The words and acronyms you'll hear across modern marketing - social, paid, influencer, creative, search and measurement - defined in plain English. 78 terms and growing.
The ranking system a social platform uses to decide which content each user sees, in what order. Modern algorithms weigh watch time, saves, shares, dwell time and recency far more than likes or follower count.
The methodology used to credit a sale or sign-up to the marketing touchpoints that drove it. Common models: last-click, first-click, linear, data-driven, and MMM.
Grouping users by a shared characteristic (sign-up week, acquisition channel) and comparing their behaviour over time. The honest way to read retention.
The day-to-day work of responding to comments, DMs and mentions on a brand’s social channels. Done well, it lifts reach (the algorithm rewards engaged posts) and turns audiences into customers.
A recurring theme or format a brand publishes against — for example ‘behind the scenes’, ‘product education’, ‘founder POV’. Pillars give a feed coherence and make planning faster.
A server-to-server method (notably Meta’s Conversions API) of sending conversion events directly to an ad platform, bypassing browser-based tracking. Largely replaces the cookie-based pixel post-iOS 14.5.
Anyone producing content for an audience on a social or video platform. The preferred term over ‘influencer’ in most professional contexts since around 2022.
The ecosystem of independent creators, the platforms that monetise them and the brands that partner with them. Estimated at over $250B globally in 2025.
Sharing that happens in private channels — DMs, WhatsApp, email — and is invisible to standard analytics. Often the largest driver of word-of-mouth for modern brands.
Demand-Side Platform. Software (e.g. DV360, The Trade Desk) that buys programmatic display, video and CTV inventory across thousands of publishers in real time.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Google’s quality framework for evaluating content — particularly important for health, finance and legal topics.
Total interactions (likes, comments, shares, saves) divided by reach or followers, expressed as a percentage. The standard health metric for organic social content.
US Federal Trade Commission requirement that creators clearly label paid partnerships using #ad, #sponsored or the platform’s native paid-partnership tool. The UK equivalent is governed by the ASA.
Generative Engine Optimisation. The practice of optimising content for retrieval and citation by large language models (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) — distinct from classical SEO.
Go-To-Market. The plan for how a product or brand will reach its customers — covering positioning, pricing, channels and sales motion. (Not to be confused with Google Tag Manager, same acronym.)
A keyword prefixed with # that groups posts on the same topic. Less important than it once was for discovery — most platforms now rely on on-image and on-caption signals instead.
The first 1-3 seconds of a video or the first line of a caption. On short-form video, hook strength predicts watch-through more than any other variable.
A controlled experiment (geo holdout, ghost bidding, conversion lift) that measures the conversions a channel actually caused, not the ones it merely touched.
The job a user is trying to do with a query. Usually grouped as informational, navigational, commercial or transactional. Drives both content choice and bidding.
An audience modelled by a platform to resemble a seed list (e.g. your top customers). The default cold-prospecting audience on Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn.
A production approach where one shoot produces dozens of cuts and variants for different platforms, audiences and tests — instead of one finished asset.
A small piece of JavaScript placed on a website to send user behaviour back to an ad platform. Increasingly paired with server-side tracking via Conversions API.
Showing ads specifically to people who’ve already interacted with your brand — site visitors, video viewers, cart abandoners. Sometimes called remarketing.
Return On Ad Spend. Revenue generated divided by ad spend, usually expressed as a ratio (e.g. 4.2x). The most-used profitability metric in performance marketing.
Structured data (typically JSON-LD) added to a page so search engines and LLMs can parse entities — products, articles, FAQs, definitions — unambiguously.
Monitoring conversations across social platforms, forums and news for brand mentions, competitor activity and category trends. The input to most modern brand strategy.
The depth and breadth of content a site has published on a single subject area. Increasingly the dominant ranking factor in both Google and LLM citation.
User-Generated Content. Posts, videos or reviews created by customers or fans rather than the brand. Often outperforms brand-made content in paid placements.
The contractual permissions a brand secures to reuse a creator’s content in paid ads, OOH, email or web. Almost always negotiated separately from the original post fee.
When a creator grants a brand permission to run paid ads from the creator’s own handle. Often called ‘Spark Ads’ on TikTok or ‘Partnership Ads’ on Meta.
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