Reference

Performance Marketing Glossary

600+ terms from paid media, SEO, analytics, CRO, mobile app growth, SaaS, and crypto marketing — all in one place. Click any term in a blog post to land directly on its definition.

A

Analytics

A controlled experiment comparing two versions of a page, ad, or email to determine which performs better for a defined metric. Statistical significance is required before declaring a winner and rolling out changes.

The portion of a webpage visible on screen without scrolling. Originating from newspaper design, above-the-fold placement is critical for high-impact elements because on mobile, 50–70% of visitors never scroll below the first screen. The value proposition, primary CTA, and key trust signals should all be visible within this zone.

Paid Media

Additional ad elements such as sitelinks, callouts, images, and prices that expand how a search ad appears. Good assets improve visibility and click-through rate.

Paid Media

The performance decline that happens when the same audience sees the same creative too often. Ad fatigue usually shows up as falling CTR, rising CPM or CPC, and weaker conversion rate over time.

Paid Media

Google's composite score that determines an ad's position in search results. Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score × contextual signals (device, location, time, and expected impact of extensions). Higher Ad Rank wins better positions at lower effective cost.

Ad SchedulingAd Scheduling / Dayparting

Paid Media

Setting campaigns to show ads only during specific hours or days of the week where conversion intent is highest. Dayparting allows budget to be concentrated in high-converting time windows and suppressed during low-performing periods. Bid adjustments by hour and day can be applied without full exclusion for more nuanced control.

An AI-generated answer shown directly in some search results, summarising information from multiple sources. Winning visibility in AI Overviews requires clear answers, trustworthy content, and strong entity signals.

Google search summaries generated with AI that synthesise information from multiple sources. Pages are more likely to appear in AI Overviews when they are well-structured, trustworthy, and clearly answer intent.

Analytics

The delay between a user action happening and that data becoming available in a reporting system. Understanding analytics lag prevents premature decisions based on incomplete data.

The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. Descriptive anchor text signals to Google what the linked page is about — "conversion rate optimisation guide" provides a stronger topical relevance signal than "click here". Natural anchor text variation (branded, generic, partial-match, and exact-match) is healthier than a high concentration of exact-match anchors, which can trigger algorithmic penalties.

Annual Contract ValueACV (Annual Contract Value)

SaaS

The average annualised revenue per customer contract. ACV is commonly used in B2B SaaS to evaluate deal quality, segment accounts, and judge whether CAC is sustainable for a given sales motion.

App Store OptimisationASO (App Store Optimisation)

Mobile & App

The practice of optimising an app's metadata — title, keywords, screenshots, description, ratings — to improve discoverability and conversion rate in the App Store and Google Play. The organic equivalent of SEO for mobile apps.

Apple Search AdsApple Search Ads (ASA)

Paid Media

Apple's native advertising platform that places ads at the top of App Store search results. It supports Basic and Advanced campaign types and provides high-intent traffic for app install campaigns with strong conversion rates.

ARRAnnual Recurring Revenue

SaaS

The annualised value of recurring subscription revenue. ARR = MRR × 12. Investors and acquirers value SaaS companies as a multiple of ARR, making it the primary business valuation metric for subscription companies.

Defining who sees your ads based on demographics, interests, behaviours, in-market signals, or custom data. Precise audience targeting reduces CAC and improves conversion rates by matching ads to high-intent prospects.

Average Revenue Per UserARPU (Average Revenue Per User)

SaaS

Average Revenue Per User measures how much revenue each user generates on average in a given period. It is often used in apps, subscriptions, and marketplaces to judge monetization quality alongside retention and acquisition cost.

B

The native GA4 export that sends raw event data into Google BigQuery for advanced analysis. It enables unsampled reporting, deeper attribution work, and custom joins with CRM or revenue data.

The total customer acquisition cost calculated across all channels combined — total marketing and sales spend divided by total new customers in a period. Blended CAC differs from channel-specific CAC because it includes organic, referral, and word-of-mouth alongside paid channels. Companies with strong organic and community growth will have a blended CAC significantly below their paid-only CAC.

