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Ad-Tech Glossary

Plain-English definitions for every term we use in our teardowns - with real examples from scraped campaign data.

A
Ad Fatigue
The decay in ad performance that occurs when a target audience has seen the same creative too many times, causing CTR to fall, CPMs to rise, and ROAS to erode.Creative
Ad Localization
How a brand adapts an ad for a new market by reworking the argument itself, a creative decision that automatic translation settings cannot make.Creative
Advantage+ Catalog Ads
Meta's AI-powered ad format that pulls from a connected product catalog to automatically assemble and personalize ads for each viewer based on browsing history and purchase signals.Platform Features
Advertorial
A paid ad written in the style of editorial content - long-form, educational, and structured like an article or email rather than a traditional advertisement.Creative & Copy
AI Content Disclosure
The requirement to label ads where AI generated or substantially modified visual, audio, or video content, enforced via automatic metadata detection on Meta and self-disclosure on Google from 2026.Platform Features
AI Max for Search
A suite of Google AI features within Search campaigns that automatically expands keyword matching, generates ad headlines, and routes traffic to the most relevant landing page.Platform Features
AI Voiceover Ads
Platform-generated or third-party-synthesized audio added to video ads using text-to-speech, enabling narration or dubbing without studio recording.Creative
AI-Generated UGCAI UGC
Avatar-based video creative produced by AI platforms that replicates talking-head testimonials, product demos, and unboxing-style content without involving real human creators in production.Creative
Amazon Attribution
Amazon's free tool for tracking how off-Amazon ads - Google, Meta, email - drive detail-page views, add-to-carts, and sales on Amazon listings.Measurement & Attribution
Andromeda Algorithm
Meta's AI-powered ad retrieval engine that matches ads to users based on creative signals rather than audience targeting settings.Platform Features
Asset Groups
A themed collection of creative assets, audience signals, and landing URLs inside a Performance Max campaign that Google's AI uses to assemble and serve ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Maps.Campaign Structure
Attribution Window
The look-back period after a click or impression during which a platform claims credit for a conversion — changing the window changes reported ROAS without changing actual sales.Attribution & Tracking
Audience Exclusions
The targeting control that stops a prospecting budget from re-buying existing customers, by suppressing customer lists and site visitors.Audience & Targeting
Audience Network
Meta's placement that runs your ads on third-party apps and websites - the one placement D2C brands are most split on keeping.Platform Features
Audience Signals (Performance Max)
First-party and interest-based inputs D2C brands feed into Google Performance Max campaigns to guide the AI toward likely converters—without restricting who can see the ads.Campaign Structure
Average Order Value (AOV)AOV
Total revenue divided by number of orders — the unit-economics metric that sets how much a brand can profitably spend to acquire a customer.Measurement & Attribution
B
Blended ROAS
Total revenue divided by total ad spend across all channels, giving a single efficiency number that no individual platform can inflate through its own attribution model.Measurement & Attribution
Brand Bidding
Bidding on your own brand name in paid search - to defend the click, control the message, and keep competitors off your terms.Campaign Structure
Brand Lift Study
A controlled experiment that measures whether an ad campaign changed how target customers think about a brand, by comparing survey responses from people who saw the ads against a matched group that didn't.Measurement & Attribution
Brand Memory: How Meta's AI Learns Your Brand
Meta's AI feature that studies a brand's own ad history to learn its tone and format, then keeps newly generated creative on-brand at scale.Platform Features
Break-Even ROAS
The specific ROAS a brand must hit to cover product costs without generating profit or loss, calculated as 1 divided by gross margin percentage.Measurement & Attribution
Broad Match
Google Ads' most expansive keyword match type, which triggers ads on semantically related searches, synonyms, and intent-matched queries rather than exact keyword variations alone.Campaign Structure
Buy with Prime: What D2C Brands Actually Get From It
Amazon's checkout button that puts Prime shipping and one-click purchase on a D2C brand's own store, with Amazon fulfilling the order behind it.Platform Features
C
CAC Payback Period
The number of months it takes a brand to recover its customer acquisition cost through the gross profit generated by that customer.Measurement & Attribution
Campaign Total Budget
A Google Ads budget type that sets a single fixed spending cap over a campaign flight of 3 to 90 days, letting Google's AI manage daily pacing without a per-day limit.Campaign Structure
Click-to-WhatsApp AdsCTWA
A Meta ad format where tapping a Facebook or Instagram ad opens a WhatsApp conversation with the business instead of loading a landing page.Platform Features
Collation Groups
Meta's internal grouping of related ad variants that are being tested against each other within the same campaign, visible in Ad Library data as a shared identifier across creatives.Meta Ads
