PPC Glossary: 55 Essential Terms

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an essential part of any digital advertising or marketing campaign.

With PPC, advertisers pay a small fee each time a user clicks an ad. In addition to organic search, businesses need to embrace it in order to see results within a reasonable timeframe. 

Learning all the terms and tricks of the trade will go a long way in making effective and profitable pay-per-click ads.

This glossary will provide an overview of the various processes, metrics, and calculations most commonly used in navigating and leveraging the online marketing platform.

Start your most effective ad campaign with the best PPC services available on Clutch.

55 PPC Terms to Know

PPC can be a difficult concept to grasp for newcomers in the marketing space. However, learning the fundamentals can go a long way. 

A

• Ad Campaign: A set of advertisements that focus on a single message.
• Ad Extensions: Extra information that is shown below the ad copy.
• Ad Group: A category containing one or more ads that share similar targets.
• Ad Performance: Refers to the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, measured by the response or engagement of the target audience.
• Ad Position: The position of an advertisement on the SERP in relation to other ads on the page.
• Ad Rank: A metric used to determine the ad’s placement on a page relative to other ads.
• Ad Relevance: A metric measuring how closely related a specific ad is to the user’s search.
• Ad Scheduling: Allows an organization to display ads or change bids during certain times.
• Automated Bidding: A bidding strategy that places bids for ads based on their likelihood of resulting in a click or a conversion.

Additional Reading: ‘How to Create a PPC Budget’

B

• Bidding Strategy: A system that automatically sets bids for ads based on their likelihood to result in a click or conversion.
• Broad Match Modifier: Shows ads if the keywords appear in the search query in the exact or a similar variant form.

C

• Call Extensions: A feature allowing advertisers to include additional information about their businesses and offering to their text ads.
• Click-through Rate (CTR): The number of clicks that an ad receives divided by the number of times an ad is shown.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal out of the total number of visitors.
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): A metric measuring the aggregate cost to acquire one paying customer on a campaign or channel level.
• Cost per Click (CPC): A metric that determines how much advertisers pay for the ads placed on websites or social media, based on the number of clicks the ad receives.
• Cost per Lead (CPL): A metric dividing the total amount spent on a campaign by the number of leads generated.
• Cost per Mille (CPM): A metric showing how much it costs to serve 1,000 ad impressions.

D

• Digital Marketing: A type of marketing through online channels.
• Display Ad: A type of online advertisement that combines text, images, and a URL that links to a website where a customer can learn more about or buy products.
• Display Network: A group of more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear on Google.
• Display URL: The webpage address that appears with an ad.
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion: A system that automatically updates ads with the keywords in the ad group that caused them to appear to the audience.

E

• Enhanced CPC: A bid strategy that adjusts cost per click (CPC) to maximize conversions or conversion value.
• Exact Match: A keyword match type that allows advertisers to show their ads on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword.
• Expected CTR: The likelihood the ad will be clicked when it is shown.

G

• Geotargeting: A type of advertising that uses location data to reach consumers with messaging appropriate to their locality and behavior.
• Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords):  An online platform where advertisers can place bids to influence where their ads, services, listings, or videos appear to web users.
• Google Analytics: A web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand.
• Google Search: The search engine built and operated by Google
• Google Shopping (formerly Google Product Search or Google Products):  A service that allows users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendors.

I

• Impression Share: The percentage of impressions that your ads receive compared to the total number of impressions that your ads could get.

K

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A set of quantifiable metrics used to accurately measure an employee's performance during a specific time period.

M

• Manual Bidding: A method that lets advertisers set their own maximum cost-per-click (CPC) for ads.
• Max CPC: The maximum amount of money an organization wants to spend for clicks on a specific keyword.

N

• Negative Keywords: A method of excluding search terms from campaigns to help focus on only the keywords that matter to customers.

O

• Optimization Score: Indicates how well an ad account is set to perform.

P

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC): A digital advertising model where the advertiser pays a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
• PPC Advertising: A model of digital advertising where the advertiser pays a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.

Q

• Quality Score: A metric used by search engines that influence the ad rank and cost per click of ads.

R

• Remarketing: Engaging audiences who have already interacted with the brand, encouraging them to re-invest in the organization.
• Return on Investment (ROI): A ratio between net income and investment.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): A marketing metric measuring the amount of revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising.
• Responsive Display Ads: Allows the upload of images, headlines, descriptions, and logos, and has Google formulate a high-performing ad.

S

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): The practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on SERPs.
• Search Engine Results Page (SERP): The page users see after entering a query into any search engine.
• Search Network: A group of websites connected by search algorithms where ads and free product listings appear.
• Search Query: The words and phrases that people use in order to search for something through a search engine.
• Search Volume: A measure of the total number of searches that are performed through search engines, expressed as the average monthly volume during the previous 12-month period.
• Sitelinks: These are links under the same domain clustered together under a single web result.
• Smart Campaigns: Uses Google’s technology to produce optimized ad campaigns with minimal input.

T

• Target CPA: A bidding strategy focused on optimizing conversions at a specific acquisition cost.
• Target ROAS: A bidding strategy that aims to improve conversions based on the return you want from your ad spend.
• Text Ad: Appear in the search results and comprise a headline, a display URL, and a description.

V

• Video Ad: A marketing strategy that involves creating informative video content to promote a product.

Learn the Key PPC Terms to Help Your Business

PPC is often described as complex by newcomers, especially since it blends both technical systems and customer intuition.

Explore this glossary to help your company build a fruitful PPC campaign. 

Looking for a team to help you kick off a memorable search ad campaign? Find the best PPC agencies on Clutch.