Analytics

In GA4, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged — lasting less than 10 seconds, with no conversion event and no second pageview. A high bounce rate on a landing page signals a mismatch between the ad or search intent that drove the visit and the page content delivered. It is the inverse of GA4 Engagement Rate.

Crypto & Fintech

The total value of assets moved across blockchains via bridging protocols over a period, often used to assess cross-chain demand and ecosystem activity.

The speed at which campaign budget is being spent relative to the intended pacing plan. Monitoring burn rate helps avoid both overspending and underspending.

C

CACCustomer Acquisition Cost

Paid Media

The total cost to acquire one new paying customer, including ad spend, salaries, and tools divided by the number of new customers in a period. Lowering CAC while maintaining quality is a core lever of profitable growth.

Call to ActionCTA (Call to Action)

CRO

A prompt — button, link, or phrase — that directs users to take a specific next step. Strong CTAs are specific, benefit-focused, and reduce friction. They're the most-tested element in conversion rate optimisation.

An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a page should be treated as the primary URL when similar or duplicate versions exist. Canonicals help consolidate ranking signals and reduce duplication issues.

The distribution of budget and effort across channels such as SEO, paid search, paid social, email, and partnerships. A healthy channel mix reduces overdependence on any single source of growth.

The percentage of customers who cancel or do not renew within a given period. High churn erodes MRR growth and increases CAC payback period, making retention optimisation as important as acquisition for sustainable growth.

Grouping users by a shared characteristic at a specific point in time — typically acquisition date — and tracking their behaviour over subsequent periods to identify retention patterns and LTV by segment. Cohort analysis reveals whether retention is improving or degrading over time and which acquisition channels produce users with higher long-term engagement.

A central pillar page supported by a cluster of topically related blog posts and landing pages, all interlinked. Content hubs build topical authority, help target competitive head terms, and distribute internal link equity across the cluster.

The percentage of visitors or users who complete a desired action. Conversion Rate = (Conversions / Total Visitors) × 100. Even small improvements in conversion rate compound significantly on paid media budgets.

The process of measuring actions that matter to your business — purchases, leads, sign-ups — and sending that data to ad platforms to evaluate performance and power automated bidding strategies like Smart Bidding.

Google's set of page experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) for loading speed, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for visual stability, and Interaction to Next Paint (INP) for responsiveness. These are a confirmed Google ranking factor.

Cost Per LeadCPL (Cost Per Lead)

Paid Media

The total ad spend divided by the number of leads generated in a period. CPL = Total Spend ÷ Leads. It measures efficiency specifically for lead-generation campaigns rather than direct purchase campaigns, and should always be paired with lead quality metrics (SQL rate, close rate) to avoid optimising for cheap, low-quality leads.

CPACost Per Acquisition

Paid Media

The cost to achieve a specific conversion action such as a purchase, lead, or sign-up. CPA = Total Spend ÷ Conversions. It differs from CAC in that it tracks any conversion event, not only net-new customer acquisition.

CPCCost Per Click

Paid Media

The amount you pay each time a user clicks your ad. CPC = Total Ad Spend ÷ Total Clicks. Reducing CPC through better Quality Scores or audience targeting, while maintaining conversion rate, directly improves ROAS.

CPICost Per Install

Paid Media

The average cost to drive one app install through paid advertising. CPI = Total Spend ÷ Total Installs. It is the primary efficiency metric for mobile user acquisition campaigns and varies significantly by platform and category.

CPMCost Per Mille

Paid Media

The cost per one thousand ad impressions. Common in display and social advertising where brand awareness is the goal. CPM = (Total Spend ÷ Total Impressions) × 1,000.

The amount of crawling attention search engines are likely to spend on a site within a period of time. On large sites, weak crawl budget management can slow discovery and re-crawling of important pages.

Creative fatigue happens when an audience sees the same ad too often and engagement begins to decline. Rising frequency paired with falling CTR or conversion rate is usually a sign that fresh creative is needed.

A structured process of comparing different ad concepts, hooks, formats, or messages to identify which creative variables improve click-through rate, conversion rate, or cost efficiency.

CROConversion Rate Optimisation

CRO

The systematic process of increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, using data, UX research, and controlled experiments rather than guesswork. CRO compounds ROAS improvements without increasing ad spend.

