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jargon
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web marketing jargon
As Donna Hoffman & Thomas Novak demonstrate in their
exemplary paper
on Metrics Terminology,
the terminology used by online marketers is confusing,
unstable and inconsistent.
The following glossary is not
comprehensive or definitive. It is a response to requests
by some of our clients or their contacts for explanations
of particular terms.
Auditor
- a company that verifies advertisements went online and
site statistics or a site's proprietary reporting systems.
Auditors include Arbitron and AC Nielsen. Some
specialist companies now act as counters, ie enumerating
site, page and advertisement deliveries.
Banner
- an advertisement that links to an advertiser's site or a
buffer page (generally hosted by the site on which the
advertisement is running).
Button - a small advertisement that links to an
advertiser's site or a buffer page. They are generally
used for sponsorships or downloadable products.
Clicks: the number of times a user clicks a banner or
other advertisement.
Click rate - the percentage of impressions that result in
clicks. Sometimes referred to as the click through or
response rate.
Conversion - shifting a visitor's response from viewing to
action, eg the relationship between viewing an advertising
banner on a site and buying the advertising
product/service or inquiring about it.
Cookie - software used to identify a specific visitor to a
site. (For more information see the Privacy
guide)
CPM - cost per mille, the total cost of 1,000 visitor
requests to view an advertisement, ie the cost for 1,000
impressions.
Domain
Dynamic rotation - delivery of advertisements 'on the
fly', either on a random basis or targeted at particular
visitors who are identified by cookies or other
technology. Dynamic rotation lets different users see a
different ad on a specific page, and allows ads to be seen
in more than one place on a site. Advertisements can be
dynamically rotated throughout an entire site or within a
given section. Also called dynamic delivery.
Eyeballs - the number of unique users of/visitors to a
site
Hardwired - advertisements in a fixed position on a
particular page and delivered each time the page is
delivered (the opposite of dynamic rotation).
Hit - every element of a requested page (including text,
graphics, and interactive items) is counted as a hit to a
server. Hits are not the preferred unit of site-traffic
measurement because the number of hits per page varies
widely. Figures about hits are problematical: some studies
suggest an 'average page' involves six hits (eg text plus
five images), others suggest the 'average' is fifteen hits
(text plus 14 images). See also page views.
Host -
Impression - the number of times a page (or an online
advertisement such as a banner) is requested by a
visitors' browser and presumably seen by the visitor. Some
commercial sites market on the basis of guaranteed
impressions, eg the minimum times a banner will be seen as
the user navigates through the site.
Metrics
- a measurement of activity on the internet. In relation
to marketing the metrics generally involve measures of a
site's audience (eg number of visitors exposed to a
specific advertisement) or the effectiveness of a
particular action (eg number of visitors who saw an offer
online and made an online purchase of the advertised
product/service)
Page - data available on the web and identified with an
URL. You are viewing a discrete page; this site consists
of several hundred pages. A page often contains text plus
images, ie comprises several data files, each of which
constitute a 'hit' when retrieved by a browser
Page views or page deliveries -the number of times a web
page is requested. Page views, not hits, are the preferred
counting method for site-traffic estimates and
measurement.
Point of Presence (POP)
Request - a connection to a site (ie hit) that
successfully retrieves content. Unlike a hit, a request
doesn't include client or server 'errors'
Response rate - the percentage of impressions that result
in clicks. Also called the click rate.
Server - device that is connected to the internet and
provides access to web pages or other content when
requested by a browser, a gopher or other software
Session - the duration of a user's visit to a site or the
time spent continuously online
Unique users - the number of different individuals
visiting a site within a specific period. Sites often use
identifiers such as cookies to differentiate between
users.
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