A
- Ad Impressions: Show how often your ad was displayed to users on a social media platform. Not to be confused with reach, which counts unique users.
- Ad Spend: The budget spent on an ad campaign. No money, no seat at the table when bidding for ad placements.
B
- Bidding: The process where advertisers bid in an automated system, pitting your ad against others. Higher bids can secure better ad delivery. The clear goal: get your ad shown as often as possible to the right audience.
C
- CPA (Cost per Action): In social performance marketing, the cost incurred until an action — a purchase, a booking, an inquiry — is completed.
- CPC (Cost per Click): The price paid per click on an ad. Use CPC to measure the efficiency of your ads.
- CPL (Cost per Lead): That one is obvious — cost per lead generated.
- CPM (Cost per Mille): Cost per thousand impressions. A standard measure for evaluating ad delivery costs.
- CR (Conversion Rate): The percentage of users who complete a desired action (e.g. purchase, sign-up) on your website.
- Creative: Refers to the visual elements of your campaign — in other words, what gets served to the audience.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of users who clicked on an ad, divided by total impressions. An indicator of an ad's effectiveness.
E
- Engagement Rate: Shows how actively the audience interacts with an ad — through likes, comments, shares, and other actions.
F
- Frequency: This indicator tells you how often the audience has seen an ad on average.
G
- Geo-Targeting: A method of serving your ads exclusively to users in specific regions. Especially useful for local marketing campaigns.
I
- Influencer Marketing: A form of social media marketing that leverages the reach and recognition of influencers.
K
- KPI (Key Performance Indicator): Metrics used to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign (e.g. impressions, clicks, and conversions).
L
- Lookalike Audience: An audience segment built by the social platforms that lets advertisers reach new users who resemble their existing customers.
P
- Pixel: A code snippet embedded in a website or app. It tracks user behavior and collects relevant data for retargeting and conversion tracking.
- PPC (Pay per Click): A billing model where you, the advertiser, only pay when someone clicks your ad.
R
- Retargeting: The practice of serving ads to users who have already interacted with your brand — whether by visiting your website or engaging with a previous ad.
- ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend): Shows you how effective and profitable your ad campaign is. ROAS is one of the most important KPIs in social performance marketing — it tells you how much revenue you earn for every euro invested in your ad.
S
- Social Media Analytics: The data and statistics pulled from social media platforms to measure the performance of content and campaigns.
- Social Proof: A psychological phenomenon where people copy the actions of others, believing those actions reflect correct behavior.
T
- Testing: A method for comparing different elements of a campaign. A good testing setup lets you get the maximum out of your campaigns by continuously optimizing creatives, copy, and audiences.
U
- UGC (User-Generated Content): Content created by users and shared on social media or other platforms. UGC has also established itself as a content format for ads.