Crypto & Fintech

A marketing campaign distributing free tokens to wallet addresses meeting specific eligibility criteria — typically based on historical protocol usage, community participation, or holding a specific token. Airdrops simultaneously serve as user acquisition, product distribution, and community building events. Designing eligibility criteria to target genuine users rather than airdrop farmers is critical for post-distribution retention.

CTRClick-Through Rate

Paid Media

The percentage of people who see your ad and click it. CTR = (Clicks ÷ Impressions) × 100. A strong CTR signals ad relevance; a weak CTR suggests misalignment between ad copy and audience intent.

User-defined attributes in analytics tools used to capture extra context such as plan type, content category, or customer segment. They make reporting far more actionable than default metrics alone.

Numerical values you define in analytics tools to track business-specific data such as margin, scroll percentage, or content score. Custom metrics extend reporting beyond standard platform fields.

Customer Data PlatformCDP (Customer Data Platform)

SaaS

A Customer Data Platform centralizes customer data from multiple sources to build unified user profiles that can be used across analytics, advertising, CRM, and personalization tools. A CDP is especially valuable when teams need more reliable first-party data for segmentation and attribution.

Customer exclusion is the practice of removing existing customers from acquisition campaigns so budgets are not wasted on users who have already converted. It is especially important in lead generation, subscription businesses, and remarketing-heavy accounts.

D

Mobile & App

The percentage of users who are still active in an app 7 days after their initial install or sign-up. D7 retention is a leading indicator of product-market fit — apps with D7 retention above 20% typically sustain significantly stronger 30-day and 90-day retention. Comparing D7 by acquisition channel and cohort identifies which channels bring the most genuinely engaged users.

Daily Active UsersDAU (Daily Active Users)

Mobile & App

The count of unique users who perform at least one qualifying action in an app or platform within a given day. DAU is a primary engagement metric for consumer apps and is divided by MAU to produce the DAU/MAU ratio (stickiness). For products targeting daily usage habits, a DAU/MAU ratio above 20% is generally considered healthy.

Analytics

A JavaScript object that standardises how data is passed from a website or app to analytics and marketing tools via Google Tag Manager. The site pushes events and variables — product IDs, user types, transaction values, page categories — to the data layer, and GTM listens and fires tags in response. A well-implemented data layer is the foundation of accurate, scalable, and developer-independent tracking.

DeFiDecentralised Finance

Crypto & Fintech

Financial services — lending, trading, yield farming — built on blockchain smart contracts without traditional intermediaries. DeFi protocols use token incentives and community governance as viral growth and retention mechanisms.

DEXDecentralised Exchange

Crypto & Fintech

A crypto exchange that facilitates peer-to-peer trading directly between users' wallets through smart contracts, without a central intermediary holding funds. Leading DEXs include Uniswap, Curve, and dYdX. Marketing a DEX requires reaching crypto-native audiences through community channels and tracking performance via on-chain analytics rather than traditional web pixels.

Domain AuthorityDA (Domain Authority)

SEO

Moz's 1–100 proprietary score predicting a domain's ability to rank in search results, based primarily on the quality and quantity of inbound backlinks. DA is a relative benchmarking metric useful for comparing sites against competitors — not a signal Google itself uses. Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush Authority Score are equivalent metrics from competing tools.

Dynamic Search AdsDSA (Dynamic Search Ads)

Paid Media

A Google Ads campaign type that automatically generates ad headlines and selects matching landing pages from your website content based on the user search query. DSAs capture long-tail queries not covered by keyword campaigns. Best used as a supplementary campaign with tight negative keyword controls rather than a replacement for keyword-based campaigns.

E

E-E-A-TExperience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness

SEO

Google's quality rater framework for evaluating content credibility. Pages authored by credible, experienced experts with strong trust signals — author bios, citations, reviews — rank better in competitive YMYL niches.

The process of helping search engines clearly understand the people, brands, products, and concepts mentioned on a site. Entity optimisation supports stronger topic understanding and knowledge signals.

