Reference
Paid ads glossary for service businesses
Plain-English definitions of the terms you will hear from Google Ads and Meta Ads managers, so you can follow what the report is actually saying.
40+Campaigns launched
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Edward Eaton runs every account personallyThe terms
38 definitions, in alphabetical order.
- Ad set
- The level in Meta where you set audience, budget, schedule and placements.
- Attribution
- Deciding which ad or channel gets credit for a conversion. Platforms and analytics often disagree.
- Call tracking
- Using trackable numbers to see which ads and keywords produce phone calls.
- Campaign objective
- What you tell Meta to optimise for, such as Leads or Sales. It changes who sees the ad.
- Conversion
- The action you are paying for: a form, a call, a booking or a purchase.
- Conversion rate
- The percentage of clicks that become conversions.
- Conversion tracking
- Recording conversions so the platform and you can see which ads produced them. Without it, bidding optimises blind.
- Conversions API
- A server-side connection that sends conversion data to Meta more reliably than the Pixel alone.
- Cost per sale
- Ad spend divided by customers won. The number that decides whether ads are profitable.
- CPA (cost per acquisition)
- Ad spend divided by the number of conversions you defined, such as a form, a call or a purchase.
- CPC (cost per click)
- What you pay each time someone clicks your ad. A cheap click is not a good one if it never enquires.
- CPL (cost per lead)
- Ad spend divided by the number of leads. Useful, but only meaningful alongside lead quality and what happens next.
- CPM (cost per thousand impressions)
- What it costs to show your ad 1,000 times. A measure of how expensive attention is in an audience.
- Creative fatigue
- Falling results because the same audience has seen the same ad too often.
- CTR (click-through rate)
- The percentage of people who saw the ad and clicked. A high rate with few enquiries points to a page problem.
- Frequency
- How many times the average person has seen your ad. High frequency with falling results suggests fatigue.
- Impressions
- The number of times an ad was shown.
- Keyword match types
- Settings (broad, phrase, exact) that control how closely a search must match your keyword.
- Landing page
- The page an ad sends people to. It should match the ad's promise and make one action easy.
- Lead
- An enquiry from a potential customer. Not all leads are equal.
- Lead form
- A form that opens inside Facebook or Instagram. High volume, lower intent than a landing page.
- Lead generation
- The process of attracting and capturing enquiries from potential customers, usually through ads and landing pages.
- Lead qualification
- Filtering enquiries by area, budget, timeframe or need before they reach your phone.
- Lead quality
- How likely a lead is to become a customer. Tracked by marking which enquiries were good.
- Learning phase
- A period after a campaign launches or changes when the platform is still working out who to show ads to.
- Local Services Ads
- Google's pay-per-lead listings with a Google Guaranteed or Screened badge, available in selected categories and areas.
- Lookalike audience
- A group Meta builds that resembles your existing customers or leads.
- Meta Pixel
- A snippet on your website that reports visits and actions to Meta.
- Negative keywords
- Searches you tell Google not to show your ads for, such as 'jobs', 'free' or 'DIY'.
- Performance Max
- A Google campaign type that runs across Search, YouTube, Display, Maps and more from one set of assets.
- Quality Score
- Google's estimate of how relevant your ad, keyword and page are. Higher scores usually mean lower costs.
- Responsive Search Ads (RSA)
- Google ads built from several headlines and descriptions that Google mixes and tests.
- Retargeting
- Showing ads to people who already visited your site or engaged with your ads.
- ROAS (return on ad spend)
- Revenue divided by ad spend. 4x means £4 of revenue for each £1 spent. It ignores margin.
- Search campaign
- Google Ads text ads shown when someone types a relevant search. Captures existing demand.
- Search terms
- The actual phrases people typed before clicking your ad. Reviewing them is the fastest way to cut waste.
- Smart bidding
- Google's automated bidding that adjusts bids using conversion data. Only as good as the conversion tracking beneath it.
- UTM parameters
- Tags added to links so analytics can show which campaign sent a visitor.
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