Ad Rank
Google’s method for determining each ad’s position on a search engine results page. The advertiser with the highest ad rank will be placed in the top position followed by the ad with the second highest ad rank and so forth. Ad Rank is calculated based on the bid received, Quality Score and ad extensions, for each ad eligible to appear.
Audiences
Allow you to target users based on previous behavior. Audience lists are used for remarketing, including people who’ve previously been to your website (website visitors), used your mobile app (mobile app users), provided their email address (customer emails) or engaged with your content on YouTube (YouTube users). Audiences can also be targeted based on Google’s understanding of user behavior, they include affinity audiences and in-market audiences.
Average Position
Provides detail about where ads are placed and is calculated by dividing the actual position by the number of impressions. For example, if you received 2 impressions with one impression in position 1 and the other impression in position 2, then you would have an average position of 1.5 reported inside Google Ads.
Awareness
Brand awareness is the level of consumer consciousness of a company. It measures a potential customer’s ability to not only recognize a brand image, but to also associate it with a certain company’s product or service.
Brand awareness is best spread through both inbound and outbound marketing efforts. When competition in an industry is high, brand awareness can be one of a business’s greatest assets.
Boosted
The number of people who see your post as a result of paid promotion.
Campaign
The top-level structure of your account, think of campaigns as folders within your account. You can create one or more campaigns inside your account based on your advertising objectives. There are multiple ways to structure your campaigns, for example, you can use campaigns for different targeting (search vs. display), for structuring keywords, allocating budget and more. Each campaign contains one or more ad groups to create a more granular structure inside your account.
Click
The number of times people click on content in your posts such as page title, links, photos.
Conversion
Any action that is valuable to your organization. Conversion tracking allows you to measure the number of people viewing important pages on your website (such as thank you pages), making phone calls using a Google forwarding number, downloading apps, actions within an app and offline conversions. Google Ads allows you to use dedicated conversion tracking or import conversion data from Google Analytics.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of clicks (or interactions) that result in a conversion.
CPC
Cost-per-click or CPC is the amount you are willing to spend (or are charged) for each click. If you set a manual CPC bid, then you’ll never pay more than this amount (unless you are using bid adjustments) since Google Ads uses an auction to display ads and you are only charged the amount necessary for the click.
CPM
Cost-per-thousand-impressions or CPM is a bidding option where an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions of their ad regardless of the number of clicks. CPM bidding is designed for advertisers wanting to increase brand awareness rather than drive conversions.
CPV
Cost-per-view or CPV is a bidding option where you pay for each video view.
Cross-device Conversion
A conversion that occurs after someone clicks on your ad using one device and then later converts using another device. Cross-device conversions are estimated by Google using aggregated and anonymized user data.
CTOR
The click-to-open rate (CTOR) compares the number of unique clicks to unique opens. This number indicates how effective the email message, design, and content performed, and whether it created enough interest in the recipient to take action.
Unlike click-through rate, click-to-open rate is the number of clicks out of the number of opens (instead of the number of delivered emails). This gives you a better gauge of how the design and messaging resonated with your audience, since these clicks are only from people that actually viewed your email.
CTR
Click-through-rate or CTR is the percentage of impressions that result in a click on your ad. For example, an ad with 100 clicks and 1,000 impressions would have a click-through-rate of 10%.
Customer Match
Allows you to upload email addresses for your existing contacts as a remarketing list inside Google Ads. You’ll need a large enough list for ads to be displayed since the email addresses are matched to Google Accounts and it’s likely that only a portion of your list will have a Google Account associated with their email address.
Display Targeting
Once you’ve created a display campaign you can apply one or more of the display targeting options to each of the ad groups within the campaign.
Display Keywords
Allows you to choose keywords that are then matched to the content on pages within the Google Display Network. For example, selecting the display keyword ‘holiday’ will automatically find content relating to that theme on sites within the Google Display Network.
Placements
Includes automatic placements where the other targeting methods are used to automatically find relevant places to display your ads. For example, if you use display keywords, Google Ads will automatically find relevant placements. Placements can also be managed, this is when you specify exactly where you want your ads to be displayed. For example, adding ‘youtube.com’ will mean your ads are displayed on YouTube.
Topic
Similar to display keywords but you select from a predefined list of content topics. For example, you could choose to display your ads on content that’s classified by Google as being related to ‘travel’.
Interests
Allow you to target people who have expressed a particular interest based on their browsing behavior. For example, you could target people interested in ‘concert and music festival tickets’. It’s important to understand that you are targeting the individual, not the content, so once they’ve expressed the interest you can target them regardless of the sites they’re browsing on the Google Display Network.
Interests can be selected based on ‘Affinity Audiences’ which are general areas of interest, ‘In-market Audiences’ which are for people looking to purchase, or a ‘Custom Affinity Audience’ which you build based on interests and websites.
Remarketing
Allows you to target people based on previous interactions with your organization. See also remarketing list.
Demographics
Allows you to target people based on age, gender and parental status. Demographics can be actual or inferred based on browsing behavior. It’s also important to know that Google can’t determine demographics for all users, so there will be a large portion of ‘unknown’.
Dynamic Ad
For a search campaign, you can create dynamic search ads that automatically select a landing page, create a headline and display URL, so all you need to provide is the description. These are suited to large-scale websites with products that regularly change. For a display campaign, you can create dynamic ads that are updated based on a feed (data that you upload to Google Ads) to include products and services within the ad variation.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion
Allows you to automatically include the matched keywords from the ad group into the text ad so that it appears relevant to what someone is searching. Dynamic keyword insertion is particularly useful for larger sets of keywords that are very similar, for example, products with different product codes.
