What’s the word?

9 digital advertising terms to know

Digital advertising has been exploding for the last several years, and the growth shows no signs of stopping. According to a January 2017 forecast by Forrester Research, 46% of all advertising is expected to be digital in 5 years, with a total spend of nearly $120 billion in the U.S. Here’s a quick guide to some of the terms you should know when planning your digital campaigns.

Viral videos, infographics and other content pieces are the ones that rack up millions of shares on social media. Everyone wants to create the next viral campaign, but no one can really predict what will take off and what won’t, so it’s wise just to focus on developing the best content you can. If it goes viral, you can pop the champagne, and if not, then you still have a great piece of content to promote through other channels.
Paid social can help you promote your content through paid ads and boosted posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites. If your budget’s limited, you may feel as if you can’t afford it, but you’ll be surprised at how much reach and engagement you can get for a relatively minor investment.
Organic social posts are unpaid and shared with your followers on your own feed. Depending on how big your following is, and whether or not your post achieves the dream and goes viral, you may get a lot of response from organic posts, or not. Either way, it’s important to keep putting them out there and building your social media presence.
Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that follows visitors to other sites and serves ads based on their browsing history. If you’ve ever admired a flat-screen TV or a pair of shoes online, and then started seeing the same product pop up everywhere you go for a few days, that’s retargeting in action.
Call to action (CTA) is an instruction included in an ad or landing page to motivate viewers and visitors to take a desired action (e.g. “Download our e-book” or “Sign up for our webinar”).
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are statistics and ratios, such as page views and conversions, which measure response to your advertising. You may choose to track different KPIs depending on what the goal of your campaign is.
Conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the action outlined in your CTA, divided by the total number of people who view your ad or visit your landing page. A high conversion rate is an excellent measure of success, because it means people are actually engaging with your content.
Cost per click, or CPC, is the price you pay each time someone clicks on your ad in a paid campaign. It’s possible to control your average CPC by selectively targeting keywords and monitoring other aspects of your campaign.
Cost per impression, also called cost per thousand or CPM, is the most common way of pricing web ads. It’s the price you pay for every 1,000 impressions, or potential views, of your ad on a given page.