Internet Marketing Glossary
Banner Exchange : A banner exchange program is a program designed to allow marketers to exchange banners (a form of bartering) to enable marketers to promote their sites without the outlay of cash. A program typically allows a marketer to display one advertisement, across the network, for every two advertisements it hosts on its site. Unlike a straight exchange with one entity, exchange programs allow for the possibility for the banner to be displayed on many web sites (those sites that participate in that particular network). CAPCO Marketing offers a free banner exchange to GourmetShoppes.com merchants with a straight 1:1 ratio.
Brand : A brand is a product from a known source or organization. The name of the organization can also serve as a brand. The brand value reflects how a product's name, or company name, is perceived by the marketplace, whether that is a target audience for a product or the marketplace in general (clearly these can have different meanings and therefore different values). It is important to understand the meaning and the value of the brand (for each target audience) in order to develop an effective marketing mix, for each target audience.
Branding (branding campaign) : An ad campaign that focuses on introducing, re-introducing or enforcing the brand for a particular product or organization. Branding is one of the most unappreciated aspects of web advertising because so many people focus on click-through rates. This is unfortunate because studies have shown internet advertising to be highly successful in building brand awareness.
Call to Action : Call to Action is the action that is requested by a marketer's content (either from an advertising banner or web-site copy). This may be to click-through to enter a contest, enter a survey to win a free prize or purchase a product.
Cookie File (or cookies) : The cookie file is a file that resides on the client machine. It contains data passed from websites, so that websites can communicate with this file when the same client returns. The website only has access to the part of the cookie file that represents the interaction with that particular website. Clearly the cookie file has caused some issues with respect to privacy. Considering that as consumers, we do not know what information is being stored in the file, we should become concerned! The cookie file was first developed in order to help sites with the transaction process of the web. Without a cookie file, websites are not able to track a single user's path through a website, thus a transaction that required multiple pages (as most do) would simply not be workable.
Characters : When referring to text-based advertising, characters include any letter, symbol, number or space.
CPM : CPM is a holdover from traditional media advertising, and does not take advantage of the Hypertext nature of the medium. It charges purely on the number of times the advertisement is served. It does account for branding effects, that are not accounted for in the other models. CPM is the cost per thousand ad impressions. A Web site that charges $15,000 per banner and guarantees 600,000 impressions has a CPM of $25 ($15,000 divided by 600). If an advertiser's CPM is $25 then you get 1000 impressions of your banner or ad for $25.
CTR : Click-through ratio or click-through rate. Metrics used in measuring the effectiveness of an advertising banner (and similar). The percentage of ad views that resulted in an ad click. A method of rating how many times a banner is clicked on. A ratio of the number of times a banner is shown to the number of times it is clicked on. For example, if a banner has a CTR of 20:1, it means that 1 out of 20 people have clicked on it (i.e. 5% of the people who viewed it).
Discussion Boards and Chat Rooms : Discussion boards allow for asynchronous discussion between 2 or more people over a period of time. Chat rooms are designed for synchronous discussion at one time. Discussion boards are typically available for review, at any time, chat rooms have no data until a chat session begins.
E-Commerce : E-commerce refers to all forms of business activities conducted across the internet. This can include E-tailing, B2B, intranets and extranets, online advertising, and simply online presences of any form that are used for some type of communication (customer service for example).
E-tailing : E-tailing refers to retailing over the internet. Thus an e-tailer is a B2C business that executes a transaction with the final consumer. E-tailers can be pure play businesses like Amazon.com or businesses that have evolved from a legacy business, Tesco.com. E-tailing is a subset of e-commerce.
File size : The actual size of the file. When referring to online banner advertising, this is the actul size of the image file in kilobytes.
GIF : Graphic Interchange Format. A common file format for web graphics (and banners). Not always the best choice for photo-realistic images.
GIF89 : Animated version of Graphic Interchange Format. A common file format for web graphics (and banners) that includes frames set to a specific frequency that provides for changing content within the graphic. Not always the best choice for photo-realistic images.
Hit or Hits : Hits refer to the number of files served when a user accesses a web page. Total hits for a page will therefore equal the number of times the page is accessed X the number of files included on a page.
Homepage : The homepage of a web site is the entry point to the site. It is the page that will usually have a web address (AKA URL) that ends with .com, .edu, .org, .gov or .countrycode (the 2 letter code for the country outside the USA). While the homepage is designed to be the entry point to a web site, designers cannot assume that all viewers will enter the web site by that page and online advertising does not require the direction of users to homepages as opposed to pages within a website.