Collection Ads
A mobile-only Meta ad format combining a cover image or video with a product tile grid that opens a full-screen in-app storefront when tapped.Creative
Competitor Conquesting
Bidding on a rival brand's trademarked name as a Google Ads keyword so your ad appears when someone searches for the competitor.Campaign Structure
Contextual Targeting
A method of placing ads based on the content of the page or app where the ad appears, rather than on the viewer's past browsing behavior.Audience Targeting
Contribution Margin
The revenue remaining after subtracting all variable costs per order — COGS, shipping, payment fees, and returns — that D2C brands use to set CAC ceilings and profitability floors for paid media.Measurement & Attribution
Cost Per ViewCPV
The amount an advertiser pays each time a viewer watches a video ad past the platform's defined threshold — 30 seconds for YouTube TrueView in-stream, or the full duration for shorter formats.Campaign Structure
Creative Testing
A structured process for running controlled experiments to identify which ad creatives - images, videos, copy, headlines - drive the best performance for a given audience and objective.Meta Ads
Creative Velocity
The rate at which new ad creatives are produced and launched into an account, typically measured as net-new assets per $10,000 in weekly spend.Creative
Cross-Channel Attribution
A measurement method that distributes conversion credit across every paid touchpoint in the customer journey, so a single purchase isn't claimed in full by Meta, Google, and email simultaneously.Attribution & Tracking
Custom Labels (Google Shopping)
Five free-form Google Merchant Center feed fields (custom_label_0–4) that segment products by margin, price, or bestseller rank for separate bidding.Campaign Structure
Customer Acquisition CostCAC
The total cost of acquiring a single new customer, including all marketing and sales expenses divided by the number of new customers gained.Measurement & Attribution
Customer Lifetime ValueLTV
The total net revenue a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship.Measurement & Attribution
Customer Match
A Google Ads tool that lets brands upload hashed customer data — emails, phone numbers, or addresses — to reach known buyers and find similar audiences across Search, Shopping, YouTube, and Gmail.Audience Targeting
D
Dayparting
The practice of restricting or adjusting ad delivery to specific hours or days of the week based on when historical data shows conversions are most likely to occur.Campaign Structure
Demand Gen Campaigns
Google's AI-powered campaign type that serves visual and video ads across YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover, and Gmail to reach in-market audiences before they search.Campaign Structure
Demand-Side PlatformDSP
Software that lets advertisers buy ad inventory across multiple publishers and exchanges through a single interface, using real-time bidding to reach audiences beyond Meta and Google.Platform Features
Dynamic Creative OptimizationDCO
An automated ad-serving method that assembles the best-performing combination of creative elements in real time for each individual viewer.Meta Ads
Dynamic Product AdsDPA
A Meta ad format that automatically pulls product images, prices, and copy from your catalog to serve personalized ads to shoppers who have already shown interest in specific products.Meta Ads
F
Final URL Expansion
A Google Ads setting that allows Google to override a campaign's specified landing page and route a click to a different page on the same domain that Google judges more relevant to the user's query.Platform Features
First-Party Data
Customer and behavioral data collected directly from a brand's own channels-email signups, purchase history, on-site events-owned by the brand and used to power paid media targeting and measurement.Audience Targeting
Flexible Creative
A Meta ad format where advertisers upload multiple images, videos, and copy variants in one ad unit, with Meta's AI assembling and serving the best-performing combination to each user.Creative
Free Shipping Threshold
The cart value a shopper has to clear before shipping becomes free - the cheapest lever a D2C brand has for moving average order value.Unit Economics
Full-Funnel Paid Strategy
Coordinating paid campaigns across prospecting, retargeting, and retention at once, instead of optimizing only for bottom-funnel conversions.Campaign Structure
G
Generative Creative (Meta)
Meta's in-platform AI tools that generate ad images, backgrounds, text, and video from a brand's existing assets, inside Advantage+ creative.Creative
Gift with PurchaseGWP
A promotional offer that bundles a free product with an order instead of cutting the price - used to lift order value or trial a new SKU.Unit Economics
Google Ads Transparency Center
Google's public archive of ads from verified advertisers - shows each ad's creative, format, region and last-shown date, but no spend or targeting.Platform Features
Google Display NetworkGDN
Google's inventory of sites, apps, and videos where image and video ads run next to content rather than next to a search query.Campaign Structure
Google Shopping Campaigns
A Google Ads campaign type that displays product image, price, and store name in search results, triggered by your Merchant Center product feed rather than keyword bids.Campaign Structure
Google Universal Cart
A Google-managed shopping cart shared across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail that lets buyers add products from multiple retailers and check out with Google Pay without visiting individual brand websites.Platform Features