Dynamic Remarketing
Remarketing that automatically changes the products or services included in the ad based on what someone viewed on your website.
Dynamic Search Ad
A text ad format where Google automatically matches the search query to a landing page on your website, removing the need to manage keywords.
Enhanced CPC
Enhanced cost-per-click or ECPC is a bidding option that will automatically increase the final bid if Google predicts that a click is likely to convert. Google looks at a range of signals and uses machine learning to determine if a click is more (or less) likely to result in a conversion.
Effective CPM
Effective CPM or ECPM (not to be confused with ECPC) is where Google converts a CPC bid to an equivalent CPM bid for ads competing on the Google Display Network.
Exact Match
A keyword match type that shows your ads when the keyword you are bidding on is the same as the search query someone is using. Exact match keywords also include close variants and word order.
Frequency Cap
Sets the maximum number of impressions for your ad allowing you to control the number of times someone sees your ad on the Google Display Network. The frequency cap is based on viewable impressions of your ads and can be set at the campaign, ad group or ad level and by the day, week or month.
Google AdSense
Google’s program for publishers to monetize their website content. By creating a display campaign you will be targeting placements that publishers have allocated to display ads within their website through Google AdSense.
Google Analytics
Google’s digital analytics tool which provides visitor data for insights into people’s behavior on your website. Linking Google Ads to Google Analytics will provide you with a rich set of reports about the performance of your campaigns and how people engage with your website content after they’ve clicked on your ad.
Google Display Network
Made up of over two million websites and over 650,000 mobile apps, the Google Display Network allows you to show ads to people who are browsing and engaging with different types of content.
Google Forwarding Number
Uses one of Google’s phone numbers in your ads which then forwards to your own phone number. Using a Google Forwarding Number provides automatic call reporting and can be used to track conversions, for example, based on call duration. This allows you to view performance right down to the keyword level inside your account. Calls are charged the same amount as a click on your ad.
Google Search Network
The advertising network that allows you to show ads to people searching. The Google Search Network allows you to target people searching on Google as well as Google Search Partners which include third-party websites.
Impression
An impression is counted when an ad is displayed (with or without a click). For display campaigns, you have the option of bidding on a viewable impression.
Impression Share
Shows you the visibility you’ve achieved with your ads. Impression share is the percentage of times a campaign was eligible to display an ad compared to when the ad was actually displayed. For example, an impression share of 50% means that your ads were only shown for half of all available impressions.
Interactions
Are the primary actions people take with your ads. For example, clicks on a text ad, views of a video ad, calls for a call-only ad and so forth. You are typically charged for an interaction with your ad.
Interaction Rate
The total number of interactions divided by impressions. For example, video views divided by impressions. The interaction rate is similar to click-through-rate but is based on any primary interaction.
Keyword
The main targeting method for search campaigns, a keyword is an instruction (determined by the keyword text and match type) to Google about when to show ads from the keyword’s ad group.
KPI
A quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, etc. in meeting objectives for performance.
Likes
The number of people who click “like” (or other reaction) at the bottom of your post.
Open Rate
Email open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open a specific email out of your total number of subscribers.
Organic
The number of people who see your post without paid distribution.
Pageview
Any one page of your site completely loading any one time. If I visit your web site and look at 3 pages, that will count as 3 page views.
PPC
PPC stands for pay-per-click. See CPC.
Quality Score
Google’s measurement of how relevant an advertiser’s ads are to what someone is interested in. Quality Score is based on a range of factors, including click-through-rate, relevance and landing page experience. The Quality Score displayed inside your account is different to the calculation used when your ads enter the real-time auction in order to be shown to people searching and browsing.
Radius Targeting
A location targeting option that allows you to set a radius around an address (or other map location).
Reach
The number of people who saw your post at least once. Can be broken down by organic and boosted.
Reactions
The number of times people have engaged with your posts through likes (or other reactions), comments, and shares.
Remarketing List
Allows you to target people based on previous interactions with your organization. Remarketing lists can be created inside Google Ads or imported from Google Analytics. Lists can then be used to show ads to particular people or to adjust bids.
App Users
Add people to a remarketing list based on those using your mobile app or taking specific actions within your app.
Customer Emails
Add people to a remarketing list by uploading their email addresses into Google Ads and matching those email addresses to Google Accounts.
Website Visitors
Add people to a remarketing list based on those viewing a particular page (or pages) on your website.
YouTube Users
Add people to a remarketing list based on particular interactions with your YouTube videos and channel.
Responsive Display Ad
The default ad format for display campaigns. Responsive display ads include multiple assets, including; headlines, descriptions, images and logos. Ads are then automatically created based on the assets included in the ad format.
Responsive Search Ad
An ad format that allows you to include multiple headlines and descriptions. Up to 15 headlines and four descriptions can be added to the ad format. Google Ads will then automatically display three headlines and two description lines.
ROAS
Return on advertising spend (ROAS) is a metric that divides the total revenue by the total advertising spend. For example, if your total revenue from Google Ads was $10,000 and you spent $5,000 on your ads, then your ROAS would be 200%.
Search Query
The actual text that someone entered when they performed a search. Remember that the search query someone uses might not be the same as the keyword you are bidding on because of the keyword match types.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization – the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
Share
A person sees your post and shares it on their page or to a group they belong to.
Universal App Campaign
A campaign type that is designed to drive installs of your Android or iOS mobile app. Ads are automatically shown on the Google Search Network, the Google Display Network (including other apps), and Google Play (for Android apps).
Viewable CPM
Viewable CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) bidding is where you define the amount you want to spend on 1,000 viewable impressions, regardless of the number of clicks. A viewable impression is counted when at least 50% of the ad is displayed on screen for at least one second (this is two seconds for video ads).