Hyperlink or Hypertext : A link to a webpage or web document. Hypertext refers to the connectivity between web documents, which is non-linear. Thus any part of the document (word or phrase) can launch another document, or another part of the same document via a hyperlink.
Impression : A measure of how many times a banner is displayed. Count one impression each time the banner is shown. Number of times an ad banner is downloaded and presumably seen by visitors. Corresponds to net impressions in traditional media. Impressions also refers to the number of times a page is accessed over a fixed period of time.
Interstitial Pages : Interstitial pages are a form of advertisement on the web that appears between web pages that the user requests. Thus when a user elects to enter or exit a web-site, a page appears with its advertisement, in place of the requested page, the user then needs to select from that page to receive the page requested (or the advertisement page will disappear after a fixed time). This is a form of interruption advertising (similar to broadcast models) but this form of web advertising breaks information design rules, as the user had a certain set of expectation when making the page selection, the interstitial page did not match the expectation. Interstitial advertisements are a form of web advertising, other forms include banner advertisements and advertising buttons.
IP Address : An IP address is a numerical address of the computer broken into 4 groups of 3 digit numbers lower than 254. In most cases, these addresses are unique for each internet connected computer throughout the world.
JPG (or JPEG) : Joint Photographic Experts Group. A common file format for photo-realistic images. Not as common as GIF for banners because JPEG compression has a tendency to blur small text.
Keyword : Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page or search system that would match words used by web surfers in finding aweb page (via a search engine). Selecting keywords, that match your target audiences' use of the web is a critical marketing assignment.
Lifetime Value : Lifetime Value of the Customer determines the value of a customer to a firm, over the lifecycle of that customer. This removes the focus on individual transactions with customers and has become increasingly used with the developments of technology and market research, and thus the ability to focus on narrower target markets, even to the individual consumer in some cases. Lifetime Value is an important measure used for relationship marketing programs. Lifetime Value of Customers was a popular metric for internet firms as they built their customer bases.
Marketing Mix : A Marketing Mix is the combination of product offerings used to reach a target market for the organization. The marketing mix comprises the Product (what the actual offering comprises), Price (the value exchanged for that offering), Promotion (the means of communicating that offering to the target audience, promotional mix) and distribution (also known as Place, the means of having the product offering available to the target audience). The marketing mix is also known as the four Ps.
Opt-in/Opt-out : Opt-in / Opt-out refers to the mechanism used by web-sites to allow users to signal their interest in receiving information from the web-site owner. They are used to develop permission-based marketing programs. CAPCO Marketing only uses Opt-in/Opt-out systems for it's email newsletters and dispatches.
Page View : Number of times a user requests a page that may contain a particular ad. Indicative of the number of times an ad was potentially seen, or "gross impressions." A measure of how many times a complete page is displayed. Count one page view each time a page is displayed.
Pixels : Short for 'picture element,' a dot that represents the smallest graphic unit of measurement on a screen. A pixel is screen-dependent; that is, the dimensions of screen elements vary with the display system and resolution. It is used to describe the main measure of unit that make up a graphic in online advertising, similiar to how inches are used in print media advertising.
Rich Media : Rich media refers to media on the web that offers an enhanced, interactive experience. VRML for 3 D, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave would be good examples of languages for rich media. The Rich Media SIG is a good resource for emerging technologies. Rich media is often used for banner advertisements, for homepage's and for e-mail communications. It is important, however, for designers considering the use of rich media, to understand the audience they are designing for, and make sure the audience has access to the information being conveyed via the rich media (browsers do not have many rich media technologies built into their viewing capabilities, therefore plug-ins are required).
RON : Run of Network. Refers to banner advertising that runs across a network of sites or microsites.
ROS : Run of Site. Refers to banner advertising that runs on one website.
Spam : Spam is the term used for unsolicited e-mail sent by marketers and individuals who typically have purchased an e-mail mailing list.
Target Marketing : Communicating with a specific group of consumers with similar characterstics, within a broader group of consumers who purchase the type of product. Market Segmentation is the process of target marketing. Once target market(s) are identified, the organization develops a product offering (marketing mix) that is positioned to be attractive to that segment. CAPCO Marketing offers a host of ad products that reach a targeted audience.
URL : URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the web address of a web page.