M
Marketing Efficiency RatioMER
Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across all channels, measured off back-end revenue rather than platform-reported conversions.Measurement & Attribution
Meta Ad Library
A public, searchable database of all active ads running across Meta's platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network - available to anyone without an account.Competitive Intelligence
Meta Advantage+ Shopping CampaignsASC
Meta's fully automated campaign type that uses AI to handle creative testing, audience targeting, placement, and budget allocation for e-commerce advertisers with minimal manual configuration.Meta Ads
Meta Conversions APICAPI
A server-to-server interface that sends conversion events from a brand's backend directly to Meta, bypassing the browser-level limitations that iOS privacy changes and ad blockers impose on the Meta Pixel.Attribution & Tracking
Meta Location Fees
A 2–5% surcharge Meta adds to ads delivered in six countries from July 1, 2026, billed on the invoice and never shown in Ads Manager reporting.Platform Features
P
Partnership Ads
A Meta ad format that runs a creator's post as a paid ad under the creator's handle, combining the social proof of influencer content with Ads Manager's targeting and measurement.Creative
Performance MaxPMax
A Google Ads campaign type that runs ads across all Google surfaces — Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Discover — from a single campaign, using AI to allocate budget and optimize toward a conversion goal.Campaign Structure
Post-Purchase Upsell
An offer shown after checkout that a buyer accepts in one click, without re-entering payment - a way to lift order value the ad has already paid for.Unit Economics
Predictive Budget Allocation
An AI-driven system that moves ad spend across campaigns in real time based on forecasted performance signals, acting before results change rather than after.Campaign Structure
Price Anchoring
A copy device that prices a product against a chosen comparison, so the number reads as small before the reader judges it on its own.Creative
Promotion Assets
A Google Ads asset that renders a discount, an occasion label, a promo code, and a validity window directly inside a search ad.Platform Features
Prospecting Campaign
A paid media campaign targeting cold audiences—people who have never interacted with your brand—to acquire net-new customers at scale.Campaign Structure
R
Reels Trending Ads
A Meta placement that inserts brand video immediately after creator Reels ranked in the top 5% of engagement on Instagram and Facebook, giving advertisers adjacency to trending content without producing it themselves.Platform Features
Repeat Purchase RateRPR
The percentage of customers who make a second or subsequent purchase within a defined time window, used to determine whether paid acquisition is building a profitable customer base.Measurement & Attribution
Responsive Search AdsRSA
Google's only Search ad format, where you provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions and Google's machine learning assembles the best-performing combination for each query and user.Platform Features
Retail Media NetworkRMN
An advertising platform operated by a retailer that lets brands buy ad placements targeting shoppers using the retailer's own first-party purchase and browsing data, with attribution that closes directly to a verified purchase.Platform Features
Retargeting
A paid advertising strategy that serves ads specifically to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand, rather than cold audiences.Audience & Targeting
Return on Ad SpendROAS
The revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated as total revenue divided by total ad spend.Measurement & Attribution
S
Search Intent
The underlying goal a person has when they type a query into a search engine - the reason behind the search, not just the words used.Audience & Targeting
Seller Ratings
The automated star rating and review count Google can show beside a search ad - an asset a brand qualifies for rather than switches on.Platform Features
Shoppable CTV
A connected TV ad format that adds a product carousel and QR code to video ads, letting viewers browse and purchase directly from their television screen.Platform Features
Sitelink Assets
Extra links shown beneath a Google search ad that route to specific pages - authored by the advertiser, served at Google's discretion.Campaign Structure
Smart Bidding
Google's family of AI-powered bid strategies - Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversion Value - that automatically set bids for each auction based on predicted conversion probability.Campaign Structure
Smart Bidding Exploration
An opt-in Google Ads feature that directs the bidding algorithm to pursue queries it would normally skip — signals within your eligible set that previously fell below its confidence threshold — by accepting a bounded ROAS reduction in exchange for reaching new converting users.Platform Features
Social Commerce
Selling products directly inside social media apps - Instagram Shops, TikTok Shop, Facebook Shops, WhatsApp checkout - so a buyer completes a purchase without leaving the platform.Platform Features
Social Proof
The use of other people's experiences, opinions, or actions to validate a buying decision - reviews, testimonials, user counts, and press mentions in ads and on landing pages.Creative & Copy