Running marketing campaigns causes a marketer to come across a lot of marketing acronyms and jargons. In some cases, they may be unfamiliar with such terms, leading to a slowdown in understanding and progressing the campaign. Here are some of the most common advertising and marketing abbreviations, their full forms and brief explanations that every marketer should know about.

General Terms

KPI - Key Performance Indicators -

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the major metrics that reflect the goals of your campaign.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing -

Search Engine Marketing represents advertisements run on search engines based on the search intent, keywords, and criteria. Advertisements run on search engines rely heavily on the allocated budget of the campaign.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization -

Search Engine Optimization represents the activities conducted to increase the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

Campaign Cost-Related Terms

CPM - Cost Per Miles or 1000 Impressions -

This represents the cost you incur for every 1000 showings of your ads across a specific platform.

Formula - CPM = (Total Ad Costs * 1000) / Total Impressions

CPC - Cost Per Click

This is the cost you incur every time a potential customer clicks your advertisement.

Formula - CPC = Total Ad Costs / Total Ad Clicks

CPV - Cost Per View

This is the cost that occurs each time a potential customer sees your image or video ad for a specific amount of time. The ad publisher usually dictates how long your ads will be shown in such cases.

Formula - CPV = Total Ad Costs / Number of Views

CPL - Cost Per Lead

This is the cost that occurs each time your advertisement generates a lead by fulfilling a secondary goal (i.e., subscribing to newsletters).

Formula - CPL = Total Ad Costs / Number of Generated Leads

CPA - Cost Per Action/Acquisitions -

This is the cost you incur each time a potential customer fulfills a primary aim (i.e., buying something) targeted in your campaign through your ads.

Formula - CPA = Total Ad Costs / Number of Actions Generated

eCPM / eCPL / eCPA / eCPC / eCPV

This is the average or effective cost for each metric (CPC/CPA/CPL/CPM/CPV) across the entire campaign.

Formula - eCPC = Total Campaign Costs / Total number of clicks generated by the campaign.

PPC - Pay Per Click

This is an alternative term for cost per click (CPC).

Campaign Engagement & Performance-Related Terms

VTC - View Through Click

View-through clicks represent situations where a customer saw your ads but did not click on them. But, later on, they visited your website and converted.

CTR - Click Through Rate

Click-through rates reflect the engagement of your audience with your ads. It calculates the ratio of how many times people click on your ads and how many times they see the ads.

Formula - CTR = (Total Ad Clicks / Total Ad Impressions) * 100%

SOV - Share of Voice

This is a metric that reflects the chances of customers seeing your ads against other advertisers. It is calculated as a percentage of your ads seen by potential customers against other advertisers.

Formula - SOV = 1 / Number of Ads Shown in a Particular Page

AOV - Average Order Value

This calculates the average transaction or order value of each converted customer. This metric is especially important for retail firms running campaigns.

Formula - AOV = Number of Transactions Gained Through Ads / Total Revenue Generated Through Ads

Other Terms

CTA - Call to Action

"Call to Action" represents the action you want your target customers to fulfill after clicking on your ads.

DSP - Demand Side Platform

Demand Side Platforms are firms through which advertisers can buy display ad inventory across real-time bidding networks (i.e., Google). These platforms place the ads in the networks based on the criteria defined by the advertisers.

RTB - Real-Time Bidding

Real-Time Bidding is the process of buying unsold ad inventory from networks through programmatic auctions. Like regular auctions, the highest bid takes priority here.

DMA - Designated Marketing Area

This represents the regions or locations targeted by your advertisement campaigns.

IAB - Interactive Advertising Bureau

The IAB defines the industry standards for digital advertising. This also involves defining ad specifications for each type of campaign you conduct.

ROS - Run of Site

This represents a situation where you run ads through a specific website only.

RON - Run of Network

This represents a scenario where you run your ads through a network that encompasses multiple websites. 

Final thoughts on Advertising Abbreviations

Advertising terms and jargons help marketers to understand the marketing campaigns conducted from a larger perspective. As such, knowing these abbreviations and what they mean should help you to understand your ad campaigns better and increase their effectiveness.

Also, check out this post for effective clickbait examples that you can use to increase engagement.