Online Marketing Terms & Acronyms

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B2B - Business to Business
The business model and practice of a website, company/business which sells services and/or products to other businesses. An example of this would be a wholesaler who sells products to other retailers, or an advertising agency which sells its services to a business.
B2C - Business to Consumer
The business model and practice of a website, company/business which sells services and/or products to end-user consumers. An example of this would be an online white goods website which sells fridges to end-users.
CPA - Cost Per Action
The specific cost of making a consumer perform an action: whether that be make an email enquiry, sign up to a service and so on. For example if a company spends $100 on online marketing to get 100 users to a website, and 5 users sign up to an email newsletter (the action), then the cost per action would be $20.
CPC - Cost Per Click
Also used to describe advertising employing this model. The amount that is charged when one user clicks on an ad. Can be anything from 2 cents to $20. Typically this is associated most with search engine marketing ads, but can also be applied to other formats such as banner advertising and contextual ads.
CPM – Cost Per Mili (Thousand)
The industry standard measurement of the cost to display an online advertisement one thousand times, regardless of the number of clicks the advertiser pays. For example, to show a banner advertisement 10,000 times with a CPM of $2.50 would cost an advertiser $25. Also used to describe advertising employing this model.
CPS - Cost Per Sale
The specific cost of making a consumer make an online transaction (sale or purchase).: whether that is for a “real world” good or service (e.g. a toaster) or an online product (a subscription to a website). For example if a company spends $100 on online marketing to get 100 users to a website, and 5 users purchase a toaster (the sale), then the cost per sale be $20.
CPS - Cost Per Acquisition
Similar to cost per sale, but relating more specifically to a consumer signing up or becoming a member of a service. For example a consumer may purchase many products and these would be considered individual sales (cost per sale). However to get one “new member” for a specific product or service would be used to determine the cost per acquisition, and may or may not rely on the end user completing a financial transaction or purchase.
CTR - Click-Through Rate
This is the percentage of how often a user will click on an ad and be taken to another website/webpage. For example, if 100 users view an ad and 10 clicks on it and proceed to another location, the click through rate would be 10%.
Organic (natural) search results
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! index millions of websites, and when an end-user searches for a particular term, they return a listing of results. For the most part, a company cannot pay to have their website appear in the “natural” listings. Instead, they maybe able to pay in the non-natural advertisements which usually appear next to the organic results.
PPV - Pages Per Visit
The metric of the number of pages an end-user will view when visiting a website.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
The process of making a website appears in a search engines result. Covers a wide range of technical elements (page construction, site architecture), content elements (what is written on a page, keyword density) and how a site is linked to by other websites. Because search engines keep their ranking algorithms as secret and as closed as possible (it is, after all, one of their key intellectual properties), SEO is somewhat of an art & a science, although there are most certainly established baselines for SEO “best practices”.
SEM- Search Engine Marketing
This refers of the advertising model where advertisers pay a search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc) to appear in the advertisements which appear next to “organic” search results. Usually these advertisements are sold on a cost per click basis. Typically, advertisers bid on “keywords”, from just a handful to tens of thousands of specific words and phrases, depending on their business objectives.
SERP – Search Engine Ranking Position
The metric of where a website appears (organically) in a search engine for a specific term, keyword or phrase.
UV - Unique Visitor
The metric of one end-user visiting a website. An end user can visit a particular website several times in one day, however they would still only be counted as one unique visitor by most analytical tracking software.