Measuring specific user interactions on a website or app — clicks, form submissions, video plays, scroll depth, file downloads. In GA4, every user interaction is modelled as an event rather than a pageview.

A behavioural trigger that fires a pop-up or overlay when a user signals intent to leave a page — detected by cursor movement toward the browser close button on desktop, or rapid upward scrolling on mobile. Exit-intent overlays with a compelling offer can convert 5–15% of otherwise-exiting visitors. Most effective on high-traffic landing pages where the cost of a missed conversion is greatest.

Exit rate is the percentage of pageviews that were the last page in a session. Unlike bounce rate, exit rate can be useful for spotting where users abandon a multi-step journey such as checkout, onboarding, or a lead form flow.

Revenue generated from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, seat additions, or usage increases — as opposed to new customer acquisition. Expansion revenue carries near-zero CAC and is the most capital-efficient growth lever in SaaS. When expansion MRR exceeds churned MRR the business achieves negative net churn, growing revenue without increasing customer count.

F

The process of improving product feed titles, descriptions, categories, attributes, and images to boost visibility and performance in shopping campaigns. Better feeds usually lead to higher CTR and conversion quality.

Data a business collects directly from its own users, customers, and website visitors through forms, purchases, logins, product usage, and consented tracking. First-party data is increasingly important as third-party tracking becomes less reliable.

Anything in a form that makes completion harder than necessary, such as too many fields, unclear labels, trust concerns, or poor validation. Reducing form friction is one of the fastest ways to improve lead conversion rate.

Paid Media

A delivery control that limits how often the same user sees an ad within a given time period. Frequency caps help reduce ad fatigue and wasted impressions in display and paid social campaigns.

A limit on how often the same user sees an ad within a given period. Frequency caps reduce ad fatigue, wasted impressions, and the negative brand effects of overexposure.

A strategy that covers all stages of the buyer journey — awareness (TOFU), consideration (MOFU), and conversion (BOFU) — with tailored messaging and channels for each stage. It prevents over-investment at one stage while neglecting others.

Mapping and measuring the sequential steps users take toward a conversion goal. Funnel analysis pinpoints where users drop off so optimisation effort is directed at the highest-impact bottlenecks.

G

GA4Google Analytics 4

Analytics

Google's current analytics platform built on an event-based model, replacing the session-based Universal Analytics. GA4 integrates with Google Ads, supports cross-platform (web + app) tracking, and uses machine learning for predictive insights.

GTMGoogle Tag Manager

Analytics

A tag management system that lets you deploy and manage marketing and analytics tags on your site without editing code. GTM speeds up tracking implementation, reduces developer dependency, and centralises tracking governance.

H

A visual representation of where users click, scroll, or move their cursor on a page. Heatmaps reveal which content receives attention and which friction points cause drop-off, guiding CRO hypotheses.

I

The surrounding text, headings, captions, and page content that help search engines interpret what an image is about. Strong context improves image relevance and accessibility.

The percentage of eligible impressions your ads received out of the total available. Lost IS (budget) and Lost IS (rank) break down the two primary reasons for missed impressions and guide budget or bid decisions.

In-App PurchaseIn-App Purchase (IAP)

Mobile & App

A transaction completed inside a mobile app for consumables, subscriptions, upgrades, or digital goods. IAP tracking is central to mobile monetisation and ROAS analysis.

A controlled experiment measuring the true causal impact of a marketing channel by comparing a test group exposed to the campaign against a holdout group that is not. Incrementality testing answers "how much revenue would we have generated without this channel?" — a question attribution models estimate but cannot definitively answer. Holdout tests are offered natively by Meta (Conversion Lift) and Google (Geo Experiments).

Hyperlinks between pages within the same domain. Internal links distribute PageRank across the site, help search engines discover and understand content hierarchy, and guide users to related and high-value pages.

Paid Media

Invalid clicks are ad clicks that platforms identify as accidental, fraudulent, or otherwise not genuine user interest. Monitoring them helps protect budget quality, especially in high-spend or highly competitive paid accounts.

