Understanding Terms Used In Advertising

Advertising is lifeblood of business. If you are planning to buy advertising for your business, a knowledge of the relevant terms would be a great help. Here are few commonly used terms in world of advertising.

Advertisement

A graphic or text ad linked to an advertiser’s website.

Views

The number of times a advertisement is seen by users. This is usually the same as “page views”, but counts the number of times the advertisement is actually downloaded rather than the number of times the page is downloaded.

Clicks/Click Throughs

Advertisements are operated by clicking the cursor over them. These responses are called clicks or click throughs.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

It is the percentage of users who see the advertisement and click on it.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who visit your site and give you the desired response. It could be buying your product or filling a form.

Cookies

Small files placed on a user’s computer manage, monitor and track visitor movements and results.

CPM/Cost Per 1000 Impressions

The amount you pay for every thousand times a advertisement is shown. This is the most common way of charging for advertisements.

Hits

The number of times a server receives a request for a web page or an image. It used to be a measurement tool for ads but is notgood any more. One page can have lots of images and get lots of hits, even if it is loaded only seen once.

Page Impressions or Page Views

The number of times a web page has been requested by the server. It is much more accurate than hits but is not a good method for ad purposes. A single visitor may reload page many a times giving erroneous results.

Unique Users

The people who download/visited a web page, counted by IP address. This does not get flawed with multiple visits from single visitor. Most reputable sites will check the IP address of the person clicking on a link and only count it once in a 24-hour period.