The Bytown Advertising Glossary
Ad platforms speak in acronyms. This glossary translates them — every definition starts with a plain answer you can act on, written for owners, not marketers.
Metrics
The numbers that tell you whether your ads make money.
Ad spend (advertising budget)
The money you put into ads over a period.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
The all-in cost to win one customer.
Conversion rate
The share of clicks that turn into the action you wanted.
CPA (cost per acquisition)
What it costs you to win one customer or conversion.
CPC (cost per click)
What you pay each time someone clicks your ad.
CPL (cost per lead)
What you pay in ad spend for one lead.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions)
What you pay to be seen 1,000 times.
CTR (click-through rate)
The share of people who click after seeing the ad.
Reach, impressions & frequency
One view, unique viewers, and views per person.
LTV (customer lifetime value)
Total profit one customer brings over time.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
Revenue divided by what you spent to get it.
Google Ads
The terms you meet inside a Google Ads account.
Ad assets (extensions)
Free extras that make your ad bigger.
Ad Rank
Bid × quality decides your position on the page.
Keyword match types
How loosely Google matches searches to your keywords.
Negative keywords
Terms you block so your ad never shows for them.
Performance Max
Google's AI campaign that runs across all its channels.
PPC (pay-per-click)
Ads you only pay for when clicked.
Quality Score
Google's 1–10 rating of your ad's relevance.
Responsive search ads
You supply the parts; Google assembles the ad.
Smart campaigns
Easy setup, surrendered controls.
Target ROAS & Target CPA
Name the return you want; the algorithm bids toward it.
Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram advertising, decoded.
Ad set
The Meta layer where audience and budget live.
Advantage+
Meta's AI-automated campaign setup.
Boosted post vs ad
Buying attention vs building to buy customers.
Campaign objective
The setting that tells the algorithm what to chase.
Custom audience
An audience built from your own data.
Lookalike audience
A new audience built to resemble your best customers.
Meta pixel
The snippet that tells Meta who did what on your site.
Retargeting
Showing ads to people who already visited you.
Tracking & Attribution
How you know which ad actually caused the sale.
Marketing attribution
The rule deciding which ad gets credit for a conversion.
Conversion tracking
Measuring which ads actually caused sales or leads.
Conversions API (CAPI)
Server-side tracking that catches what the pixel misses.
First-party data
The customer data only your business owns.
Ideal customer profile (ICP)
A clear description of the customer worth paying to reach.
Strategy & Money
The decisions that come before any campaign is built.
Agency retainer
A monthly fee to have someone run your ads.
Bid strategy
How you tell the platform to spend — manually or by target.
Marketing funnel (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU)
The stages from stranger to customer.
Paid vs organic
Visibility you buy vs visibility you earn.
Search ads vs display ads
Catching demand vs creating it.
AI Advertising
The platforms and tools rewriting how ads get made.