J

K

Keyword DifficultyKD (Keyword Difficulty)

SEO

A 0–100 metric estimating how competitive it is to rank in the top 10 organic results for a keyword, based primarily on the authority of currently ranking pages. Targeting keywords with KD below 30–40 is recommended for newer domains, progressively tackling higher-difficulty terms as domain authority builds. KD calculations differ between tools — Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz each have their own methodology.

KYCKnow Your Customer

Crypto & Fintech

A regulatory requirement mandating that financial service providers verify the identity of customers before providing services. In fintech and crypto, KYC involves collecting and verifying government-issued ID, address proof, and sometimes source-of-funds documentation. KYC friction is a primary conversion drop-off in fintech onboarding funnels — reducing completion time while maintaining compliance is a critical CRO challenge.

L

A standalone page designed to receive traffic from a specific campaign and drive a single conversion action. Effective landing pages have message match with the ad, a clear CTA, social proof, and minimal navigation distractions.

An ad format that lets users submit contact details directly from the ad without visiting a landing page first. It can increase lead volume but needs strong qualification rules.

Search phrases of three or more words with lower individual search volume but higher purchase intent and lower competition than short-tail head terms. Collectively, long-tail keywords account for approximately 70% of all search queries. For a specialist site, ranking for dozens of long-tail terms with strong commercial intent drives more qualified traffic than chasing high-volume generic keywords.

A targeting type where ad platforms (Meta, Google) find new users who share characteristics with your best existing customers. Lookalike audiences are one of the most efficient cold-audience targeting methods for scaling paid media.

LTVCustomer Lifetime Value

SaaS

The total revenue expected from a customer over their entire relationship with the business. The LTV:CAC ratio is a core health metric; a ratio above 3:1 generally indicates a sustainable growth model for subscription businesses.

The ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost. A ratio of 3:1 or higher is generally considered healthy for a SaaS or subscription business, indicating that customer revenue justifies acquisition investment.

M

A payback view that uses gross margin instead of top-line revenue to judge how quickly acquisition cost is recovered. It gives a more realistic picture of capital efficiency.

Crypto & Fintech

Market making is the practice of continuously placing buy and sell orders to provide liquidity in a trading market. In crypto, it is often used to improve tradability, tighten spreads, and support healthier market conditions for a token or exchange pair.

Media Mix ModellingMMM (Media Mix Modelling)

Analytics

A statistical regression technique that models the historical relationship between marketing spend across all channels and business outcomes to quantify each channel's contribution and optimise budget allocation. MMM requires no individual-level tracking data, making it privacy-compliant and able to measure channels like TV and outdoor that resist digital attribution. It is typically run quarterly and produces spend elasticity curves for each channel.

The consistency between the promise made in an ad or search result and the message a user sees on the landing page. Strong message match reduces confusion, lowers bounce rate, and improves conversion rate.

Paid Media

Paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Meta Audience Network. Meta Ads leverage detailed demographic, interest, and behavioural data to reach and retarget audiences at scale.

The ~160-character HTML snippet summarising a page's content that appears beneath the title in SERPs. While not a direct ranking factor, a compelling meta description improves CTR from the search results page.

Automatic notifications triggered when traffic, spend, conversion rate, or other KPIs move outside expected ranges. Alerting helps teams catch issues before they become expensive.

MEVMaximal Extractable Value

Crypto & Fintech

MEV is the value that validators, block producers, or searchers can extract by reordering, including, or excluding transactions within a block. It matters because it affects trade execution quality, fairness, and the economics of on-chain activity.

A small, measurable user action that indicates progression toward the primary conversion goal — such as email newsletter signup, pricing page visit, PDF download, or video play. Micro-conversions allow campaign optimisation when primary conversion volume is too low for direct statistical analysis. In GA4, micro-conversions can be marked as conversion events and used as Smart Bidding optimisation signals.

Mobile Measurement PartnerMMP (Mobile Measurement Partner)

Mobile & App

A third-party analytics platform — AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch — that tracks and attributes mobile app installs and in-app events to the correct marketing source, providing the source of truth for mobile campaign performance.

Modeled conversions are estimated conversions platforms infer when direct measurement is incomplete because of privacy limits, consent denial, or device fragmentation. They help fill reporting gaps, but should still be interpreted as estimates rather than exact counts.

