from an off-screen location to cover a portion of the active window. Many fly ins, or slide ins as they are also known, are immune to pop-up killing software so can be very effective. Again, they annoy visitors so whether you want to use them or not is a choice you have to make.

Hits - Not to be confused with visits. Hits are not visitors, one visitor can generate several hits per visit because hits refer to every graphic on the page as well as the page itself. Visits is what you want to look at in your web site logs if you are ever asked to tell an advertiser or affiliate network how many people visit your site each month.

HTML Newsletter - An email which looks like a webpage rather than just plain text. Some email accounts can not receive emails like this.

Impressions - Applies to the number of times an ad is seen by total visitors. 1000 visits to a page results in 1000 impressions of a banner. Some affiliate programs pay a set fee per impression although this fee is usually pretty low since banner advertising is perceived as been less effective. Really only worth bothering with if you can drive thousands of visitors to your site daily...and generally, auto-surf programs are prohibited if you have dabbled with those in the past!

Leads - Some advertisers like to pay affiliates on a per lead basis. Pay per lead affiliates earn a set figure every time someone clicks a banner or otherwise follows one of their affiliate links and performs a specified action on the advertiser website. Typically, this is not a purchase but something like signing up for a newsletter, requesting a quote, becoming a member of the site, that kind of thing.

Merchant - Another name for advertiser.

Opt-In Email - A newsletter which a user has requested to receive. Not spam in other words. Double Opt In email lists are most frequently used now and are a very good advertising medium.

Pop-Up - An advertising window which appears over the site being visited. These tend to be a more effective form of advertising than banners because they are hard to ignore, but at the same time many internet users use pop-up killing software to stop them being shown and others profess to avoiding websites which use them. You need to decide whether potentially antagonising your visitors is worth the extra revenue a pop-up can generate.

Pop-Under - Less annoying than a pop-under, these are partial or full window advertising which appear under the active window thus not interfering with a users' surfing experience directly. Indirectly, they can slow down page loads and are still killed by pop-up killing software and still antagonise visitors but are effective.

PPC - Also known as "Pay Per Click", this refers to a type of advertising where, as an affiliate, you earn a set figure every time a visitor to the site clicks on one of your banners or text links. When affiliating with companies, this is usually offered in conjunction with a lead/sale bonus rather than a stand-alone offer. If you can provide search results on your website, then many search engines offer affiliate schemes when PPC advertising can prove lucrative to an affiliate.

PPL - Pay Per Lead.

PPS - Pay Per Sale.

Publisher - YOU. The affiliate who shows the advertising on their website or newsletter is a publisher.

ROI - Return On Investment. The montary return for a specific campaign. Eg. a campaign costs $100, it generates $150 in sales commission, the ROI is $50.

Sales - When one of your visitors clicks on a banner, text link etc. and makes a purchase from the advertiser's company, you earn a commission percentage of the total sale. Individual advertisers have different commission percentage levels and additional terms but thats basically what Sales stands for in the context of affiliate marketing.

Skyscraper - a large vertical banner which usually appears down the side of the page.

Text Ad - Usually an email newsletter or plain text advertising on a website. No graphics.

Text Links - A text link is possibly the most effective form of advertising there is.

Incorporate an advertising text link into your general page structure and not only is the reader's eye drawn to it by default, but you can describe the offer in a way which appeals directly to your visitors and the chances are, they will not even realise they are being advertised to.