Monthly Active UsersMAU (Monthly Active Users)

Mobile & App

The count of unique users who perform at least one qualifying action within a calendar month. MAU growth rate is a primary KPI for consumer apps, reported alongside the DAU/MAU ratio and cohort retention curves. "Active" must be defined as a meaningful action (not just an app open) to prevent inflated counts from low-intent sessions.

MRRMonthly Recurring Revenue

SaaS

The predictable, recurring revenue a SaaS company generates each month from active subscriptions. MRR growth rate and MRR breakdown (new, expansion, churned) are primary indicators of subscription business health.

Multivariate TestingMVT (Multivariate Testing)

CRO

An experiment testing multiple page elements simultaneously to find the highest-performing combination — for example, testing three headlines and two CTA colours in a single test. MVT can detect interaction effects that A/B testing misses, but requires 5–10× more conversion volume per variant to reach statistical significance. Best reserved for high-traffic pages where single-element A/B tests have been exhausted.

N

Keywords added to a campaign to prevent ads from showing for irrelevant searches. A well-maintained negative keyword list reduces wasted spend, improves CTR and Quality Score, and is foundational to a profitable Google Ads account.

Net Revenue RetentionNRR (Net Revenue Retention)

SaaS

The percentage of recurring revenue retained from an existing customer cohort over a period, including expansion from upsells and cross-sells, minus churn and contraction. NRR > 100% means the business grows revenue from its existing customer base without any new customer acquisition. Companies with NRR above 120% typically command premium SaaS valuation multiples.

O

P

An analytics technique for studying the common paths users take before or after a key event. It helps uncover confusing journeys, missed navigation links, and hidden conversion blockers.

Payback PeriodCAC Payback Period

General

The number of months required for the gross margin generated by a new customer to equal the cost of acquiring them. Payback Period = CAC ÷ (ARPU × Gross Margin %). Under 12 months is generally healthy for B2B SaaS; under 6 months for consumer apps. Payback period is more actionable than LTV:CAC for early-stage companies because it measures near-term capital efficiency.

A results-driven form of digital advertising where advertisers only pay when a specific action occurs — click, lead, or purchase. It emphasises measurability, optimisation, and ROI over vanity metrics.

Performance MaxPerformance Max (PMax)

Paid Media

A Google Ads campaign type that serves ads across all Google channels — Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Discover — from a single campaign. PMax relies heavily on audience signals and creative assets for automated targeting.

Product-Led GrowthPLG (Product-Led Growth)

SaaS

A go-to-market strategy where the product itself is the primary driver of user acquisition, expansion, and retention — typically through freemium or free trial models. PLG reduces CAC by letting users experience value before purchasing.

Automated buying and selling of digital advertising inventory through real-time bidding platforms. Programmatic enables precise audience-level targeting across thousands of publisher sites simultaneously, replacing manual direct insertion orders. Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) such as DV360, The Trade Desk, and Amazon DSP are the primary execution tools.

Crypto & Fintech

Protocol-owned liquidity is liquidity controlled directly by a protocol rather than rented temporarily through outside liquidity providers. It can improve stability, reduce dependence on mercenary capital, and give the protocol more control over market structure.

Q

Crypto & Fintech

A user who not only signs up but deposits a meaningful amount or meets quality thresholds defined by the business. It is a better indicator of real acquisition value in financial products.

Paid Media

Google's 1–10 rating of the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Higher Quality Scores lower your CPC and improve Ad Rank, making it a key lever for Google Ads efficiency.

Query Deserves FreshnessQuery Deserves Freshness (QDF)

SEO

A search concept where Google gives extra weight to recently updated content for topics that change quickly. Freshness matters more for news, trends, and evolving commercial queries.

R

Paid Media

Serving ads to users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your brand. Remarketing audiences typically convert at a higher rate and lower CPA than cold audiences, making it a high-ROAS channel.

Responsive Search AdsRSA (Responsive Search Ads)

Paid Media

The standard Google Ads text ad format accepting up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines. Google's machine learning tests combinations and learns which pairings perform best for different queries, audiences, and devices. Providing at least 8–10 distinct, non-repetitive headlines maximises the system's ability to optimise.

Paid Media

Retargeting is the practice of re-engaging users who previously visited your site, used your app, or interacted with your brand but did not convert. It overlaps with remarketing, and is often one of the most efficient ways to recover lost demand and lower effective acquisition cost.

Mobile & App

The percentage of users who return to a product or app after a defined period. Retention is one of the strongest indicators of product value and sustainable unit economics.

Revenue attribution is the process of assigning revenue credit to the channels, campaigns, or touchpoints that influenced a sale. It is more useful than conversion counting alone because it connects marketing activity to business value directly.

Rich results are enhanced search listings that include extra visual or structured elements such as FAQs, reviews, breadcrumbs, or product details. They depend on eligible structured data and can improve visibility and click-through rate.

ROASReturn on Ad Spend

Paid Media

The revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. Calculated as (Revenue ÷ Ad Spend) × 100. A ROAS of 400% means $4 earned for every $1 spent — a key metric for evaluating paid channel profitability.

ROIReturn on Investment

General

The ratio of net profit to total investment, expressed as a percentage. ROI = (Revenue - Cost) ÷ Cost × 100. Unlike ROAS which measures revenue against ad spend only, ROI accounts for all costs including product margin, fulfilment, and operational overhead. ROI provides a more complete profitability picture than ROAS but requires accurate cost data to calculate correctly.

A SaaS benchmark stating that a healthy company's ARR growth rate plus EBITDA margin should sum to 40 or higher. A company growing at 50% YoY with -10% EBITDA scores 40 (acceptable); one growing at 20% with 25% EBITDA also scores 45 (healthy through efficiency). Below 40 suggests the company needs to improve either growth velocity or profitability.

S

Search ConsoleGoogle Search Console

SEO

Google Search Console is a free SEO platform for monitoring indexing, search performance, crawl issues, Core Web Vitals, and query-level visibility. It is one of the most useful tools for finding pages with high impressions, low CTR, and technical problems limiting organic growth.

The underlying goal a user has when entering a query — informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. Aligning content to search intent is one of the strongest on-page signals for ranking and converting organic traffic.

Paid Media

Search Partners are third-party websites and properties where Google Ads search campaigns may also appear beyond Google's own search results. Performance can vary widely, so this inventory should be reviewed separately instead of assumed to match core Search quality.

A structured review of a site’s technical setup, content quality, internal links, metadata, and search performance to identify the issues most likely to limit rankings and traffic.

SERPSearch Engine Results Page

SEO

The page displayed by a search engine in response to a query. SERP features include organic results, paid ads, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, image packs, and local packs — each requiring different optimisation tactics.

A tracking setup where analytics and marketing data are routed through a server container before being sent to platforms. It improves control, data quality, and privacy compliance compared to purely browser-side tagging.

A measurement setup where data is processed through your own server or tagging endpoint instead of relying only on the browser. It improves data control and can reduce signal loss caused by browser restrictions and ad blockers.

A replay of an individual user session showing clicks, scrolling, taps, and navigation behaviour. Session recordings help diagnose UX friction and drop-off points that standard analytics often cannot explain on their own.

Share of VoiceSOV (Share of Voice)

Paid Media

The percentage of total available impressions in a market captured by a specific brand across paid search, organic search, or all digital channels. In Google Ads, Search Impression Share is the paid equivalent. Tracking organic Share of Voice via rank tracking tools (percentage of target queries a domain appears in) is a leading indicator of brand awareness growth.

Paid Media

A shared budget is a single campaign budget that Google Ads can distribute across multiple campaigns automatically. It is useful when closely related campaigns do not need rigid individual budget control and performance tends to vary day to day.

Mobile & App

An Apple ad format that lets users install an app from an overlay without leaving the current app. It reduces friction in mobile acquisition flows and can improve install conversion rates.

Crypto & Fintech

Slippage is the difference between the expected execution price of a trade and the price actually received. It rises when liquidity is thin or order size is large relative to market depth, making it a key metric in DeFi and trading UX.

Paid Media

Google Ads' automated bid strategies that use machine learning to optimise for conversions or conversion value at auction time. Strategies include Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions, and Maximise Conversion Value.

Testimonials, reviews, case studies, client logos, or usage statistics that reassure prospects by showing others have trusted and benefited from your product or service. Social proof is a primary reducer of conversion friction.

Crypto & Fintech

The proportion of token holders or circulating supply that is staked rather than idle or traded, often used as a signal of ecosystem participation and token alignment.

Machine-readable code (typically JSON-LD schema) added to pages to help search engines understand content type and unlock rich results such as FAQs, reviews, product details, and articles in SERPs.

T

The process of controlling how analytics and marketing tags are named, approved, tested, and maintained over time. Good tag governance reduces broken tracking and duplicated events.

Optimisations to a site's infrastructure — crawlability, indexability, page speed, Core Web Vitals, schema markup, canonical tags, and site architecture — that help search engines discover, render, and rank content.

Time to ValueTTV (Time to Value)

SaaS

The elapsed time between a user first signing up and reaching the product's "aha moment" — the first experience of core value. Shorter TTV correlates with higher activation rate, better D7 retention, and higher trial-to-paid conversion. Onboarding flows, progressive disclosure, and in-app guidance are the primary levers for reducing TTV.

Token Generation EventTGE (Token Generation Event)

Crypto & Fintech

The moment a crypto project's token is officially created and distributed on-chain, often marking the transition from pre-launch community building to live trading and ecosystem activity.

Crypto & Fintech

The economic design of a cryptocurrency or blockchain project's token — including supply schedule, distribution, utility, and incentive structures — that directly influences community growth, user retention, and token price dynamics.

A group of content pieces around a central theme: one pillar page covers the broad topic while cluster pages cover subtopics in depth. Internal links between them signal topical relevance to Google and improve rankings for both pages.

The degree to which a site is seen as a strong source on a subject because it covers related subtopics with depth and internal consistency. Topical authority is built through content clusters, strong internal linking, and subject-matter expertise.

Analytics

A document that defines which events, parameters, and naming rules should be measured across a site or product. It helps prevent broken analytics and reporting drift.

The percentage of free trial users who convert to a paid subscription. A 20% trial-to-paid rate means 5 trial sign-ups are required per paying customer, directly determining the effective CAC. Improving trial-to-paid through better onboarding, feature gating, and in-trial nurture sequences is typically more capital-efficient than increasing trial acquisition volume.

TVLTotal Value Locked

Crypto & Fintech

The total value of crypto assets deposited in a DeFi protocol's smart contracts at a given moment, measured in USD. TVL is the primary size metric for DeFi protocols — growing TVL indicates strong user trust and protocol utility. It is tracked by aggregators such as DefiLlama and used to benchmark protocols within the same category.

U

Mobile & App

The percentage of users who remove an app within a defined period after installing it. High uninstall rate often signals weak acquisition quality, poor onboarding, or a mismatch between ad promise and product experience.

URL tags — utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content — appended to URLs so analytics tools can identify the precise traffic source, medium, and campaign driving each visit or conversion.

V

The clear statement of the specific benefit a product delivers, who it is for, and why it is better than alternatives. A strong value proposition is the single most critical element of a high-converting landing page.

Paid Media

Viewability measures whether an ad had a real chance to be seen by the user, not just whether it was served. It matters most in display and video advertising where impressions alone can overstate actual exposure.

W

Crypto & Fintech

The percentage of visitors who successfully connect a wallet after landing on a dApp or Web3 page. It is a key activation metric because no on-chain action can happen until wallet connection is completed.

Warehouse-native analytics refers to reporting and analysis built directly on top of a central data warehouse rather than a separate analytics interface alone. It gives teams more flexibility, control, and consistency across product, revenue, and marketing data.

Crypto & Fintech

Wash trading is the artificial generation of trading volume through self-dealing or coordinated buying and selling that creates the appearance of market activity without genuine demand. It distorts metrics and can mislead investors, users, and partners.

Crypto & Fintech

Marketing strategies native to blockchain-based products, including community building on Discord and Telegram, token airdrop campaigns, influencer partnerships, and on-chain growth analytics. Community is the primary distribution channel.

X

Z

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